X-bit labs

The Fast and Furious: ATI Radeon X1900 XTX Review

Category: Video

by Anton Shilov , Alexey Stepin

[ 01/24/2006 | 08:28 PM ]

ATI Technologies’ highly-anticipated Radeon X1800-series proved to be a high-performance lineup, however, ATI failed to grab the crown of the indisputable leader from Nvidia Corp. with the new family and the latter’s GeForce 7800 GTX 512, which was never available in mass quantities, attracted a lot of attention to Nvidia’s products. Today ATI attempts to fight back its leadership with the Radeon X1900 XTX graphics card, which offers a promise to be the fastest consumer board in the world. Find out whether the Radeon X1900 XTX delivers on its promise in this review that includes 24 gaming benchmarks.

Table of contents:

• GPU Performance Improvements: Which Route to Take?
  
• Game Trends
  
• Radeon X1900: Architected for the Future
  
• Closer Look at the Radeon X1900-Series: PCB Design and Cooling System
  
• Radeon X1900 XT/XTX: The Battle for Watts
  
• Noise, Overclocking and 2D Quality
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Theoretical Tests
  
• Pixel Shader Performance
  
• Vertex Shader Performance
  
• Media Playback
  
• First-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Battlefield 2
  
• The Chronicles of Riddick
  
• Call of Duty 2
  
• Doom 3
  
• Far Cry
  
• Far Cry HDR Performance
  
• F.E.A.R.
  
• Half-Life 2
  
• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
  
• Project Snowblind
  
• Quake 4
  
• Serious Sam 2
  
• Unreal Tournament 2004
  
• 3D Shooters with Third-Person View
  
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
  
• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
  
• Simulators
  
• Colin McRae Rally 2005
  
• Pacific Fighters
  
• Strategies
  
• Age of Empires 3
  
• Warhammer 40 000: Dawn of War
  
• Semi-synthetic benchmarks
  
• Aquamark3
  
• Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 3
  
• Synthetic benchmarks
  
• Futuremark 3DMark03
  
• Futuremark 3DMark05
  
• Futuremark 3DMark06
  
• Conclusion
  

The famous Radeon X1800 product series by ATI Technologies was delayed significantly from its original date and when it hit the market, its architectural advantages over the competing GeForce 7800-series were not obvious for the consumer. While ATI’s Radeon X1800 XT was significantly faster compared to the GeForce 7800 GTX in a variety of benchmarks, it was left in the dust by the GeForce 7800 GTX 512, a product that was never available widely, but that created “the right” effect for the whole 7800 lineup during the holiday season.

On the 24^th of January, 2006, ATI tries to recapture leadership in both performance and availability with the Radeon X1900-series: more than 5000 units will be available for purchase on the first day, 60% of which are XTX flavours, with more than 50 000 graphics cards already made. Perhaps, the numbers are not really great, but we should keep in mind that we are talking about offerings that will cost $549 (Radeon X1900 XT 512MB), $599 (Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire Edition 512MB) and $649 (Radeon X1900 XTX 512MB), demand for which is unlikely to count in hundreds of thousands, especially right after the New Year parties.

The new Radeon X1900-series not only offers instant availability, but also improved performance amid moderate increase in the size of the die and transistor count. The newbie features 48 pixel shader processors, three times more than the Radeon X1800 XT and two times more than the GeForce 7800 GTX. But there is a question whether modern games truly need extremely high pixel shader performance. Read on to find out whether and by what margin the Radeon X1900 XTX can beat Nvidia’s latest GeForce 7800 GTX 512 in the broadest set of benchmarks available over the Internet.