X-bit labs

ATI RADEON X800 Gets its Face.

Category: Video

by Anton Shilov

[ 04/22/2004 | 06:07 PM ]

An Asian web-site OC.com.tw has published pictures from ATi Technology Days 2004 event hosted by ATI Technologies, including a photo of a graphics card that is believed to be the highly anticipated RADEON X800.

Official dates and specs of ATI’s upcoming code-named R420 products are still to be decided, but according to the latest unofficial information, the RADEON X800 PRO will be launched on the 4^th or the 5^th of May, while the RADEON X800 for AGP 8x and RADEON X880XT for PCI Express x16 are scheduled for June, not May introduction, if the information is correct.

If the information is correct, the more or less final revision of ATI RADEON X800 graphics cards looks as shown. The card has a massive cooler for the visual processing unit, but does not equip its GDDR3 memory with heat-spreaders. Large coolers on VPUs typically imply on high core-clock speeds, while the absence of memory cooling may indicate relatively low memory frequency.

ATI Technologies reportedly plans to roll-out various versions of the code-named R420 VPU branded as RADEON X800 PRO, RADEON X800 XT, RADEON X880 XT and RADEON X800 SE. The solutions will enable different number of rendering pipelines: 12, 16, 16, 8 and will function at different clock-speeds that are still to be decided. Higher-end graphics cards, such as RADEON X800PRO, X800XT and X880XT will have 256 or 512MB of GDDR3 memory functioning at clock-speed in the range of 1000MHz. The performance-mainstream offering RADEON X800 SE will use memory with 128-bit bus that is clocked at lower clock-speed compared to high-end products.

Officials for ATI Technologies typically do not comment on unreleased products. There are more pictures from the even over here.