ATI Radeon X800 Pro and XT Platinum Edition: R420 Arrives
by Derek Wilson on May 4, 2004 10:28 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Chip
R420 is a very power GPU in tight little package. ATI opted not to go with full DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 support in their latest GPU, but that doesn't mean that this chip doesn't pack a punch. Here's a breakdown of what's on the top of the line playing field now.
| NV38 | NV40 | R360 | R420 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transistors | 130M |
222M |
110M |
160M |
| Core clock | 475MHz |
400MHz |
412MHz |
500MHz |
| Mem clock | 950MHz |
1.1GHz |
900MHz |
1.12GHz |
| Memory Bus | 256bit |
256bit |
256bit |
256bit |
| Vertex Pipelines | ~4 |
6 |
4 |
6 |
| Pixel Pipelines | 4x2 |
16x1 |
8x1 |
16x1 |
| Shader Model | 2.0+ |
3.0 |
2.0 |
2.0+ |
| Fab Process | 130nm |
130nm |
150nm |
130nm |
| GeForce 6800 GT | GeForce 6800 Ultra | GeForce 6850 Ultra | Radeon X800 Pro | Radeon X800 XT PE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $399 |
$499 |
$499+ |
$399 |
$499 |
The first thing we see is that R420 has the highest clock speed (giving it the highest peak fillrate), and it just edges out NV40 for memory speed. Of course, these theoretical numbers don't really translate directly into performance. In order to understand where performance comes from, we'll need to take a much closer look at the architecture.
Before we get in over our heads on this, it is important to differentiate the hardware itself from how the hardware looks in terms of a graphics API. Both NVIDIA and ATI, in presenting their hardware to us, have relied heavily on using the constructs of DirectX 9 to explain what's going on at different stages in the pipeline. This is useful in that we can understand how the hardware looks to the software, but there are some caveats. We will be keeping this in mind as we look over the new offerings from ATI and NVIDIA.
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adntaylor - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
I wish they'd also tested with an nForce3 motherboard. nVidia have managed some very interesting performance enhancements on the AGP to HT tunnel that only works with the nVidia graphics cards. That might have pushed the 6800 in front - who knows!UlricT - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
Hey... Though the review rocks, you guys desperately need an editor for spelling and grammar!Jeff7181 - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
This pretty much settles it. With the excellent comparision between architectures, and the benchmark scores to prove the advantages and disadvantages of the architecture... my next card will be made by ATI.NV40 sure has a lot of potential, one might say it's ahead of it's time, supporting SM 3.0 and being so programmable. However, with a product cycle of 6 months to a year, being ahead of it's time is more of a disadvantage in this case. People don't care what it COULD do... people care what it DOES do... and the R420 seems to do it better. I just hope my venture into the world of ATI doesn't turn into driver hell.
NullSubroutine - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
Im fan boy for neither company and objectively I can say the cards are equal. Some games the ATI cards are faster other games the Nvidia cards are faster. So it all depends on the game you play to which one is better and the price of the card you are looking for. (Hmm, maybe motherboard companies could make 2 AGP slots...)About the arguement of the PS 2.0/3.0...
2.0 Cards will be able to play games with 3.0, they may not have full functionality or they may run it slower. This will remain to be seen till games begin to use 3.0. However...
The one thing bad for Nvidia in my eyes is the pixel shader quality that can be seen in Farcry, whether this is a game or driver glitch it is still unknown.
I forgot to add I like that the ATI cards use less power, I dont want to have to pay for another PSU ontop of already high prices of video cards. I would also like to see a review again a month from now when newer drivers come out to see how much things have changed.
l3ored - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
pschhh, did you see the unreal 3 demo? in the video i saw, it looked like it ran at about 5fps imagine running halo on a gfx 5200. however you could run it if you were to turn of halo's PS 2 effects. i think thats how it's going to be with unreal 3Slaanesh - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
Since PS 3.0 is not supported by the X800 hardware, does this mean that those extremely impressive graphical features showed in the Unreal 3 tech demo (NV40 launch) and the near-to-be-released goodlooking PS 3.0 Far Cry update are both NOT playable on the X800?? This would be a huge disadvantage for ATi since alot of the upcoming topgames will support PS3.0!l3ored - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
i agree phiro, personally i think im gonna get the one that hits $200 first (may be a while)Phiro - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
Hearing about the 6850 and the other Emergency-Extreme-Whatever 6800 variants that are floating about irritates me greatly. Nvidia, you are losing your way!Instead of spending all that time, effort and $$ just to try to take the "speed champ" title, make your shit that much cheaper instead! If your 6800 Ultra was $425 instead of $500, that would give you a hell of alot more market share and $$ than a stupid Emergency Edition of your top end cards... We laugh at Intel for doing it, and now you're doing it too, come fricking on...
gordon151 - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
#14, I think it has more to do with the fact those OpenGL benchmarks are based on a single engine that was never fast on ATI hardware to begin with.araczynski - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
12: personally i think the TNT line was better then the Voodoo line. I think they bought them out only to get rid of the competition, which was rather stupid because i think they would have died out sooner or later anyway because nvidia was just better. I would guess that perhaps they bought them out cuz that gave them patent rights and they woudln't have to worry about being sued for probably copying some of the technology :)