New ATI Products Confirmed: The X Series Line-up
by Derek Wilson on June 1, 2004 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Introduction
Today, ATI is announcing quite a few new products. Unfortunately, we don't have any numbers to bring to the table today, but there are some very interesting developments in both desktop and mobile. Much of what we see finalized today had been rumored for a while, so this article is more of a confirmation of those suspicions and a summary of what we can expect to see coming to the market from ATI.Some of the details won't be known until closer to product availability, but most of the information is fairly straight forward. ATI is introducing three new desktop parts and one new mobile part. In addition to their new GPUs, they are announcing the introduction of a reference design for a modular PCI Express graphics platform.
The most exciting news that we have is about the low end and mobile Radeon X-series parts. The new high end desktop series that ATI is releasing will be the R423 based PCI Express Radeon X800 line, and the new mid-range cards will be RV380 (which is basically a PCI Express version of RV360 and the 9600).
Before we get to the table listing all the specifications for each new ATI part that is launched today, let's take a closer look at the newest kids on the block.
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Pumpkinierre - Tuesday, June 1, 2004 - link
Maybe 110nm is just on that limit where present technology allows the usual shrink/power reduction effect to be maintained without all the 90nm problems that really require a rethink to sort out. If that's the case it might be a good overclocker but could suffer from overvoltage or early death.quanta - Tuesday, June 1, 2004 - link
I wonder if anyone even cares about the 130nm X600 part, when they can just overclock 110nm X300 cards. But then again, die shrinks from 130nm to 90nm has given Intel a lot of trouble in the form of voltage leak and heat, I suspect X300 may not be able to run as fast as X600 without generate a lot more heat.Gholam - Tuesday, June 1, 2004 - link
Hmm, do I get it right that there won't be an 8-pipeline PCI-E Radeon? Straight from 4-pipeline X600 to 12-pipeline X800 PRO? Sounds somewhat strange... X800SE anyone?sxr7171 - Tuesday, June 1, 2004 - link
nserra - Tuesday, June 1, 2004 - link
#jcromanoNice explanation, have you used on processors too, like it would be amd 90nm athlon 64 die size?
This is much like digital camera 3mp to 5mp, it's almost the double but if you look at it, you would say it's only 30%/40% bigger. Or ati 160m transitors vs nvidia 222m. Ati is almost "big" but it has less 62m or a radeon 9600 less, funny isn't it?
Cycophant - Tuesday, June 1, 2004 - link
Small spelling mistake on the article intro:"Today, ATI fills out their new X series with three new PCI Express parts based on current __technolgoy__ that we are seeing. "
spikemike - Tuesday, June 1, 2004 - link
I don't believe blacks will look any blacker, you have to remember that the backlight is constant throughout the entire lcd. You can't control the brightness at a single pixel, so if you wanted to make blacks blacker then the whole screen would get darker, making the whites darker too, and in a very low darkness scene, you don't want to lose the black level resolution.vedin - Tuesday, June 1, 2004 - link
Darn..and I was really hoping that the X600 would be a little faster in the core and memory than the 9600XT. Say..550mhz? Honestly, I was hoping for a scaled down X800..so much for wishful thinking.jcromano - Tuesday, June 1, 2004 - link
I believe your claim that "a straight die shrink only accounts for about a 30% increase in space efficiency," found in paragraph 3 of the page titled "X300 Debuts at 110nm," may be in error.I'm not really sure what "space efficiency" is, but you make this claim in contrast to ATI's claim of a 40% increase in transistors per given area.
Assuming that the number of transistors per unit area scales inversely with the square of the (linear) process size, we have:
transistor density = k/d^2
For the old 130nm process, then,
transistor density (old value) = k/130^2.
For the new 110nm process,
transistor density (new value) = k/110^2.
The generally accepted way of presenting a percent increase or decrease is to use the old value as the denominator of the fraction. A formula such as this one would be appropriate:
(new value/old value) - 1
where the result is re-expressed as a percent, and a positive result is interpreted as an increase.
If we plug in, using k/110^2 for the new value (numerator) and k/130^2 for the old value (denominator), and cancel the k's, we get
130^2/110^2 - 1 = .39669 = 39.669%, which is admittedly lower than the 40% claimed by ATI, but close enough for me.
ducsauce - Tuesday, June 1, 2004 - link
I wonder if ATI will put out an All-in-wonder version of the x800 some time this year. The AIW 9800 pro is not going to keep up for long.