Price: Not yet launched |
Meant For: Extreme gamers |
Key Specs: 625 MHz, 512 MB 1.45 GHz GDDR3, 48 pixel processors, 8 vertex shaders |
Pros: Dual DVI output, crossfire-enabled |
Cons: None |
Contact: Mediatech India.Tel: 9873186855E-mail: haresh@mediatechindia.com RQS# E24 or SMS 130324 to 9811800601 |
After years of playing catch-up to NVIDIA, the Red team
finally has a product that beats NVIDIA hands down with its R580 architecture
and Ultra Threaded Dispatch ProcessorIt's been quite long since ATi was
anywhere near the top spot in PC graphics. The spot was earlier dominated by
NVIDIA. Despite the new core, the R580 is not that big a departure from the
R520, but has still managed to throw NVIDIA off the pedestal it has monopolized
for so long. We got a reference card from ATi, so there was nothing bundled.
Retail might be different. The card in itself looks really bulky, has two DVI
out-ports and an S-Video out.
R580 architecture
Along with eight vertex shaders, the card has been endowed with
48-independent pixel shader processors compared to 24 on the 7800GTX-512. Why so
many? Its because of the way games have evolved. When shaders were introduced in
graphic cards, people had to spend huge amounts to buy a one that had just 32 MB
RAM! Games were just beginning to exploit the potential of the pixel shader
technology. The other important thing is the use that these shaders were being
put to. Rendering a graphic requires two kinds of operations-texture and
arithmetic. Earlier the ratio between these was 1:1. However, most games today
require the operations to be performed in a 5:1 ratio. There is also
a technique called Procedural Textures that allows you to perform most shader
operations mathematically. Finally, texture operations depend more on the memory
bandwidth, size, speed, and not so much on the pixel or vertex pipelines. To
increase these, you really need to update the whole system. Arithmetic
operations, on the other hand, are mere calculations. Thus, more the processors,
the faster arithmetic operations can be performed. Since 5 out of 6 operations
today are arithmetic, having more processors would obviously lead to a huge
performance boost. This is what ATi has done. By increasing the number of pixel
processors from 16 to 48, it has essentially tripled the capabilities.
The Ultra Threaded Dispatch Processor acts as an arbiter
and ensures that each shader processor has got work to do. It keeps re-orderingthe
instructions for optimal performance. We suspect that the entire architecture is
out of order execution friendly. This is important since ATi is constantly
pushing towards making GPUs which can take some of the load off the processor.
Using our standard test bed (Athlon X2 4800+, 1GB RAM, A8N-SLI board and 7200RPM
120GB SATA drive), we ran the tests at the absolute maximum settings. The card
comfortably outdid the 7800GTX-512 in every test except Quake 4, where, the
7800GTX-512 outdid it consistently. This is perhaps a driver bug or maybe the
NVIDIA cards just love the Quake 4 engine. However, every time we cranked
up the image quality levels, ATi got away from NVIDIA faster. This is certainly
because of the 48 pixel shaders the card has.
Test | Resolution | AA/AF | X1800XT | 7800GTX 512 | X1900XT |
Splinter Cell CT |
1600x1200 | No AA/AF |
47 | 54.3 | 63.2 |
4xAA/8xAF | 45.4 | 46.6 | 61.2 | ||
Far Cry |
1600x1200 | No AA/AF |
52.6 | 97 | 113 |
4xAA/8xAF | 63.6 | 66 | 81 | ||
F.E.A.R | 1600x1200 | No AA/AF |
53 | 61 | 73 |
4xAA/8xAF | 42 | 33 | 53 | ||
Quake 4 |
1600x1200 | No AA/AF |
89 | 113.5 | 102.8 |
4xAA/8xAF | 59 | 70 | 67.9 | ||
3DMark 05 |
1600x1200 | No AA/AF |
6578 | 7934 | 9356 |
Bottom Line A brilliantly
fast card and without a doubt. It will satisfy all your gaming needs. The only
thing faster will probably be the X1900XTX. We expect the 1900XT to be priced
around35k which almost classifies this as a value buy!
Varun Dubey