ATI's New Radeon X850 and X800 Lines: A Smorgasbord of GPUs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on December 1, 2004 9:41 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
ATI Radeon X800
The Radeon X800 is sort of the inverse of the X850 Pro: its basically an underclocked version of the X800 Pro. With a 400MHz core clock and moderately paced 700MHz (effective) memory, this cheap, 12 pixel pipeline, 128mb card is ATI's answer to NV41 (GeForce 6800 non-Ultra). Of course, it's a lot easier to win that battle on the PCI Express side when NV41 is still only really stuck on AGP cards. It will be very interesting to look back and see whose strategy ended up working out better through this transition period. ATI has really made an agressive leap into the arms of PCI Express.
Compared to NVIDIA's GeForce 6600GT:
Showing a 1 - 19% performance lead over the 6600 GT in just every game but Doom 3, the X800 definitely proves its worth here. The 22% lead the 6600 GT holds in Doom 3 does help a little, but the X800 posts 3 big wins and only the one loss.
We weren't able to test the X700 XT for this review, but does ATI even need to bring out a X700 XT now? Looks like they've gotten off the hook again, first the XT PE now the X700 XT. Who would buy a X700 XT at $250 when you can get a Radeon X800 for that price? The introduction of both products makes less sense the X850 Pro.
The X800 isn't a bad part, especially in terms of its price point. Competition with the 6600 GT and the 6800 non-ultra (when it comes to PCI Express) will be strenghtened. With the X700 Pro on the market and the Radeon X800 holding up the $250 price segment, ATI will do just fine in the midrange. Now they just need to get some of the products out on AGP platforms.
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Booty - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Yeah, this product naming is getting out of control - I don't even want to take the time to try to get them straight. I'll wait until everything's actually available, then try to see what the best option in each price range is. Right now, though, I have to go lie down - trying to remember what product is which gave me a headache.bob661 - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#16I would like to know too since we 6800GT's in a CAD environment and haven't had ANY problems with them.
BenSkywalker - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Any chance of seeing high res testing again?Alphafox78 - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#9, how is the 6800GT "slightly unreliable"?? Ive had one for months and have no "reliability issues."D0rkIRL - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
I'm looking into that X800 now, as a possible budget upgrade, so I don't have to switch over to nVidia and get the 6600GT AGP.Entropy531 - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
The X800 XL has some potential if it OCs well. The 6800GT is still the best option though, if you go PCI-E.shabby - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Worst refresh release ever! A minor bump in core/mem does not equal 50 bucks more.Im thinking that the agp x800 cards are not going to fall in price at all, these pcie only cards are not competing against them so it makes sense(for ati) to keep prices high for both the x800 and x850 cards.
Now lets hope nvidia comes out with a 500/1200 6900 ultra :)
istari101 - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Considering the fact that both ATI and Nvidia are technological think tanks, you'd think they could do a less confusing job of naming their cards. :|flexy - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
pricing for the "high end" cards is utterly ridiculous...the (so called) high-end (X850) which is only a refresh of current tech is totally overprized, has dual slot cooling etc.....And...R520 is already taped out...
Who pays $520 for this stupid card which, not even has SM3.0 and is only marginally better than previous versions ? Retards ?
jkostans - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
I miss the days of $200-$300 video cards being the top of the line (Voodoo2, TNT2, Geforce 1-4). I dunno why anyone would want to spend any more than this on a video card unless they've got money to burn.