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 XL
This is probably the most interesting and oddly priced part we've taken a look at today. At a $350 MSRP, we need to compare it to $399 and $299 parts. Since it's a 16 pipeline part with 256MB of RAM and a 1GHz memory data rate, we can expect some very good numbers on this card, even at lower core clock speeds. The width of the architecture really helps when scaling down.
Performing as good or better than a part that's $50 more expensive in every test we run is quite an acheivement. Yes, the the X850 Pro has a 30% higher core clock speed, but the 30% increase in pixel pipelines from 12 to 16 negates that. Eventhough the X850 Pro has a little more memory bandwidth, the fact that the X800 XL is wider give is the advantage in parallelism. The X800 XL is just a better card than the X850 Pro, especially at the $349 price point ATI is shooting for.
Clearly the X800 XL is worth the added $100 investment over the vanilla X800 if it's in the budget. In every game we tested but UT2K4 the difference was larger than 24%, and could even mean playability under Doom 3 or Farcry under high stress conditions.
At a $350 price point, the X800 XL stacks up to be a very nice part. Unfortunately for ATI, it also elimiates their own current $400 incarnation of the X850 Pro as a viable entity. We find it very hard to believe that ATI would release a $350 card that would outperform a $400 card they just released a few weeks earlier so either, the clock speeds of the X800 XL and/or X850 Pro will dramatically change between now and when they are actually available, or the X800 XL and X850 Pro will be priced differently than what we've been told.
There's a quick evaluation of ATI's new lineup, but if you want to see all cards compared side by side, here you go...
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
69 Comments
View All Comments
IdahoB - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
I just hope that the large increase in the variety of cards means that a couple of them which actually be available to buy. It seems that they have more model numbers than physical stock these days. I would have loved a X800 of some description but couldn't find one anywhere in the UK so settled for the still slightly unreliable 6800GT.Araemo - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#7: At least it's less confusing than intel's new numbering system. yeesh.StrangerGuy - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
X800SE,X800,
X800 Pro,
X800 XL,
X800 XT,
X800 XT PE,
X850 Pro,
X850 XT
and X850 XT PE
9 models of high-end ATI cards? Oh man that is really confusing even for enthusiasts and geeks...
Araemo - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#4 The 'video processing unit' isn't for playback, it's for encode, and as far as I'm aware, ATI's non-AIW cards don't have hardware encode either.Araemo - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
I guess my 9700 Pro is safe for another 8-12 months...hopefully.
LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
No-one is mentioning the one thing ATI almost certainly has in its favor: video playback. The GeForce 68xx's "video processing unit" still does not have drivers that take advantage of it, whyever the case may be. ATI has always had a strong tradition of video playback performance. I'd really like to see Anandtech bench CPU usage with these cards with 1080 HD .WMV files, as well as with MPEG-2/MPEG-4. This would be truly useful for enthusiasts and help round out our buying decisions.gibhunter - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Ati is looking desperate with this release. Their fastest part is what, 3% faster then their previous champ. On top of that, you still can't find these fastest cards. If they were trying to confuse the customer, they might as well consider it mission accomplished.Personally, I'd just stick with 6800GT and have an upgrade path with an SLI Nforce4 board and another 6800GT in the future.
segagenesis - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
The X850 Pro is somewhat disappointing vs. its competition, does nVidia even have refresh parts planned for winter? I was looking at the $400 price range myself :(Cat - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
If it means more cards are available for less cost, than I'm all for this. It's still kinda disappointing, though.