Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup Part I - ATI's Radeon 9800 XT
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 1, 2003 3:02 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Newcomers
As we briefly mentioned, there are three new products to talk about today – the Radeon 9800 XT, the Radeon 9600 XT and then NVIDIA’s NV38.
The XT line of Radeon 9x00 cards is specifically targeted at the very high end of the gaming market. With AMD and their Athlon 64 FX, Intel and the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, it’s not too surprising to see even more companies going this direction. With an ultra-premium part like the Radeon 9800 XT the profit margins are high and more importantly, the PR opportunities are huge – claiming the title of world’s fastest desktop GPU never hurts.
The effort required to produce a part like the Radeon 9800 XT is much lower than a serious redesign. When making any kind of chip (CPU, GPU, chipset, etc…) the design team is usually given a cutoff point where they cannot make any more changes to the design, and that is the design that will go into production. However, it is very rare that manufacturers get things right on the first try. Process improvements and optimizing of critical paths within a microprocessor are both time intensive tasks that require a good deal of experience.
Once ATI’s engineers had more experience with the R350 core and more time with it they began to see where the limitations of the GPU’s clock speed existed; remember that your processor can only run as fast as its slowest speed path so it makes a great deal of sense to change the layout and optimize the use of transistors, etc… to speed up the slow paths within your GPU. This oversimplified process is what ATI and their foundry engineers have been working on and the results are encompassed in the R360 – the core of the Radeon 9800 XT.
The Radeon 9800 XT is able to run at a slightly higher core frequency of 412MHz, quite impressive for ATI’s 0.15-micron chip (yes, this is the same process that the original R300 was based on). Keep in mind that the Radeon 9800 Pro ran at 380MHz and you’ll see that this 8% increase in clock speed is beginning to reach the limits of what ATI can do at 0.15-micron.
The Radeon 9800 XT does receive a boost in memory speed as well, now boasting a 365MHz DDR memory clock (730MHz effective) – an increase of 7% over the original Radeon 9800 Pro and an increase of 4% over the 256MB 9800 Pro. ATI was much more proud of their core clock improvements as we will begin to crave faster GPU speeds once more shader intensive games come out.
The Radeon 9800 XT does have a thermal diode (mounted on-package but not on-die) that has a driver interface that will allow the card to automatically increase its core speed if the thermal conditions are suitable. The GPU will never drop below its advertised 412MHz clock speed, but it can reach speeds of up to 440MHz as far as we know. The important thing to note here is that ATI fully warrantees this overclocking support, an interesting move indeed. Obviously they only guarantee the overclock when it is performed automatically in the drivers, as they do not rate the chips for running at the overclocked speed in all conditions.
The OverDrive feature, as ATI likes to call it, will be enabled through the Catalyst 3.8 drivers and we’ll be sure to look into its functionality once the final drivers are made available.
The Radeon 9800 XT will be available in the next month or so and it will be sold in 256MB configurations at a price of $499 – most likely taking the place of the Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB.
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Malichite - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
I don't intend to join into a flame war, but I would like a few points cleared up. First of all I have a GF4 4600 and I am looking to upgrade, but I still have concerns with ATIs drivers. In this review I noticed a few discrepancies on both sides. Unless something has changed, ATI's 9x00 series has serious problem fps with both SimCity 4 and Neverwinter Nights w/shadows (not to mention problems in Morrowind). Just pop over to Rage3d's forums if you want to find out more. Additionally I believe the current 3.7 catalyst have flickering menu issues in FS2004, not show stoppers but definitely irritating. Lastly, I wish someone would mention the R3x0 series slow frame buffers, since they are of major concern for people that use PSX emulators.On the nVidia side, I am fairly confident that the NV38 isn't giving AA in Homeworld 2 unless they are using 4xS in OpenGL (not offered in current drivers). Just check the forums at Relic and you will find that none of the GF3+ cards work with AA in OpenGL unless you use QuinCunx/8XS.
I realize that you can't expect everything in a review, but I wish just a few review sites would mention/research the known bugs for the games they test.
Please don't respond with replies about how you don't play these games, thus you don't care if they work well. The point of a new GFX card is an upgrade for all software, not just to get 200+ fps in UT2003.
Just a view from someone that loves the IQ from ATI's R3x0 series, but dreads the driver issues. Guess I am either waiting for the NV40 or the magic Catalyst 3.8.
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
Be nice to see benchmarks using Battlefield 1942.As BF1942 has an expansion, and a new title Battlefield: Vietnam coming out next year.
Competition is good.. I've always liked ATi and never had any problems with them.. Nice job ATi.. keep it up.
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
For the guys worried about which is the best way to blow $500 on games that haven't been released yet, get a life.There's no need for Anand to go over what everyone already knows about DX9 - NVidia blows bigtime with its current chips. Do the ATi fanboyz just want to grind the NVidia fanboyz faces in the dirt about this again?
The question is not whether to buy an ATi or an NVidia card, but whether it's worth upgrading your current card to a 9800XT when there's a next generation card only 6 months away. IMO only guys that reply to the "make your penis bigger" spams would think it's worth shelling out $500 at this point in time...
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
Please include NASCAR Racing 2003 Season in the tests!Just set it up for the maximum number of players, enable all details and start a single race without qualifying. That leaves you behind a full field of cars and gives a realistic impression of frame rate. Hit "F" to display frame rate or use another tool to record frame rate.
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
Halo sucks. Why won't that computer chick ever shut up! Hello, I'm fighting like 10 guys, stop talking to me you stupid broad! God is there like 5 hours of speech of her in this game?Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
BATTLEFIELD1942 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!BATTLEFIELD1942!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
Homeworld BenchmarkFX56u.... AA -> Frame UP????????
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#154 here, just wanted to add that people shouldn't flip out just because their favorite company won/lost a benchmark. Just play the damn game, who cares if you're looking at 3fps less, seriously.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#153: The XT is supposed to have a more powerful GPU (VPU? Damn companies using special names), so in theory the 9600XT could compete with the 9700 Pro if the VPU/RAM speeds were high enough. Of course, communism works too, in theory.Oh, and I run all my games in 1024x768 at 32-bit depth with 4xAA and 8xAF (64-tap) using a PNY Ti4200, slightly overclocked (read, to the limit of the card at 265/545); it runs everything but DX9 fine (a whopping 425 marks in 3dMark2003 with AA/AF on, looked pretty as hell chugging at 3fps). I like seeing a benchmark that uses a resolution I'm actually using, instead of these pin-sized 1600x1200+ resolutions that only the $500 21" CRT freaks can use without going blind. Yes, it taxes a card, but I don't plan on taxing my overclocked card so hard it fries the GPU; particularly a $500 one, thanks.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Is this a misprint? Did he mean to say 9500pro instead of 9700pro?“According to ATI, the Radeon 9600 XT should be the first mainstream part to outperform the Radeon 9700 Pro in all situations – not bad for a $199 card.”
That doesn’t sound like it’s possible according to specs and the 9600pro.