ATI's New Leader in Graphics Performance: The Radeon X1900 Series
by Derek Wilson & Josh Venning on January 24, 2006 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Performance Breakdown
Here we're going to take a quick look at overall performance of the X1900 XTX compared to the X1800 XT and to the 7800 GTX 512. This will give us a good idea at the outset of what we are going to see in terms of performance from the new part from ATI. Obviously having individual numbers for multiple resolutions over multiple settings is more conducive to proper analysis of the performance characteristics of the hardware, but for those who just want the bottom line here it is. This is a look at 2048x1536 with 4xAA performance in order to see a snapshot of performance under high stress.
The resounding victory of the X1900 XTX over the 7800 GTX 512 in almost every performance test clearly shows how powerful a part we are playing with. Clearly NVIDIA has been dethroned and will have a difficult time regaining its performance lead. But the more these two companies can leap-frog eachother, the happier we get.
The only real loss the X1900 suffers to the 7800 GTX 512 is in Black and White 2. We've complained about the poor performance of BW2 under ATI hardware for months now, and apparently ATI have located a bug in the application causing the performance issue. They have a patch, which we are currently evaluating, that improves performance. ATI are saying that Lionhead will be including this fix in an upcoming game patch, and we are excited to see something finally being done about this issue.
Of course, with the BW2 test in question, that puts the ATI Radeon X1900 XTX firmly and without question in place as the worlds fastest consumer level graphics product.
Here we're going to take a quick look at overall performance of the X1900 XTX compared to the X1800 XT and to the 7800 GTX 512. This will give us a good idea at the outset of what we are going to see in terms of performance from the new part from ATI. Obviously having individual numbers for multiple resolutions over multiple settings is more conducive to proper analysis of the performance characteristics of the hardware, but for those who just want the bottom line here it is. This is a look at 2048x1536 with 4xAA performance in order to see a snapshot of performance under high stress.
Hold your mouse over the links below to see the quick performance breakdown of the Radeon X1900 XTX at that resolution:
The resounding victory of the X1900 XTX over the 7800 GTX 512 in almost every performance test clearly shows how powerful a part we are playing with. Clearly NVIDIA has been dethroned and will have a difficult time regaining its performance lead. But the more these two companies can leap-frog eachother, the happier we get.
The only real loss the X1900 suffers to the 7800 GTX 512 is in Black and White 2. We've complained about the poor performance of BW2 under ATI hardware for months now, and apparently ATI have located a bug in the application causing the performance issue. They have a patch, which we are currently evaluating, that improves performance. ATI are saying that Lionhead will be including this fix in an upcoming game patch, and we are excited to see something finally being done about this issue.
Of course, with the BW2 test in question, that puts the ATI Radeon X1900 XTX firmly and without question in place as the worlds fastest consumer level graphics product.
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photoguy99 - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Why do the editors keep implying the power of cards is "getting ahead" of games when it's actually not even close?- 1600x1200 monitors are pretty affordable
- 8xAA does look better than 4xAA
- It's nice play games with a minimum frame rate of 50-60
Yes these are high end desires, but the X1900XT can't even meet these needs despite it's great power.
Let's face it - the power of cards could double tomorrow and still be put to good use.
mi1stormilst - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Well said well said my friend...We need to stop being so impressed by so very little. When games look like REAL LIFE does with lots of colors, shading, no jagged edges (unless its from the knife I just plunged into your eye) lol you get the picture.
poohbear - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
technology moves forward at a slower pace then that mates. U expect every vid card to be a 9700pro?! right. there has to be a pace the developers can follow.photoguy99 - Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - link
I think we are agreeing with you -The article authors keep implying they have to struggle to push these cards to their limit because they are getting so powerful so fast.
To your point, I do agree it's moving forward slow - relative to what people can make use of.
For example 90% of Office users can not make use of a faster CPU.
However 90% of gamers could make use of a faster GPU.
So even though GPU performance is doubling faster than CPU performance they should keep it up because we can and will use every ounce of it.
Powermoloch - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
It is great to see that ATi is doing their part right ;)photoguy99 - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
When DX10 is released with vist it seems like this card would be like having SM2.0 - you're behind the curve again.Yea, I know there is always something better around the corner - and I don't recommend waiting if you want a great card now.
But I'm sure some people would like to know.
Spoelie - Thursday, January 26, 2006 - link
Not at all, I do not see DX10 arriving before vista near the end of this year. If it does earlier it will not make any splash whatsoever on game development before that. Even so, you cannot be 'behind' if you're only competitor is still at SM3.0 as well. As far as I can tell, there will be no HARD architectural changes in G71/7900 - they might improve tidbits here and there, like support for AA while doing HDR rendering, but that will be about the full extent of changes.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
True, but I'm betting it will be quite a while before we see any DX10 games. I would suspect that the R620/G80 will be DX10 parts.timmiser - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
I expect that Microsoft's Flight Simulator X will be the first DX10 game.hwhacker - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Question to Derek (or whomever):Perhaps I interpreted something wrong, but is it correct that you're saying X1900 is more of a 12x4 technology (because of fetch4) than the 16x3 we always thought? If so, that would make it A LOT more like Xenos, and perhaps R600, which makes sense, if I recall their ALU setup correctly (Xenos is 16x4, one for stall, so effective 16x3). R520 was 16x1, so...I gotta ask...Does this mean a 16x4 is imminent, or am I just reading the information incorrectly?
If that's true, ATi really did mess with the definition of a pipeline.
I can hear the rumours now...R590 with 16 QUADS, 16 ROPs, 16 TMUs, and 64 pixel processors...Oh yeah, and GDDR4 (on a 80nm process.) You heard it here first. ;)