Radeon X1900XTX clocks revealed: 695/1550MHz

cleeve

Illustrious
Because they're going for more operations per pipe.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Their 16-pipe X1800 XT can compete with Nvidia's 24-pipe 7800 GTX... and it's not nearly as impressive from as hardware standpoint as the X1900 will be.
 

lakedude

Distinguished
Dec 31, 2007
1,789
0
19,780
ATI secretly released its Silver Bullets material to AIBs this week and the picture of R580 is slowly coming together. R580, or Radeon X1900 as it is called internally, is expected to "launch" in January according to ATI documentation........

The Silver Bullets presentation was a little light on details, but did confirm the R580 GPU has 48 pixel shader processors and higher clocks than R520 (a.k.a. Radeon X1800). Radeon X1900 uses a 90nm process also found on Radeon X1800.

From: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2653
 

ltcommander_data

Distinguished
Dec 16, 2004
997
0
18,980
Having 48 pixel shaders does not mean 48 pipelines. The X1900 series will only have 16 pipelines with 16 TMUs and 16 ROPs while having 48 pixel shaders. ATI is aiming for a 3:1 pixel shader to TMU ratio and a 3:1 pixel sharder to ROP ratio..

nVidia is going for 32 pipelines with 32 pixel shaders and 32 texture units, while likewise having 16 ROPs. nVidia is looking for a 1:1 pixel shader to TMU ratio and a 2:1 pixel shader to ROP ratio.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28609
 

Rabidpeanut

Distinguished
Dec 14, 2005
922
0
18,980
This might be in the FAQ but...

what are TMU's and ROP's?

I am guessing that i know how the cards work, ie the pipeline processes a line of pixels at a time instead of just one due to the new ratios (i think i am getting this right).

I was going to get an x1800xt until i heard about this card coming along, luckily the person getting it for me was a girl and therefore did not know what she was doing.

Saved by progesterone and oestrogen !

Now if i can only find someone living in Canada...
 

cleeve

Illustrious
Yep, what data said;

Shader units <> Pixel Pipelines

The X1900 is a 16-pipeline card...

TMUs are Texture Management Units. A single pipeline with two TMUs can process two textures on that pixel per pass.
 

obobski

Distinguished
Jan 1, 2006
38
0
18,530
so this provides support for the concept of RV530 and R580 being architectually close

and G71 is supposed to be clocking 750MHZ core...just for information

Now, since ATI's card will be doing more operations per pixel fill rate in raw theoretical terms means a bit less, but here is a rough idea of where these two new cards will be, compared to 7800GTX 512 and X1800XT


G71 - 750MHZ 32 TMU 16 ROP: 24,000M Texels/S and 12,000M Pixels/S
G70 - 550MHZ 24 TMU 16 ROP: 10,320M Texels/S and 8,800M Pixels/S

R520 - 625MHZ 16 TMU 16 ROP: 10,000M Texels/S and 10,000M Pixels/S
R580 - 695MHZ 16 TMU 16 ROP: 11,120M Texels/S and 11,120M Pixels/S

in raw theoretical fill rate, the G71 steps ahead by a considerable ammount (while it's pixel fill is rather close, the higher texture fillrate obviously increases performance) The next thing to note is the ATI card is planned with fairly slow memory for that high of a clock, which would lead a guess to 512-bit, or (more likely) typical ATI design with fairly low bandwidth for the GPU (if you compare R480 and NV40, R480 has a much higher theoretical fill rate in contrast to NV40, yet almost identical memory bandwidth, which does serve to lower performance)

Since the R580 can maintain more operations on the individual pixel, compared to G71, which results in somewhat higher performance than it's fill rate figures would dictate, the other thing I would guess at, is that overall 3D power from G71 and R580 will not be as large of a performance increase as NV40 was from NV38/R360, or R420 was from NV38/R360

But more along the lines of G70 from NV40/R480 and R520 from NV40/R480, it won't be a small bump but it won't be huge, and R580 adds a lot of computational power behind those pipes...
 

lakedude

Distinguished
Dec 31, 2007
1,789
0
19,780
Where can I read up on pipes vs pixel processors? I tried to Google it and came up with the answer that they were the same thing??

From: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1817/



R520 architecture

The focus of ATI’s new R520 architecture has really been on efficiency, making sure that all clock-cycles are put to good use and creating minimal overhead. Unlike previous rumors indicating the architecture had up to 32-pipelines, the actual number is 16-pipelines or pixel-shader processors, with 8-vertex shader processors.
 

obobski

Distinguished
Jan 1, 2006
38
0
18,530
the best way to get at what your trying to see
look at Radeon X1600 series benchmarks in comparison to Radeon X800GT/GTO and GeForce 6800GT

It has the same 3 ALU thing, just less of it (it's only 4 TMU/4 ROP)
It performs anywhere from drastically under the X800/6800 series, to right ahead...

Some will pose that if the X1600 is better in SM3.0, why is the X800 series faster in games like FarCry, which have SM3.0...

remember that X800 isn't an SM3.0 part, so it's running an SM2.0 version of the game, which means less complex calculations

the X800 has just as much power as the 6800 however, so it ends up performing better while running with less features, to see the visual differences of SM2.0 to SM3.0, check out THG's VGA chart for Winter PCIE, should be the #1 link on the VGA Charts page

it AOE3 images with SM2.0 vs SM3.0, and goes on to explain X800 not being SM3.0 iirc, the apperance in AOE3 is drastic since it's top down, and has HDR bundled into it's SM3.0 iirc (SM3.0 isn't a req. of HDR, HDR can be done with SM2.0 (which is how Valve implements on Half-Life 2 and CS:S))

basically the X800 is using just as much power, to run a "watered down" version of the game (watered down from an IQ perspective) so of course it's going to go faster...

But seeing X1600's benchmarks compared to those cards, then realize that the X1600XT's overall fill rate is only 2500M Pixels/S and 2500M Texels/S (4 TMU and 4 ROP, @ 625MHZ) so that gives some insight to how well the 3 ALU system works, X800GTO for example is 12 TMU and 12 ROP, at 400MHZ (iirc) which maintains 4800M Pixels/S and 4800M Texels/S

and it's performing basically in line with X1600XT, which is technically around 50% the power...the X800GTO (R480) only features 1 shader per pipe, compared to the 3 of X1600XT...

So the extra shaders definately increase performance, I honestly don't feel like trying to equate the performance advantage based on shaders per pipe at the moment...
 

obobski

Distinguished
Jan 1, 2006
38
0
18,530
It should be able to beat the 512MB, that isn't the 750MHZ clocked chip, it's the 550MHZ clocked chip...

Just looking at the X1600XT which can beat the 6800GT (a card over twice as fast in theoretical fill rate) that should give an indication of what nVidia is up against with G71...and possibly explain the choice for a 750MHZ core clock (but please note that G70 has 2 ALU's per pipeline, I don't believe NV40 does)
 

RichPLS

Champion
From the TechReport, which are nVidiots like you...
A Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire rig is mighty fast. Also, it's six degrees Fahrenheit outside right now at my place, and I've enjoyed the room-warming benefits of CrossFire and SLI systems throughout the preparation of this review. My mind boggles, though, when I try to consider the value proposition of plunking down $1200 for a pair of graphics cards and roughly $200 more for the motherboard. Could a pair of Radeon X1800 XT cards in CrossFire be a better deal than two GeForce 7800 GTX 512s in SLI?
Yeah, I suppose so, especially with GTX 512 prices currently in low-altitude orbit. I do have my reservations about CrossFire, including the hassle of dealing with external dongles and the iffy I/O performance of CrossFire motherboards that use ATI's SB450 south bridge. Still, CrossFire performance generally scales well enough from one card to two, and I said in my initial CrossFire review that the long-term success of this solution would hinge on the quality of ATI's new GPUs. Turns out that the Radeon X1800 XT is a very desirable graphics card that matches the GeForce 7800 GTX feature for feature and adds a few new wrinkles of its own, including finer threading granularity for Shader Model 3.0 and the ability to do antialiasing with high-dynamic-range rendering. The Radeon X1800 XT trails the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 in overall performance, but Radeon X1800 CrossFire may hit the streets at prices as much as $150 lower per card than the 7800 GTX 512. (Radeon X1800 XTs are already widely available at $599 or less.) In the rarefied air of big-money graphics subsystems, that potential $300 price difference—if indeed it develops—could make a Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire system a, uh, er, uhm, solid value.

Yeah, I said it.

It's bitchin' fast, at any rate.
 

Admiral_Cecil

Distinguished
Dec 12, 2005
204
0
18,680
Hello,

Lets not forget, the quality of ATI's new GPU won't be the problem. The current problem will be the crossfire mobos. The Asus and DFI crossfire mobos don't seem to function all to well (hence many bad reviews) and not many other manf are making such mobos yet.