ATI Radeon X1000 Series Preview

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Kurtis Kronk
Brian
ATI
Oct. 5, 2005

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Question & Answer Session

On the second day of the event we were allotted time for a question and answer session. The following are some of the more interesting things that came up.

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Q: Is there going to be an X1800 Pro version?
A: There are no plans yet for an X1800 Pro, only an XT and XL version.

Interestingly enough, we were given a CD with all the presentation slides, graphic demos, product shots and logos. On this CD, there are logos for both an X1800 Pro and an X1800 SE. Strange.

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Q: Is there going to be an X1800 XT PE?
A: Can't say yet - it is ATI's policy not to talk about unreleased products.

This basically translates to a maybe, if NVIDIA releases a 7800 Ultra version.

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Q: What is power consumption like with the new cards?
A: The X1800XT pulls 100W (aux. power required), X1600s are under 75W (no aux. power required), and obviously the X1300 do not require aux. power.

You will only need aux. power on the X1800 variants.

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Q: Are there any latency problems caused by the introduction of a Ringbus?
A: In reality the Ringbus is a much more flexible memory controller - the time on the bus (latency) isn't really an issue.

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Q: Have there been any improvements to cooling (and noise) on the high-end boards since X850?
A: The materials that make up the heatsink are better, but it's basically the same design.

I think it is interesting that ATI chose to use a dual slot cooler again while NVIDIA's 7800 GTX only takes up one slot. Granted, the X1800 XT core runs about 200MHz faster than the 7800 GTX, but the X1000 cards are all built on a 90nm process (the 7800 GTX is made on a 110nm process) so I would think that they could potentially pull off a single slot cooler. When I asked why they chose to stick with a dual slot cooler, they said it was to have a fan with wider fins that could push sufficient air without being too loud. Perhaps some of the AIB (Add-in-Board) partners will try something different from the reference cooler, we'll see.

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Q: Will the X1000 family be available in AGP?
A: AIBs (Add-in Board partners) will produce AGP variants because AGP makes up a major segment of the market and will continue to over the next few quarters.

I'm a little confused on this subject, because I was told a few months ago that there were no plans for the next-generation of cards to be available in AGP unless there was sufficient market demand. I guess there was sufficient demand!

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Q: What's the story on the X1800 compositing engine - will we see the same issues as with the X850 whereby we're limited to 60Hz in crossfire mode when playing at a resolution of 1600x1200?
A: This issue has been addressed - for example, with the X1800 you will be able to play at 2048x1536 @ 70Hz. Unfortunately, it is too late to do anything about this limitation with the X850 boards.

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Q: Why are there a series of pins on the back of the X850 Crossfire (master) cards? They also appear on the front of the X1800 cards. Is ATI going to allow for an internal connection for Crossfire?
A: No, this is not for an internal Crossfire connector. "I'm not sure what it is for though, I think it's for internal (manufacturer) testing."

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Q: Should we expect to see significant improvements in performance over the next few months with the X1000 hardware through driver updates similar to the improvements we see with driver updates from NVIDIA?
A: Yes. Significant performance and stability improvements will be made over the initial drivers.

Just to give you a better idea of what this answer means, he was saying that they always make improvements over time in their driver releases. Any time they've ever launched a new product they have made improvements in the following weeks and months, and that they will continue to do this with future product releases.

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Q: ATI vs. AGEIA?
A: We feel that you should first give developers the hardware needed to do physics work, and you don't need a dedicated PPU (Physics Processing Unit) for physics - it's just an issue of load balancing. (For more details on non-graphics processing on a GPU, see here: http://www.gpgpu.org/)

Basically, ATI doesn't feel threatened by AGEIA. They've had discussions with them behind closed doors about different business opportunities, but at this time they are not working together on any projects. It looks as though ATI could conceivably stop AGEIA in their tracks if developers utilize their hardware to the fullest extent for non-graphics processing - which they should be able to do since ATI is going to open up the platform. This will definitely be something interesting to watch over the next couple of years.

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Q: What are the differences between R520 and the GPU developed for the Xbox360?
A: They each represent a very different challenge and require a very different approach. The Xbox360 GPU can't run in a computer, so it's really difficult to make any sort of meaningful comparison between the two. The big difference is really in what optimizations are made.

Even if they could make direct comparisons, they wouldn't at this point in time. They're still keeping very hush-hush about the Xbox360 GPU.

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Page 4 of 11

Next >>

Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Re-Introducing R520 / Availability
Page 3: Architecture & New Features
Page 4: Question & Answer Session
Page 5: The Cards
Page 6: Test Setup
Page 7: Benchmarks - Half-Life 2
Page 8: Benchmarks - Day of Defeat: Source
Page 9: Benchmarks - Doom 3
Page 10: Benchmarks - Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Page 11: Image Quality / Closing Thoughts

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8 User Comments

1 - Posted by Frosty on October 5, 2005 - 5:37 pm

i am gonan keep my 7800gtx thank you very much, i really dont feel the need to upgrade now......

2 - Posted by sean478 on October 5, 2005 - 7:37 pm

Hi :) thanks for the review dude :)

I was wandering if you could email me the bioses for these cards?

i was planing on makeing flash mod guides for them :)

for example x1300np to x1300 pro mod and x1800xl to x1800xt mod ect. :)

my email is rswisfamly@cox.net :)

getting the bioses:

try using a bootable dos disk with flashrom.exe on it
http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/bios/flashrom240.z...
also try ati flash
http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/bios/atiflash309.z...

command to enter: atiflash -s 0 .bin

you could also try dumping the bios from ati tool (try the latest beta)

http://www.techpowerup.com

ati tool/settings/misc./dump bios

btw do you have access to the demos for the x1800s? do you think i could get ahold of them? :)

Edit: you could also try winflash for ati :)
http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/bios/winflash105.z...

3 - Posted by Dyrewolph on October 5, 2005 - 9:27 pm

Haha... hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahah... oooo that's a good one Kurtis! almost made me wet myself!

4 - Posted by Kurtis on October 5, 2005 - 10:29 pm

hehehe... glad someone catches my little funnies. :-D

of course, it's true... but it sounds funny! ;-)

5 - Posted by Frosty on October 13, 2005 - 7:27 am

it amazes me that with just 16 pipelines they are able to beat the 7800gtx...

6 - Posted by handrail on October 13, 2005 - 10:52 pm

the x1800xt does have a higher mem and clock speed though. maybe they can just muscle their way through to higher performance?

7 - Posted by Brian on October 13, 2005 - 10:54 pm

This is a good read:

http://www.thetechlounge.com/news.php?id=7669

Looks like ATI put a lot of work into the new chip and have plenty of room to grow.

8 - Posted by JGFgKnnI on March 18, 2008 - 11:28 pm

Nice site!

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