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ATI Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB

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Kurtis Kronk
Brian
ATI
May. 8, 2006

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Introduction

As you may recall, I wrote a preview of ATI's top-of-the-line X1900 XTX at the end of January. On March 9, ATI took a small step back and announced a new card in the X1800 line-up, the Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB PCI-Express. Notice that I said announcing, not launching; I'll come back to that! One might ask why ATI would seemingly make the X1800 series obsolete only to announce another card in that series a month later.

I assure you, however, that it was not a random drunken decision by an ATI executive to pump new blood into the X1800 line. Last summer NVIDIA launched their 7 series of video cards, first the 7800 GTX, and then the 7800 GT, and until recently, there was no mid-range segment in the new series. On March 9, NVIDIA also launched three new video cards: the 7900 GTX, 7900 GT, and 7600 GT. Perhaps worried that the 7600 GT would kick the X1600 XT's keister, ATI decided to take action and the X1800 GTO was born.

In terms of architecture and features, the X1800 GTO is identical to the X1800 XL with the exception of the pipeline count: rather than 16 pipelines, it has 12. When asked whether there was any difference aside from pipelines that distinguish the XL from the GTO, ATI said "it's R520 [X1800 XL] with 75% of the pipes." So basically, it's an artificially handicapped XL - and in case you're wondering, yes, people have already found a way to re-enable those 4 pipelines to turn the GTO into an XL (which I'll talk about later in the review). The product placement for the GTO is below the X1800 XL and above the X1600 XT. See the table below for more details. I have added NVIDIA's new cards' specifications for reference.

	7900 GTX 24 pipelines 650MHz core / 800MHz memory 512MB GDDR3, 256-bit memory interface $500
X1800 XL 16 pipelines 500MHz core / 500MHz memory 256MB GDDR3, 256-bit memory interface $325	7900 GT 24 pipelines 450MHz core / 660MHz memory 256MB GDDR3, 256-bit memory interface $300
X1800 GTO 12 pipelines 500MHz core / 500MHz memory 256MB GDDR3, 256-bit memory interface $210	7600GT 12 pipelines 560MHz core / 700MHz memory 256MB GDDR3, 128-bit memory interface $180
X1600 XT 12 pipelines 590MHz core / 690 MHz memory 256MB GDDR3, 128-bit memory interface $150

While ATI officially announced the X1800 GTO on March 9, they weren't available until the end of March. The reason we didn't see immediate availability (as mentioned in my preview) is that there aren't any actual ATI-brand X1800 GTOs at all; they are only being made by Add-in-Board partners (AIBs).

The last thing I'd like to mention before I move on is something moderately exciting ATI told us about the GTO. Not only is it compatible with the currently available X1800 Crossfire card, but a future driver release (in the near future?) will enable a dongle-less peer-to-peer crossfire configuration with two standard X1800 GTOs on ATI's Xpress 3200 chipset. I asked whether this future driver release would open up the same capability for other X1800 series cards, and I was told no. However, I see no reason why it couldn't be done since it is basically an X1800 XL anyways. Of course, we also have to wonder what the performance implications are of foregoing the dongle connector with a moderately high-end part.

For the X1800 GTO preview back on March 9, I only had time to run 4 cards through 3 games. I've been benchmarking around the clock until just last a couple weeks ago and now have 11 cards to compare in 8 games spanning multiple genres (9 if you count 3DMark, which I don't!). One of the cards I've added for testing since the preview is the X1800 XL. As such, we can now show the difference the 4 removed pipelines actually make. I still need to do a little more benchmarking at some more image quality settings to round-out testing for my upcoming image quality article. With final exams this week, time is limited, though, so I won't be able to get to that until next week. Keep an eye out for the image quality article in the next couple of weeks, though.

Note: Since I've already covered the X1000 series architecture and features in our X1000 Series Preview, I won't bother copy-pasting the same information in this review and take up another page in an already lengthy review.

We'd like to thank Directron.com for donating the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 Motherboard which we used for testing.

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: The Card & Bundle
Page 3: Test Setup
Page 4: Benchmarks: Half-Life 2
Page 5: Benchmarks: Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
Page 6: Benchmarks: Quake 4
Page 7: Benchmarks: X3 Reunion Demo
Page 8: Benchmarks: Chronicles of Riddick
Page 9: Benchmarks: F.E.A.R.
Page 10: Benchmarks: Need for Speed Most Wanted
Page 11: Benchmarks: Black & White 2
Page 12: Benchmarks: 3DMark '06
Page 13: Overclocking... and Unlocking?
Page 14: Performance Summary
Page 15: Conclusion

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