ATI's New Radeon X850 and X800 Lines: A Smorgasbord of GPUs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on December 1, 2004 9:41 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
ATI Radeon X800
The Radeon X800 is sort of the inverse of the X850 Pro: its basically an underclocked version of the X800 Pro. With a 400MHz core clock and moderately paced 700MHz (effective) memory, this cheap, 12 pixel pipeline, 128mb card is ATI's answer to NV41 (GeForce 6800 non-Ultra). Of course, it's a lot easier to win that battle on the PCI Express side when NV41 is still only really stuck on AGP cards. It will be very interesting to look back and see whose strategy ended up working out better through this transition period. ATI has really made an agressive leap into the arms of PCI Express.
Compared to NVIDIA's GeForce 6600GT:
Showing a 1 - 19% performance lead over the 6600 GT in just every game but Doom 3, the X800 definitely proves its worth here. The 22% lead the 6600 GT holds in Doom 3 does help a little, but the X800 posts 3 big wins and only the one loss.
We weren't able to test the X700 XT for this review, but does ATI even need to bring out a X700 XT now? Looks like they've gotten off the hook again, first the XT PE now the X700 XT. Who would buy a X700 XT at $250 when you can get a Radeon X800 for that price? The introduction of both products makes less sense the X850 Pro.
The X800 isn't a bad part, especially in terms of its price point. Competition with the 6600 GT and the 6800 non-ultra (when it comes to PCI Express) will be strenghtened. With the X700 Pro on the market and the Radeon X800 holding up the $250 price segment, ATI will do just fine in the midrange. Now they just need to get some of the products out on AGP platforms.
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Staples - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Yay for another dumb naming convention. ATi did this intentionally and I hope it turns people off to the brand. They did this with the R300 too but it is even worse this time, they all have 850xx in the name. As for me, I will be sticking with my 6800GT, these new cards are not much faster and the cost for the small performance gain is ridiculous.ShadowVlican - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
thanks for the great review Anand!i particularly liked the way you compared X800XL, X800, and X850Pro... that was very well done and to the point... i've yet to see another review site do that...
however i do wish to see the X700 and 6800 in there
flexy - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
>>>Keep an eye on the x800 XL. That's the interesting card of the bunch. At a $349 suggested MSRP (you know we'll shortly see deals for $300 for the card), this is a great card.
>>>
its not a GREAT card, it merely has the best price/perf ratio of ALL these current cards.
Two/Three years $350 got you the cream of the high-end top-of-the line cards....and TODAY $350 dont even give you a new GPU, just a a refresh of what is BASICALLY the 9700, 9800, X800 etc...all the same old **** with the same shaders and the same tech (basically).
Ironically, i caught myself TOO thinking that $349 is a good price - well just as proof how brainwashed "we" already are....
flexy - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
>>>Maybe they wanted to throw out some product to see how well it sold and in which flavor (AGP or PCI-e)?
>>>
WHAT products ? :)
* nonexistant cards ?
* cards for $500 - $800 ?
ALso..the question AGP/PCI is irrelevant since AGP is dead..sorry to bring the news :)
ViRGE - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#35, HDTV is MPEG2; both companies have had working MPEG2 decoding abilities for some time. Even the 68xx's broken processor still does MPEG2.skunkbuster - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#41 i've read an article not too long ago that ati had not updated their openGL drivers in over a year.also, add to the fact that their fireGL video cards, while theoretically ~should~ have had better performance than nvidia's(higher clock speed/emory pipelines), consistantly were OUTPERFORMED(by a good bit too) by nvidia and their older tech.
i'm specifically talking about the fire gl cards that were based off of the 9700/9800 gpu vs. the workstation cards using geforce4/fx gpus.
these reasons make me believe that its lack of driver optomization; that is not using the card's capbilities to full potential more than anything.
this might not conern many people, but it does me, since i work with maya.
realist - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
also ati is coming out with there SLI type ati cards ownage!!carldon - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
I was looking at the SLI benches and the 6600GT in SLI has almost the same performance as the X800XL, X850Pro and of course the X800. The SLI option is great for people who want to upgrade later and also want the SM3.0 option. But the cost of Nforce4 motherboards, if high, could tip the scales in Ati's favour. This is going to an interesting price war over the next month.CD.
Noli - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Am I right in thinking that nvidia big lead in doom3 performance is because its latest cards carry out that shadow occlusion thingie whereby a the shadows for a lightsource pointing out of a scene aren't calculated? That's a huge advantage and I never got the feeling that ATI was doing the same. If I'm right and ATI OGL drivers are not that bad but it's just the shadows thing, could ATI not steal and implement this idea too?Pollock - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
I'd have to agree that the X800 XL is looking quite nice, especially if they overclock well and have good ram on them. Too bad PCIe is taking forever to get here for the Athlon 64...