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 XL
This is probably the most interesting and oddly priced part we've taken a look at today. At a $350 MSRP, we need to compare it to $399 and $299 parts. Since it's a 16 pipeline part with 256MB of RAM and a 1GHz memory data rate, we can expect some very good numbers on this card, even at lower core clock speeds. The width of the architecture really helps when scaling down.
Performing as good or better than a part that's $50 more expensive in every test we run is quite an acheivement. Yes, the the X850 Pro has a 30% higher core clock speed, but the 30% increase in pixel pipelines from 12 to 16 negates that. Eventhough the X850 Pro has a little more memory bandwidth, the fact that the X800 XL is wider give is the advantage in parallelism. The X800 XL is just a better card than the X850 Pro, especially at the $349 price point ATI is shooting for.
Clearly the X800 XL is worth the added $100 investment over the vanilla X800 if it's in the budget. In every game we tested but UT2K4 the difference was larger than 24%, and could even mean playability under Doom 3 or Farcry under high stress conditions.
At a $350 price point, the X800 XL stacks up to be a very nice part. Unfortunately for ATI, it also elimiates their own current $400 incarnation of the X850 Pro as a viable entity. We find it very hard to believe that ATI would release a $350 card that would outperform a $400 card they just released a few weeks earlier so either, the clock speeds of the X800 XL and/or X850 Pro will dramatically change between now and when they are actually available, or the X800 XL and X850 Pro will be priced differently than what we've been told.
There's a quick evaluation of ATI's new lineup, but if you want to see all cards compared side by side, here you go...
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
69 Comments
View All Comments
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...