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 X850 Pro
Out of all of the GPUs being announced today, the Radeon X850 Pro was the only one ATI did not confirm the clock speeds of. While they listed a core clock speed of 520MHz with 1.08GHz memory, we will have to wait until they actually ship the X850 Pro before knowing for sure. That being said, we couldn't resist comparing ATI's upcoming $400 GPU to the competition to see if at ATI's currently spec'd clock speeds, if it could compete.
Compared to the Radeon X800 Pro:
The X850 Pro offers a pretty reasonable spread of performance improvements over the X800 Pro, so it gets our thumbs up as a good replacement product to the X800 Pro. Higher core clock and memory clock will mean better performance across the board, but is a better performing X800 Pro what ATI needs right now?
Compared to NVIDIA's GeForce 6800GT:
Compared to NVIDIA's $400 part however, the X850 Pro tends to disappoint. At these clock speeds, the X850 Pro can only offer a 7.1% performance advantage in Half Life 2, and a 5 - 27% performance deficit in other games. If ATI were launching the X850 Pro at these clock speeds today we'd have to give our recommendation at $400 to the GeForce 6800GT.
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kmmatney - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Man, It's way too confusing buying a card these days. There were already way too many ATI model numbers out there, and now this! Why can't they have an entry, Low Mid-range, High Mid-Range and high-end card and leave it at that.sophus - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
model numbers are out of control. just go look at pricewatch.com and get bombarded by all of the models...i've heard that the purpose of the all the numbers/acronyms is to confuse the consumer into buying a "newer" part, read: more profitable for them.
the prices are getting too high. $500 for a card?! too much money for a (practical) gamer's most frequently upgraded part.
also, the availability for these cards is way too low. How long after the release do we have to wait until we can actually see these in stores? is demand that high and supply that low? is there a leak in their bank accounts? are their manuf processes too high?
a small tweak in their product and they demand top-dollar? or rather, "well this NEW product is just a little bit better then our last one. so instead of lowering the price on our OLD product, we'll just set the bar higher for our NEW product."
Mykal Starclem - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Quote:I just hope that the large increase in the variety of cards means that a couple of them which actually be available to buy
lol
Kasper4christ - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
*cough* Spell check :PPage 2
"before it's clock soeeds are officially set in stone."
Steve Guilliot - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#31Software HDTV decoders/encoder require working DxVA (i.e. ATI cards) for best performance, and sometimes to work at all. For people intersted in going the HTPC route, the video processor is very important, just not to you.
miketheidiot - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
extremely unimpressive. My 6800 is still fine.Regs - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
This does not look like a refreash to me. Just seems more like overclocked parts trying to win the performance crown that "no 'one'" can afford. I expect Nvidia to do the same. ATI even has the nerve to charge 400 dollars for a 12 pipe design. At least have it include Dual Dvi. I know it may not need the extra 4 pipes enabled, but it just seems like their taking you for a ride for a few extra MHz.Araemo - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#24:I stand corrected, though iDCT is VERY old tech, that nVidia had around from at least the geforce 4 series(if not the gf2 series), and ATI has had since sometime in the RAGE series.
And the "Motion compensation" sounds like what ATI has enabled via their drivers in a couple aps (Divx Player and Realplayer, if I'm not mistaken.)
Motion estimation is what I was thinking the only new use was, my mistake. Though I DO hope that nvidia at least has iDCT working, if not the motion compensation as well. The main selling point I saw w/ regards to the video processor was the ENCODE.. since I've never had a cpu usage problem while decoding a video.. even on a pentium 2 running windows 2000.
#26: I don't think 'decent' is the right word.. their drivers are decent, they just aren't fast.
I draw the distinction because of the number of video cards I've had with UNSTABLE drivers. I am very happy with the stability of the Catalyst 4.x series drivers.
That said.. nVidia has stable AND fast openGL drivers.. hello ATI?
ViRGE - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#4, it's not worth getting worked up over anyone's video processor at this point. Nvidia's 68xx processor may be broken, but even if it worked, it doesn't make a difference. There are not any MPEG4 decoders on the market that can use either company's card, and WMV acceleration on my X800 Pro is having no impact: frame rates and CPU usage stay the same. And let's not even talk about hardware assisted encoding...The whole "video processor" idea has so far turned out to be a joke from both sides.
Zebo - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#10 the USD has lost 33% of it's value since GF4 days so in reality Vcards are the same price just your dollar is'nt worth anything.