Gigabyte Radeon X1900XTX review
Posted by Julio Franco on 14 April 2006 - 10:41 · 38 comments & 23517 views
ATI is now on track with a wide range of new and exciting products, the latest of which is a terrifying 48 pixel pipeline monster. Known as the Radeon X1900 this new GPU comes in two flavors.
The more impressive, and obviously more expensive version known as the Radeon X1900XTX features core frequencies of up to 650MHz, and memory speeds of 1.55GHz. With such specifications it would be difficult for rival products to outperform the Radeon X1900XTX; as a matter of fact NVIDIA barely matches it.
Currently the Radeon X1900XTX is considered the fastest (single) graphics card available in the market. However, more importantly these brand new X1900 products are already available in large quantities. This is easily the most successful aspect of this product launch; it has been some time since ATI pulled off a hard product launch. Thankfully they managed to do it with their most powerful graphics card series yet.
View: Gigabyte Radeon X1900XTX review @ TechSpot
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Full name: Julio Franco
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Full name: Julio Franco
Forum name: JulioFranco
Contact: via forum PM
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(1 reply)
#1 Posted by Beastage on 14 Apr 2006 - 11:05
- Just need 2 of these... crossfire mobo... Intel's new conroe... and some lottery winnings... and I got me self a new pc...
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(3 replies)
#2 Posted by omgbomb on 14 Apr 2006 - 11:28
- whoa what a name
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#2.2 Posted by M2Ys4U on 14 Apr 2006 - 19:17
- Those letters actually mean something. What they mean I dont' actually know, but it's to do with the architecture or something.
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(1 reply)
#3 Posted by NiceCarpet on 14 Apr 2006 - 11:54
- ^ : P
I thourt this card has been out for a while? -
#3.1 Posted by Smigit on 14 Apr 2006 - 12:10
- yeah a lil while now I believe. Not only that but they have compared it to the Nvidea 7800 . They now have the 7900 which is this cards competition. They also should have done a crossfire benchmark (or doesnt it work with that yet...I may have actually read somewhere it wasnt but I cant really put a finger on what it was I heard and so I'm prob wrong)
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(2 replies)
#4 Posted by Z3r0 on 14 Apr 2006 - 12:23
- Sadly, I no longer have any urge to upgrade my PC after extensively upgrading every 6 months for 3 years
Maybe I will upgrade when this thing is dirt cheap and bargain basement, that is it for me -
#4.1 Posted by priestx on 15 Apr 2006 - 02:57
- Right now the mainstream computer hardware market is growing rapidly. The price plateau however, is nearing and if you wait a year or two, you can buy a $100 video card that can compete with this.
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#4.2 Posted by chainsaw_007 on 15 Apr 2006 - 16:03
- true, but by then there will be MUCH better video cards out there, games for those vidoe card. The technolgy is growing paridly, but with that so are the games, so if you want to play the latest games, you better have the latest, or at least a good vidoe card.
as for me, i havn't up graded my pc for about 3 years, i plane to do it some time soon, and get the latest things!!
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(3 replies)
#5 Posted by ThaCrip on 14 Apr 2006 - 12:38
- i already got a Geforce 7900GT so im good for a while... besides i prefer NVIDIA brand over ATI myself.
after reading specs it aint all that much better than a Geforce 7800/7900 cards when running at stuff without all the AA/AF max out and since running the res of 1280x1024 generally dont need AA turned on, then those performance specs dont seem to matter to much... basically this ATI card (in the review) shine at super high resolutions (1600x1200) with AA/AF pretty much maxed.... thats where they got a quite noticeable advanatge over the 7800/7900 cards.... other than that they seem about the same overall (atleast on the games they tested) -
#5.1 Posted by jerzdawg on 14 Apr 2006 - 12:59
- but for the price you are paying for the "topOline" NVIDIA/ATI.. .wouldnt you want to be able to "max out" everything?
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#5.2 Posted by Boxster17 on 14 Apr 2006 - 21:16
- I don't know what you're talking about but I run 1280x1024 on my LCD and I definitely notice a big difference with FSAA off and with it on. I'll always sacrifice my screen res for FSAA. And like the person above said, if you've paid that much, obviously you're going to want to get the best quality.
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#5.3 Posted by ZTrang on 14 Apr 2006 - 23:20
- I concur - antialiasing definitely makes a difference to me when I play. I'll drop the resolution a notch in order to apply AA; it makes the game look that much better. Also, the X1900XTX does offer performance advantages over nVidia cards (with the exception of the 7900 GTX) even at 1280x1024 if you start turning on things like AA and AF.
Last edited by ZTrang on 14 Apr 2006 - 23:25
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(1 reply)
#6 Posted by Nikolic on 14 Apr 2006 - 13:35
- Hmmm, they were comparing a 512MB x1900XTX to a 256MB 7800GTX - obviously the x1900 is going to beat it.
It would have been nice to see it compared to a 7900GTX...
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(1 reply)
#7 Posted by Rob2687 on 14 Apr 2006 - 13:43
- The x1900xtx and 7900gtx have practically the same performance.
I've seen a review with crossfire and sli benchmarks too but I can't remember where...
Last edited by Rob2687 on 14 Apr 2006 - 14:44
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(3 replies)
#8 Posted by Gersson on 14 Apr 2006 - 14:01
- the x1900xtx is faster than a 7900GTX in everything with 4xAA and 16x AF...except in the 2 best games of all time: Doom 3 and Quake 4....
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the whole image quality thing IMO is plain wrong. Nvidia AA Is CLEARLY better but ATI AF is a WHOLE lot better.
I had 7800GT SLI last time and this 1 card gives me better real world performance -- not synthetic.
Go get a x1900xt and OC it to XTX speeds. I was fortunate enough to be able to even bios flash mine to XTX. -
#8.1 Posted by Boxster17 on 14 Apr 2006 - 21:18
- Yeah that's what I did, I bought an XT and flashed it to an XTX...I figured why waste the extra money when I could just flash it to an XTX.
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#8.2 Posted by plasmo on 15 Apr 2006 - 01:22
- thats coz ogl performance in the ati cards isnt as good as nvidia
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(2 replies)
#9 Posted by Blackice on 14 Apr 2006 - 22:27
- the X at the front is because this series is after the 9- series (like the 9700, 9800..etc). Instead of making a 10000, they went the stylish way, and slapped an X in front.
The letters behind tell you what sort of card it is. SE is special edition (OEMs mostly, I think), XT is good, XTX is uber-leet. They also make an XL of some of the 9-series cards, but those were actually worse than the standard ones (the 9800XL was a 9800 with half the VRAM). -
#9.2 Posted by ZTrang on 14 Apr 2006 - 23:24
- I'm completely guessing here, but XT might be an abbreviation for "eXTreme," and "XTX" might be an abbreviation for "eXTreme eXtra." My second guess seems less plausible, but I think it's quite possible that XT is an abbreviation for "extreme" - on the other hand, it could be a meaningless piece of branding like "GT" with nVidia cards (yes, I know that GT stands for Gran Turismo, and that it's meant to be associated with racing cars, but as a label for a card it doesn't literally stand for anything).
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#10 Posted by Noveed on 15 Apr 2006 - 00:57
- sucks i bought an x1800XT when it first hit the market .... grrrrrrr i soo want this tho... ... got a crossfire mobo too for this baby, might get a crossfire x1800Xt instead...
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(1 reply)
#11 Posted by angrybrit on 15 Apr 2006 - 01:35
- I could have bought 2 iPods at that price.
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(3 replies)
#12 Posted by PharosBR on 15 Apr 2006 - 01:41
- My 7800GT plays all the latest games at their highest details, thank you very much. No need to shell out $500+ on a piece of hardware that will only last a couple of months. DX-10 cards are coming =]
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#12.1 Posted by jerry on 15 Apr 2006 - 03:36
- All games? Oblivion at 14fps at 16x12 with 4xAA. Good luck!
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#12.2 Posted by PharosBR on 15 Apr 2006 - 05:17
- Not talking about using the control panel thing, I'm talking about maxing out all the options and sliders on the configuration menu of each game. And it's impossible to turn on AA with HDR on Oblivion (well with a 1900xtx you can, but is $500 worth it for this additional feature, anyway?)
All I tried to say is, a mid-range graphics card like the 7800gt can handle all dx9 games pretty well, no need to pay that much for a very high-end graphics card when you're not getting dx-10 support for the upcoming games.
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#13 Posted by Xavien on 15 Apr 2006 - 03:54
- it might be worthwhile to mention there is not 48 pixel pipelines, but rather shaders
i doubt the card could even fit 48 pipelines on the chip without some serious heat and power issues.
ATi is using a chip design that is different from nvidias, nvidia focuses on full blown pixel processing pipelines, where as ATi, relies more on the high and efficent memory and clock speed with more processing units for pixel shaders only. Nvidia on the other hand is making the pipelines themselves more efficent, requiring less power and heat, while providing more performance to the chip.
In the end ATi's card is virtually a brand new chip, while nvidia's chips are still based on the Geforce 6 Series design. This is going to change however once the G80 series is released, which is a brand new chip design from nvidia, once that chip is launched, only then will we see how far both ATi's and Nvidia's chips can be optimised
As for the Oblivion comment, Oblivion as a game is terrible for benchmarking, because you can have virtually the exact same system as the next guy and have your system perform better or worse then theirs on the same map. So FPS figures can vary wildy depending on what the terrain generator generates within the world. I run a 6800GT which goes from 40-70FPS at 1280x960 resolution, but you can sure as hell bet that the next guy with that card might get 20-40FPS on the same settings
As for the review, the ATi card looks good but the cards have been out for quite some time now. I think ill wait to see what the G80 Brings.
Last edited by Xavien on 16 Apr 2006 - 17:08
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#14 Posted by kronik on 15 Apr 2006 - 09:38
- can someone please confirm that this card beats the 7900GTX OC.
some links to reviews would be nice.
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#15 Posted by plastikaa on 15 Apr 2006 - 10:14
- Doesnt look like Ill be able to pop one of those into my laptop quite... haha even with my graphics card being changed easily.
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#16 Posted by TrevorB on 16 Apr 2006 - 05:20
- Geeze, that card is faster than my friends computer, which I gave him. Thats amazing.
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#17 Posted by Matt on 17 Apr 2006 - 18:48
- My 9800 pro is so outdated.
