Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

ATI Launches Radeon X1900 XT and XTX

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the pixels-and-polygons-and-processors-oh-my dept.

Steve from HEXUS writes "ATI have done more than just boost clock speeds for their latest GPU; they've concentrated on boosting particular aspects of the GPU. This doesn't necessarily mean a boost in performance in all apps, however. HEXUS has a review: 'Even current synthetic benchmarks designed to show off theoretical rates in 3D hardware can have a hard time exploiting the tripling in fragment processing ability. That's not to say the performance increases at the same clocks as R520 are invisible. Clearly they're not without increases, especially at the higher resolutions, of up to 30% in the games we tested, clock-for-clock.'"

12 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by thepotoo · · Score: 3, Insightful
    These cards are drasticly improved over the previous ones...In a lot of game they get up to double the frame rate as on the old cards. And even then they're complaining that it was running at only 72% capacity. Geez.

    Now, can someone track down pricing info for these cards?

    --
    Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
    1. Re:Wow by BenjyD · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Around $550-$600 according to Froogle. Or, in more sensible units: 6 Gamecubes, 4 PS2s or 1.5 XBox 360s.

    2. Re:Wow by imsoclever · · Score: 5, Funny

      Around 600 crispy chicken nuggets according to Wendies.

    3. Re:Wow by Surt · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And what bugs me about those commercials. It's actually about 3000 crispy chicken nuggets for the video card, and his wife looks like $200,000.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
  2. Linux Drivers by killeena · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I am sure the cards are great and all, but us Linux users would never know due to the drivers.

    --
    Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. -Theodor Adorno
    1. Re:Linux Drivers by arivanov · · Score: 3, Informative

      With the minor difference that Windows users can run them in a decent resolution and decent refresh rates for something simple as Microshaft Word. Linux users will not be able to do this for a while. And I mean users, not freaks living on the apt-get unstable edge or developers.

      When something really new comes out it takes at least 6 months+ for it to get filtered down at X-whatever level and at least a year for it getting to a distribution level. There are so many branches and fig leaves on the X tree now that even if ATI releases a source for any specific X-whatever it will be bloody useless to anyone but that specific X-whatever.

      Just as an example - I looked at merging the changes for the recent crop of PCI Express Radeons from X.org into the debian sarge (Thy Last XFree86) driver and I simply had to set it aside. A few days job at least because in their infinite wisdom the X.org people have started merging things like DRM right into the code instead of separating them out. So as a result the source which was arcane before the split is now outright mindbending in some places. Code maintainability... Yeah... Right... Heard about it...

      Grgghhhhhhhhhhh....

      --
      Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
      http://www.sigsegv.cx/
  3. Hmmm... by Yahweh+Doesn't+Exist · · Score: 4, Funny

    >'That's not to say the performance increases at the same clocks as R520 are invisible. Clearly they're not without increases, especially at the higher resolutions, of up to 30% in the games we tested, clock-for-clock.'"

    I recognise those words, but this summary makes no sense...

  4. Site down by Fooker · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sure, as soon as this is posted the site goes down for essential maintenance. What ever happened to those good days when sites were down because they were slashdotted?

  5. Because it's shorter than 'Platinum Edition'... by kapowaz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's what their previous designation was for the very top of the line cards. Unfortunately (particularly with the X800XT PE, which I waited 3 months to get hold of) the suffix was associated with being impossible to find (quite true) and for marketing / PR reasons the name was retired in favour of an additional X. Still, I agree that the trend towards increasingly lengthy names is getting a bit out of hand. I remember when the original GeForce launched and it was simply referred to as the "GeForce256". For a while Nvidia even flirted with making the names more simple with the GeForce 2. Then they brought out the MX and it kind of got confusing from there on out...

  6. Re:Who cares? Stupid paper launches by NocturnDragon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sorry to contradict you, but this one is not going to be a paper launch, ATI is shipping around 10,000 Radeon X1900 cards today. And comparing a overclocked card with one that is not overclocked doesn't cut it, as you can still overclock the new one. (And seeing as they are using 1.1ns memory, you could easily clock the memory to at least 1600MHz DDR). The price is going to be high, that's true, but that's also because you cannot really find any 7800 GTX 512MB around! Sure you can if you want to pay around 700$-800$.

  7. Only this time it's available in retail... by kapowaz · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've already spoken to one UK reseller who confirmed they have them in stock. Not yet booked in, and thus not available for purchase, but cards from Connect3D, Sapphire, PowerColor and HIS were all on the premises and will be available to exchange for cash within 24 hours. Clearly ATI has learned its lesson where launches are concerned.

  8. Another Review You Can Actually Read by AnInkle · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Tech Report's in-depth analysis is flowing freely with narry a hiccup. Check it out here.