ATI's Radeon X800 XL 512MB - A toe in the 512MB pool
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 4, 2005 9:27 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
Without a doubt, there will be a time when 512MB cards will be necessary. As we mentioned earlier, more local GPU memory is never a bad thing, it just has to be taken advantage of, and that time is not now.Performance across the majority of the games that we tested remained unchanged, even at their highest detail settings. We were a bit surprised that there was such a tangible benefit to the 512MB card running Half Life 2, but in the end, we attained better performance out of a similarly priced X850 XT with only 256MB of memory, even under Half Life 2.
ATI's desire to make their first 512MB part based on the X800 XL doesn't appear to make much sense either. The large amount of on-board memory would seem best fit for a GPU that was capable of running at resolutions and detail settings that would see some performance benefit from the additional memory.
We are worried that ATI doesn't have their users as Priority One, given the level of confusion that the X800 XL 512MB will insert into their product line. Without a significantly lower price tag, the new 512MB board inadvertently competes with ATI's X850 XT, which is clearly the better performer. With a 30% fill rate advantage, even in future games that do eat up more memory, we'd expect the X850 XT to still outperform the X800 XL 512MB. The fact of the matter is that developers aren't going to leave the majority of the gamers in the dark when it comes to implementing features and improving image quality. We wouldn't expect 512MB graphics cards to be the target for any development until the next generation of GPUs actually begins getting into the hands of gamers later this year. At that point, you're better off picking up a new GPU with more memory rather than one based on the year-old R42x architecture.
We can't help but feel a little puzzled by today's launch, but at the same time, very curious. Not so much about the X800 XL 512MB itself, but whether or not ATI will hold true to their word this time around. The X800 XL 512MB had better arrive later this month; otherwise, ATI will have just dug themselves a deeper hole and this time, it will have been for no actual benefit.
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civilgeek - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link
aliasfox - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link
Actually, g33k, because nVidia's gotten lazy on the driver side of things, the X800XT is just as fast as the 6800 Ultra DDL in most instances, if not a little faster.I'd love to see nVidia put as much effort into its Mac OpenGL drivers as it does in its Windows OpenGL drivers... or, conversely, ATi should work as hard on its Windows OpenGL drivers as it does on the Mac.
nserra - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link
512MB card is pointless I agree, but about the DOOM3 ULTRA mode require 512Mb of GPU memory, well maybe it’s correct. Only if you have an nvidia card!Ati cards use much less GPU memory for the textures and for AA and AF modes.
See "past" bench’s of nvidia 5x00 256MB vs ATI 9x00 256MB, while there was some performance decrease on the nvidia cards on games (max details settings) when going from 256MB to 128MB with the Ati there was no difference.
(Or performance increase if you do the opposite calculations [128 to 256])
ET - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link
BTW, I agree that most evidence seems to point to ExtremeTech having made some mistake, but I love to verify things.ET - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link
Yes, Anand, if you could do a 2GB test in both High and Ultra modes, I'd love to see it. Thanks!geekfool - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link
Of course if this article benchmarked something that actually needed this memory, say Celestia (http://shatters.net/celestia/) /w a 64k texture set of Earth, the 512m of ram might have made a difference.flatblastard - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link
And I'll get more use out of mine over a longer period of time. Ahhhh, I feel better now...g33k - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link
"1) ATI is better at OpenGL than Nvidia"I know its been posted before, but you have this statement completely @ss backwards. Nvidia EXCELS at OPENGL. ATI tends to do better at DirectX games.
So if you follow your logic about the Apple platform(which admittedly I know nothing about), the 6800 Ultra would be the best card for the Mac.
flatblastard - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link
Now at least when someone tries to make me feel bad for "wasting" my money on an x850xt pe, I will have someone else to point the finger at.Yes, I'm talking to you, whoever read this review and still plans on buying one of these 512MB cards! lol...
You know, I just realized.....with this new x800xl 512mb in the line-up, my x850xt pe starts to look like it was a good decision on my part.....I don't feel so cheated anymore. ;)
Ged - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
"However, I disagree with your second post. If it were that simple, why do rendered games need so much RAM? I am pretty sure there are other things stored in video RAM when rendering the OS in 3D including textures. I think the days of the VRAM being used as JUST a frame buffer in the OS are numbered."It's true that you won't just need to store 'what the screen looks like' in VRAM; however, I cannot see how a clean desktop, which OSX is supposed to have, takes up 256MB or 512MB of VRAM.
Another way to look at the 20 frames at 2560x1600x24bbp is that you could store that many textures at that resolution as well. That should be overkill for a desktop (consider that all the windows are textured they'd probably use the same texture and other objects on the desktop would probably also use the same textures).
Take the best most complex 3D game with many textures on possibly hundreds of objects right now: They don't require over 256MB of VRAM and Apple's sleek, efficient Desktop will?
Plus, with NVIDIA and ATI both using System Memory via PCIe, you don't need as much VRAM for a 2D/3D desktop because the cards could use System RAM (assuming Apple goes to PCIe at some point).
"Graphics Cards for Apple OSX needing 256MB+ or 512MB of VRAM to display the OS well."
I guess I will sum it all up by saying: "I'll believe it when I see it" :)