ATI's Late Response to G70 - Radeon X1800, X1600 and X1300
by Derek Wilson on October 5, 2005 11:05 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Test Setup and Power Performance
Our testing methodology was to try and cover a lot of ground with top to bottom hardware. Including the X1300 through the X1800 line required quite a few different cards and tests to be run. In order to make it easier to look at the data, rather than put everything for each game in one place as we normally do, we have broken up our data into three separate groups: Budget, Midrange, and High End.
We used the latest drivers we had available which are both beta drivers. From NVIDIA, the 81.82 drivers were tested rather than the current release as we expect the rel 80 drivers to be in the end users hands before the X1000 series is easy to purchase.
All of our tests were done on this system:
ATI Radeon Express 200 based system
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
1GB DDR400 2:2:2:8
120 GB Seagate 7200.7 HD
600 W OCZ PowerStreams PSU
The resolutions we tested range from 800x600 on the low end to 2048x1536 on the high end. The games we tested include:
Before we take a look at the performance numbers, here's a look at the power draw of various hardware.
As we can see, this generation draws about as much power as previous generatation products under load at the high end and midrange. The X1300 Pro seems to draw a little more power than we would like to see in a budget part. The card also sports a fan that is just as loud as the X1600 XT. Considering that some of the cards we tested against the X1300 Pro were passively cooled, this is something to note.
Our testing methodology was to try and cover a lot of ground with top to bottom hardware. Including the X1300 through the X1800 line required quite a few different cards and tests to be run. In order to make it easier to look at the data, rather than put everything for each game in one place as we normally do, we have broken up our data into three separate groups: Budget, Midrange, and High End.
We used the latest drivers we had available which are both beta drivers. From NVIDIA, the 81.82 drivers were tested rather than the current release as we expect the rel 80 drivers to be in the end users hands before the X1000 series is easy to purchase.
All of our tests were done on this system:
ATI Radeon Express 200 based system
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
1GB DDR400 2:2:2:8
120 GB Seagate 7200.7 HD
600 W OCZ PowerStreams PSU
The resolutions we tested range from 800x600 on the low end to 2048x1536 on the high end. The games we tested include:
- Day of Defeat: Source
- Doom 3
- EverQuest 2
- Far Cry
- Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
- The Chronicles of Riddick
Before we take a look at the performance numbers, here's a look at the power draw of various hardware.
As we can see, this generation draws about as much power as previous generatation products under load at the high end and midrange. The X1300 Pro seems to draw a little more power than we would like to see in a budget part. The card also sports a fan that is just as loud as the X1600 XT. Considering that some of the cards we tested against the X1300 Pro were passively cooled, this is something to note.
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DigitalFreak - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
CPU limited?DRavisher - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Usually you are not CPU limited at such high resolutions. Though it would of course be possible. But my comment still stands; the XT is not showing any good scaling at higher resolutions in those benchmarks, rather the opposite.raj14 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
i am not surprised, with 16 Pixel pipelins everybody knowed ATi was going to loose, ATi has Always sucked and continues to do so. even in Cross-FIre radeon 1800XTs won't come near SLied 7800GTXs. hats off to NVIDIA and thumbs down to ATi.utube545 - Tuesday, June 12, 2007 - link
Fuck off you dumbassmlittl3 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Excerpt from extremetech.com review of the X1800:"The Radeon X1800 XT fares much better against the GeForce 7800 GTX. It is faster, on the whole, whether you apply AA and AF or not (though the difference is tiny without them). The only reason the 7800 GTX remains less than 20% behind is because of the dominance of Nvidia in Doom 3. Without that game, ATI pulls even further ahead."
"With 8 fewer pixel pipelines, it's impressive to see this difference in performance, even though the X1800 XT runs at a much higher clock speed. We question whether it can be attributed to all the improvements in the new architecture for the sake of per-pipeline efficiency, or if it has more to do with the 25% advantage in memory bandwidth."
The 16 pipes vs. 24 pipes is not enough to draw a conclusion. At this site, the ATI cards wins with 16 pipes in most cases.
Griswold - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
I'm guessing you got your first PC last christmas.
LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Too bad he didn't get his first Speak `n Spell last Christmas, it would have been a more useful gift.mlittl3 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
I don't understand how Anandtech can complain about no products at launch when they post live review articles when they aren't even remotely ready. I know you guys are doing it because you want to post the article when the other sites do but if it isn't ready, it isn't ready. Come on. You are doing the exact same thing as ATI's paper launches.You have graphs showing the X1800xl beating x1800xt. You say there is good scaling with AA enabled but you don't show the data without AA. You also only tested like 5 games. Where is the 3dmark benches? Where are all the other games?
Anandtech review launch = ATI paper launch
I'm going to another review site. This is abysmal.
mlittl3 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Oh and one other thing. The cards picked for each section: budget, midrange, highend seem randomly chosen. Why don't we have 9200, x300, 5200, 6200, x1300 in the low end? 9600, x600, 5600, 6600, x1600 in the mid range? And 9800, x800, 5900, 6800, x1800, 7800 in the high-end? If you can't go back two generations of cards, then show some of the derivatives of last generation at least (xl, xt, xt pe, pro, ultra, etc.). Everything is so scatter-brained here no one can tell what card is faster than what.Go to extremetech.com. They show the ATI cards winning in almost every single test and they also have 3dmark scores. ATI did a great job with 16 pipelines and gives almost 1.5x performance over x800 series and beats the 7800. Don't use this site to determine the winner. Go to multiple sites.
bob661 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
So you only look for benchmarks that show what you want to see? Besides, I checked extremetech.com and ATI did NOT win all of the benchmarks there. 2 fps is not a win as you will NEVER be albe to tell the difference. Besides, how the hell is 2 fps or even 10 fps worth $100?