ATI's New Leader in Graphics Performance: The Radeon X1900 Series
by Derek Wilson & Josh Venning on January 24, 2006 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
One Last Thing, there's an All-in-Wonder Version too
The All-In-Wonder version of this card isn't lagging too far behind this time around. Previous AIW launches have seen at least a little gap between the launch of the card it's based on and an announcement. This time ATI is being proactive and bringing out an AIW version of the X1900 immediately.
The card is a single slot solution, clocked a little lower, and aside from being the cheapest X1900 around, it also features all the bells and whistles AIW users have come to know and love. The price tag doesn't exactly scream bargain, but considering all the features smashed into this part it's obviously not going to be a slouch. While the specs for the part are a considerable cut from the faster cards in the series, the combination of all the positives on this card are incredible. Here's a breakdown:
All-In-Wonder X1900:
Core clock speed: 500 MHz
Memory clock speed: 960 MHz
Price (MSRP): $500
Though the All-In-Wonder series is always sold first in North America (all AIW parts bought here are built by ATI), we haven't seen much in the way of availability for this part today. The card is listed at ATI's own store as out of stock and will ship when available. While the focal point of the launch is on the three main products we tested today, we would have preferred that ATI hold off on the announcement of this part until volume was available. We are more inclined to believe ATI's promise that the AIW will be available in the next couple weeks now that we've seen them deliver so well on this hard launch, and we'll try to test one as soon as possible to see how the reduced clocks affect real world performance.
The All-In-Wonder version of this card isn't lagging too far behind this time around. Previous AIW launches have seen at least a little gap between the launch of the card it's based on and an announcement. This time ATI is being proactive and bringing out an AIW version of the X1900 immediately.
The card is a single slot solution, clocked a little lower, and aside from being the cheapest X1900 around, it also features all the bells and whistles AIW users have come to know and love. The price tag doesn't exactly scream bargain, but considering all the features smashed into this part it's obviously not going to be a slouch. While the specs for the part are a considerable cut from the faster cards in the series, the combination of all the positives on this card are incredible. Here's a breakdown:
All-In-Wonder X1900:
Core clock speed: 500 MHz
Memory clock speed: 960 MHz
Price (MSRP): $500
Though the All-In-Wonder series is always sold first in North America (all AIW parts bought here are built by ATI), we haven't seen much in the way of availability for this part today. The card is listed at ATI's own store as out of stock and will ship when available. While the focal point of the launch is on the three main products we tested today, we would have preferred that ATI hold off on the announcement of this part until volume was available. We are more inclined to believe ATI's promise that the AIW will be available in the next couple weeks now that we've seen them deliver so well on this hard launch, and we'll try to test one as soon as possible to see how the reduced clocks affect real world performance.
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Harkonnen - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Almost $900 CDN for the XTX and it only has a 1 year warranty?Main reason I would never buy an expensive ATi card is that right there.
smitty3268 - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
The people who buy a card this expensive the first day it comes out won't keep it for a whole year, so the warranty doesn't matter. In 6 months another card will be out that makes this one look slow and they'll be spending even more money.DerekWilson - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Due to popular demand, we have added more percent increase performance comparison graphs to the performance breakdown that shows the performance relatoinships at lower resolutions.Let us know if there is anything else you'd like to see. Thanks!
Live - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
The performance breakdown looks very good now! I would go so far as to say that this should be standard in future reviews.piroroadkill - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Using a lossy image format (JPEG) for image quality comparison screenshots seems kind of... pointless.But I guess you have to worry about bandwidth.
Josh Venning - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Thanks for the input all. Just to let you know we are dealing with some problems regarding our power numbers, but they should be up shortly. Thanks for being patient.Josh Venning - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
One more thing.. We also caught a mistype on the graphs that we are in the process of correcting. The two crossfire systems we tested are the X1900 XTX Crossfire and the X1800 XT Crossfire. (we miss-labeled the latter "X1900 XT Crossfire") Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.smitty3268 - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Ah... That makes much more sense now. I was wondering why the XTX crossfire was doing so much better than the XT crossfire when the specs were so similar.SpaceRanger - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Problems with the publishing of them, or problems in the sense that it requires a direct link into a nuclear reactor to power properly??
DerekWilson - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
our local nuclear plant ran us an extention cord just for this event :-)