ATI's New High End and Mid Range: Radeon X1950 XTX & X1900 XT 256MB
by Derek Wilson on August 23, 2006 9:52 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Power to the People
The major power hog of this generation is the X1900 XTX, as we have made clear in past articles. Almost disturbingly, a single X1900 XTX draws more power than a 7950 GX2, and X1900 XTX CrossFire is more power hungry than 7950 Quad SLI. While ATI already had the slightly lower clocked X1900 XT available for those who wanted something that acted slightly less as a space heater, they needed something that performed better and fit into the same (or better) power envelope to round out this generation of GPUs for them. What they latched on to has now given graphics cards sporting the R580+ a much needed drop in power: GDDR4.
As we explained in the GDDR4 section, the optimizations made to this generation of graphics memory technology have been designed with both power savings and potential speed in mind. We've already seen how the higher speed memory pulls through in our performance tests, but how does it hold up on the power front?
For this test, used our Kill-A-Watt to measure system power at the wall. Our load numbers are recorded as maximum power draw during a run of 3DMark06's fill rate and pixel shader feature tests.
Apparently, JEDEC and ATI did their jobs well when deciding on the features of GDDR4 and making the decision to adopt it so quickly. Not only has ATI been able to improve performance with their X1950 XTX, but they've been able to do so using significantly less power. While the X1950 XTX is still no where near the envelope of the 7900 GTX, drawing the same amount of power as the X1900 XT and 7950 GX2 is a great start.
It will certainly be interesting to see what graphics makers can do with this RAM when focusing on low power implementations like silent or budget products.
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nextsmallthing - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
Did anyone else notice that the specs for some of the NVIDIA cards are wrong? For example, the core clock of the 7900GTX is supposed to be 650 MHz, not 700 MHz, and the core clock of the 7900GT should be 450 MHz, not 470 MHz. Also, the pipeline configuration for the 7300GT (according to Wikipedia anyway) should be 8 pixel & 4 vertex.This many mistakes really makes me question the accuracy of other specs I read on Anandtech.
(And by the way, would somebody please inform the DailyTech writers that it's "Xbox 360", not "XBOX 360". And yes I'm aware of the conventions that punctuation goes inside quotes and you shouldn't start sentences with "and".)
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
The 7900GTX/GT clock speeds that were listed were actually vertex clock speeds, not general core clock speeds, so they were technically correct (parts of the GPU do run at those frequencies) just not comparable to the other numbers. They have been corrected.The 7300GT is indeed 8 pipes, that was a copy/paste error. Thanks for the heads up.
Take care,
Anand
nextsmallthing - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
Wow--prompt correction and courteous reply. I'm impressed, and my faith in Anandtech is restored!Josh7289 - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
From the looks of the pricing structure for ATI's cards on the first page, and especially from the looks of the pricing structure for ATI's cards after they simplify their lineup, it looks like ATI is giving up on midrange cards, from $100 - $200. The 7600GT and the upcoming 7900GS both are alone in that price range (about $150 and $200, respecitively), with no competition from ATI, so it seems they really are giving that price range to Nvidia.Am I right with this or am I seriously missing something?
yyrkoon - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
there is a x1800GTO2, price last I looked was around $230, of course, they released it rather quietly. Still, thats about $90 higher than the 7600 GT (or in my case the eVGA 7600GT KO).OrSin - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
I wondering the same thing. Are they going to stop making any 1800's. They should be dropping in this price range nicely. Not sure how competative they are with the 7900's. And now that the 7900GS is coming out the 1800 might be just too outclassed. (you guys just missed a great deal on woot 7900GS for $145).I hope 1800 drop is still being made and I hope it drops to $150-180 range to fill that gap.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
I think they've already stopped making all of the X1800 series, but there are still cards floating around.Josh7289 - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
The X1900GT is a card meant to compete with the stock 7900GT, and as such is somewhere around the $200 - $250 price range.As for the X1950 Pro and X1650 XT, what are these supposed to compete against and at what prices. More importantly, when are these supposed to launch?
coldpower27 - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
As well the X1650 XT is also in the works.coldpower27 - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
X1950 Pro, is upcoming, as well they still have the X1900 GT.