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3DNews Vendor Reference English Resource - All you need to know about your products! |
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DesignAlthough on 4 May ATI presented the 12-pipeline ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, we got its elder brother - the 16-pipeline ATI Radeon 9800XT presented on the photos: As we can see, the card very much resembles its predecessor - ATI Radeon 9800XT. And the cooling system preserved its shape and has even grown smaller! Aren't they bullying the powerful systems of its competitor? Anyway, such "similarity" is not quite good for an entirely new product. I wish there were more impressive exterior differences, e.g. white textolyte. That the board does not bear the X800 XT logo is not a mistake, but the consequence of that the card has its origin in the samples. The cards which are to be shipped to the retail will bear a logo like this:  By the way, would you like to have a look at the person who does the PCB wiring for all ATI cards?  Meet her, a graduate from the Bauman Higher Technical College (Moscow) ;-). Sometimes she reads Russian-language reviews on her company's products, but most of the time she is fixed to her huge monitor trying to arrange just another thousand of pins in the freshly-baked chip. It turns out that TSMC adores to trade places of the processor's signal pins, and every new sample or revision requires redesign of the board's wiring. I am not telling you her name and email - it's of more use to me :).
Power consumptionOne of the most serious problems of video cards is the heat emission of core and memory chips. The ATI Radeon X800XT reference board consumes merely ~70W, which is one and a half time more than the 110W required by GeForce 6800 Ultra. How comes this fantastic difference which has turned traditional for competitive models by both companies? The answer is evident - those 160 mln transistors using the Low-k dielectric versus 222 mln transistors not using Low-k in NVIDIA chips, plus more up-to-date core by ATI that originates from Radeon 9700 Pro which used to be tuned almost manually. Thirdly, all the power-saving technologies by ATI for mobile solutions have been introduced on regular ATI graphic processors. The pipelines simply get disabled once they turn idle. The current major core by NVIDIA is two generations older and has acquired add-ons with new units, which inevitably results in overall efficiency reduction. It became evident for the first time when NV30 was released, and it cost NVIDIA lots of efforts not to lose face and urgently start doing modernizations and polishing of the chip, which proved to be not bad at all. But history repeats - again there came up the need for a two-slot cooling system (originally, the card was designed to have a low-profile cooling system) and this time it resulted in two compulsory molex power connectors which have to be plugged in to two different power cables. The recommended power rating of the PSU with a NV40 installed is 480W. It is extremely difficult to make such PSUs available in Russia, and they cost ~$120-150.  GeForce 6800Ultra The quantity of transistors in the chip is the key factor that affects some other of its characteristics. The more they are there, the lower chip yield rate. the lower the chip frequency, which creates more difficulties in applying power to the chip (because of the greater number of zones). ATI Radeon X800XT offers one molex power connector. The yellow connector of unknown purpose is present only in reference boards handed over to test labs and those manufactured at own small production facilities of ATI for internal testing needs. It won't be there on cards which are to be shipped to the retail.
 Note how the voltage stabilizer unit has turned simpler. A few more words about the power supply of modern cards - 70W is greater than can be applied via the AGP bus, but less(!) than PCI-Express16 (~75W) can hold. As a result, as new motherboards appear, we can expect R420 cards as well without any extra power. And even NV40 will most likely get rid of one of the two connectors in its PCI-E make. In any case, the dates for releasing AGP makes of both Radeon X800XT and GeForce 6800Ultra is limited to a few months, after that they will turn rarity. Once Intel announces Alderwood and Grantsdale, the computer industry will be quickly transferred to the PCI-E walk. VIVOBoth Radeon Õ800 cards offer an onboard VIVO chip (the old RAGE THEATER). Of the previous 9800XT series, only the Asus' board was equipped with the Theater 200 chip.  Traditionally, in the "features" section we review the memory, but this time the topic is so huge that we had to devote to it a separate page.
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Management by AK Design VisualPharm.com |
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