Radeon X1900 Series @ Anandtech

Anandtech has published their review of the Radeon X1900 Series:

"Take all the clich's used to describe a long overdue event or the unexpected
fulfillment of a promise (hot places freezing, heavy animals soaring through the
air, etc...) and you still couldn't say enough to fully proclaim the news that
ATI has finally properly hard launched a product. That's right, looking around
the internet this morning has provided us with the joyous realization that the
Radeon X1900XT, XTX, and CrossFire parts are available for purchase. We've tried
to keep an eye on the situation and it's been quite easy to see that ATI would
be able to pull it off this time. Some sites started taking preorders earlier in
the week saying their X1900 parts would ship in one to two days, putting the
timeframe right on the mark. There were no missing dongles, no problems with
customs, and ATI told us last week that thousands of parts had already been
delivered to manufacturers.

And if that isn't enough to dance about, ATI
has delivered a hugely powerful part with this launch. The Radeon X1900 series
is no joke, and every card featuring the name is a behemoth. With triple the
pixel shader units of the X1800 XT, and a general increase in supporting
hardware through out the pixel processing engine, ATI's hugely clocked 384
Million transistor GPU is capable of crunching enormous volumes of data very
quickly. Fill rate isn't increased very much because the X1900 series still only
allows 16 pixels to be drawn to the screen per clock cycle, but power is
delivered where it is needed most. With longer and more complex shader programs,
pixels need to stay in the shader engine longer which further shifts the
performance burden from the theoretical maximum fill rate.

NVIDIA would
like us to compare the X1900's increase in ALU (arithmetic logic unit) power to
what they did with the FX 5900 after NV30 tanked. Certainly, increasing the math
power (and increasing memory bandwidth) helped NVIDIA, but fortunately for ATI
the X1900 is not derived from a fundamentally flawed GPU design. The X1800
series are certainly not bad parts, even if they are being completely replaced
by the X1900 in ATI's lineup.
I'll spoil the results and make it clear that
the X1900XT and XTX are hands down the best cards out there right now. But all
positives aside, ATI needed this card to hard launch with good availability,
perform better than anything else, and look good doing it. There have been too
many speed bumps in ATI's way for there to be any room for a slip up on this
launch, and it looks like they've pulled it off. The launch of the X1900 series
not only puts ATI back on top, but (much more importantly) it puts them back in
the game. Let's hope that both ATI and NVIDIA can keep up the good fight. But
let's not forget why we're here. The first thing we are going to do is talk
about what makes the R580 GPU that powers the X1900 series so incredibly good at
what it does"

Whoa. Just as I was beginning to think that ATI was going to slip further and further behind nVidia they come out slugging with this monster. If you've got the bucks, the top of the line ATI card beats out the 7800GTX (yes, even the 512MB flavor) from nVidia on just about every benchmark performed and according to most sources, has better image quality while doing it. I can only think of one word to say: SWEET!

NVIDIA GeForce 7300 Preview @ Anandtech

Anandtech has a good article about the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS video card:

"Fast, feature rich, and cheap are the three ingredients necessary for ATI and NVIDIA to help get game developers excited about pushing the limits of their craft. After all, no one wants to spend time pouring their heart and soul into something if the majority of people who buy it won't get the full experience. And here's to cards like the 7300 GS continuing the trend of raising the bar for budget parts. Now all we really need is for Intel to care about putting performance and quality into their graphics hardware.

We are quite interested in getting our hands on the GeForce 7300 GS in order to put it through its paces and see how NVIDIA's newest sub $100 part fairs. We are expecting some pretty good things as the new part combines the features of the 7 series parts at a nice low price point. The major upgrade from the 6200 series is that this part supports floating point framebuffer blends (the 6200 series was the only line of 6 series parts not to support this feature). FP16 framebuffer blends are becoming increasingly attractive to game developers who want to implement HDR lighting, and the 128 to 256 MB of RAM the 7300 GS will carry on board is plenty.

Let's take a look at what else the new 7 series part will have to offer. "

nVidia is taking another shot at the lower end of the spectrum. Hopefully, with the inexpensive nVidia and ATi offerings to be available, the big manufacturers will abandon the onboard graphics in their less expensive offerings in favor of the more feature rich PCI Express cards. Of course, Intel could surprise us by introducing onboard graphics that don't suck. Ha ha. Yeah, that could happen.

Radeon X1600 XT and X1300 Pro

Beyond3D has posted a new review of ATi's Radeon X1600 XT and X1300 Pro Video Cards.:

"Back in October '05 ATI introduced the initial, much belated, X1000 series product line, comprising X1800 (R520), X1600 (RV530) and X1300 (RV515). Although these were all introduced at the same time their releases were staggered a little, and even when they did finally start rolling off the production lines their further releases hardly appeared to go too smoothly.
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Both X1300 and X1600, although around in various locations roughly when they were supposed to be, hardly appeared plentiful, which may partially have been to do with their pricing. ATI set fairly high MSRPs on both the X1300 and X1600 product lines, likely set for some high margins and to be competitive to where they were when they were introduced. However, when shipping is set to occur nearly two months after announcement, as was the case for X1600, a lot can happen in that time span, as indeed it did with NVIDIA's release of the 6800 GS. Now, though, following a reduction in MSRPs by ATI both products are becoming plentiful, vendors are coming out with numerous SKUs of both product lines, and street prices are more inline with where we would expect for their die sizes.
In this article we are going to take a more detailed look at both ATI's Radeon X1600 XT and X1300 PRO."

Interesting to see how this shakes out now that prices have come down. I would like to get hold of a 6800 GS and an X1600 and see how they fare against each other in my universe.

Sapphire Radeon X1300 256MB Video Card Review

Bona Fide Reviews has posted a review of the Sapphire Radeon X1300 256MB PCI Express Video Card and had these fine comments: "After last week's review of the BFG 7800GTX OC we visit the opposite end of the video card spectrum with Sapphire's X1300 Pro. Sapphire seems to have really focused on making their offering of the X1300 extremely affordable by being cheapest X1300 available. At the time of writing this card can be found online for $95. In other words, this video card costs less than 20% of what the 7800GTX is currently selling for. That's quite a statement. However, a graphic card has to perform to provide any real value to someone. A cheap video card that doesn't run the games they want play doesn't do much good either. So is this card worth its $95 price tag or is it a very effective paper weight? That's what we will determine in our review of Sapphire's X1300 Pro video card."

Check it out for a good dose of reality.

ATI Radeon X800 GTO cards from Sapphire, Connect3D, and PowerColor

Anandtech has a multiple card review of ATI Radeon X800 GTO cards from Sapphire, Connect3D, and PowerColor:

"We aren't exactly sure why there has been such a volley of mid-range cards between NVIDIA and ATI lately, but it could be an attempt by ATI to at least gain some kind of foothold on the mid-range graphics front (given their struggle to keep up on the high-end this past year) to assure decent sales for the holidays.

But all speculation aside, quality graphics cards at value prices are a good thing, no matter how you look at it, and luckily, the X800 GTO looks to offer good performance and prices. ATI fans won't be disappointed with this card at all, and gamers in general will want to consider this when looking to upgrade.

For this review, we'll take a look at four different variations of the X800 GTO, two of which are by Sapphire, and all interestingly different from each other. The first is the Sapphire X800 GTO Ultimate, which is a silent version of the GTO; the second, the Sapphire X800 GTO2 (pronounced GTO 'squared'), a limited edition part that has received a lot of attention due to its alleged overclocking abilities. The third and fourth cards that we'll look at are the Connect3D X800 GTO and the PowerColor X800 GTO 16. All of these cards are excellent graphics solutions, but most of them have features that set them distinctly apart from the eachother.

The GTO has been out a little while now and we've been interested in taking a look at some of them. We can assure you that they are pretty decent, but we'll let you know just how good these cards really are considering the performance and cost. Value is what it's about and we will be looking at how each of these four GTOs stack up against each other and some other graphics cards as well. As usual, we will be doing extensive performance tests, as well as overclocking and "

Follow the link above to read more about these excellent mid-range cards and see if one of them is in your future.

Radeon X1800 CrossFire Edition @ HotHardware

Hothardware.com has published their review of the Radeon X1800XT Crossfire edition video card and had this to say:

"Performance Summary: Both CrossFire configurations performed very well in the
majority of games / benchmarks we tested. Half Life 2, FarCry, Splinter Cell and
3DMark05 all scaled dramatically on CrossFire, and ATI's and NVIDIA's respective
flagship configurations traded victories in these benchmarks. 256MB and 512MB
GeForce 7800 GTX SLI configurations had big performance advantages in OpenGL
games, like Doom 3 and Quake 4, but overall ATI had a good showing. Clearly
though, a 512MB GeForce 7800 GTX SLI configuration remains the most powerful
gaming setup available today.

Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire Edition Master
cards should be available from a handful on-line retailers over the next few
days, at an MSRP of $599. We have already received word that HIS has begun
shipping cards, and ATI was only waiting on shipments of the custom dongle
before getting product out to retailers, so there is a chance consumers will be
able to get their hands on an X1800 XT master card in time for Christmas. But is
X1800 XT CrossFire worth the expense? Well, that all depends on your
perspective, and your wallet's girth of course. If we strictly look at price, a
pair of X1800 XTs - if master cards actually end up being available at or below
MSRP - will end up being up to $300 'cheaper' than a pair of 512MB GeForce 7800
GTX cards. Although NVIDIA launched these cards with an MSRP of $649, you can't
find them for less than $750, and that's if you can find them at all. Plus,
ATI's Catalyst 5.13 drivers give the X1K series a cards an advantage in video
playback quality by exposing more of Avivo's capabilities. So, with very good
gaming performance, better video performance, and an overall lower price, X1800
XT CrossFire is clearly a solid alternative to a pair of 512MB GeForce 7800
GTXs. "

Today, December 26th, the Crossfire edition cards are available at approximately $569 from www.newegg.com which is considerably less expensive than the 512MB 7800 GTX, which is listed at $749 and is currently unavailable. Now there's an interesting turnabout, given that only a short while ago ATi was the one with the availability problem. It just keeps getting more amusing by the day!

Radeon X1800 CrossFire Edition @ Beyond3D

Beyond3D.com has published their Review of the X1800 Crossfire Edition Video Card and had this to say:

"On the positive side the Crossfire solution once again proves that the performance can scale sufficiently well. ATI have implemented a fairly robust number of rendering methods, giving them options for performance increases with Crossfire over a variety of different rendering scenarios - from the testing here, the only time this stumbled, not as a result of CPU limitation, to any great extent was with F.E.A.R.; given its relatively recent introduction ATI may still need more time to tweak it, but this could be an argument for allowing the end user greater control over the rendering methods used.
Finally, probably the biggest beacon for this platform is the performance of SuperAA - the tests here demonstrated that the higher quality modes of FSAA could be accessed for very close to the same performance as a single board rendering half the AA level, which could be of benefit should a title be very CPU bound on an end users system, or the other modes not provide anything in the way of performance scaling.
It's somewhat curious to consider that customers within the workstation market could quite possibly be ideal end users for Crossfire - probably most willing to look over the physical connections, the least concerned about the price and configuration issues, probably likely to be very interested in the FSAA capabilities, yet ATI do not appear to be considering it this time, probably due to the complexity of the drivers on the workstation side.

The X1800 XT is a very high performance board in the first place and coupling it with the X1800 Crossfire Edition further increases the rendering potential, and gives the end user more room to play with the new image quality functions of the X1000 series."

I'm not sure, but I think I see a battle looming over QUALITY of graphics. I'm not entirely sure who is ahead or behind in this arena right now, but it will be interesting to see how things play out. We here at videocardreview have been curious for some time about how to go about including subjective things like video quality in reviews, as opposed to simply the speed of processing. Keep your eyes open. Interesting things to come, I think.

Radeon X1800 CrossFire Edition @ Anandtech

Anandtech has released their review of the Radeon X1800 CrossFire Edition video card and had these things to say about it: "

Performance is one of the high points of CrossFire in general. In many cases, the X1800 XT in CrossFire performs between the 7800 GTX SLI and 7800 GTX 512 SLI setups. Things may heat up even more when ATI brings out its R500 series refresh part to compete more directly with NVIDIA's top of the line king of the hill GeForce 7800 GTX 512.

But price is still an issue for ATI at the high end. With the 7800 GTX selling for between $450 and $500, finding two that fall somewhere between $900 and $1000 isn't a difficult task. With the X1800 CrossFire Edition at about $600 and the price of standard X1800 XT running between $500 and $550, shelling out $1100 or more dollars for CrossFire isn't a stretch. Unless the system is just made to eat money, one or two hundred dollars is a good savings for a comparable solution that is much more mature. And for those who want the best of the best (and really can afford to burn money), that's still going to be the $1400 dual 7800 GTX 512 setup.

And above all of this looms the shadow of availability. After an early morning look around, it doesn't look good. Some vendors have X1800 CrossFire Edition cards listed on their site, but they are all showing out of stock, back ordered, or early January ETAs on parts. With previous NVIDIA launches, we have seen product available for purchase before we published. With the 7800 GT launch, we even had parts listed for sale in our RTPE the weekend before we could talk about it. Without seeing anywhere to physically buy the hardware just hours before it is supposed to be publicly available does not give us a warm and fuzzy feeling about ATI's promises. But we are good sports, so we will keep checking throughout the day for any sign of an online vendor actually selling parts. AT"

The cards are currently available on several sites that I looked at this morning and while it is now a little late for Christmas, if you're considering a new multi-GPU setup, the ATI is a serious contender for your hard earned dollars or even the ones your granny gave you.

XFX 6600 DDR2 & MSI X1300 Pro

bit-tech.net has a nice review of XFX 6600 DDR2 and MSI X1300 Pro two new players in the budget card market:

"It has been a long time since we had a look at some mainstream video cards - not everyone can afford a Radeon X1800XT or GeForce 7800 GTX. Over the last couple of months, both ATI and NVIDIA have launched new products. Namely, Radeon X1300 Pro and GeForce 6600 DDR2.

Today, we are evaluating the performance of two video cards from MSI and XFX based on ATI's Radeon X1300 Pro 256MB and NVIDIA's GeForce 6600 DDR2 256MB chipsets. We are also going to evaluate the performance of GeForce 6600 DDR2 in SLI, as we have not had a look at NVIDIA's mainstream SLI implementation until now. If you've only got $xx available for your upgrade to PCI-Express, we suggest you continue reading."

Yeah, what they said.

ATi Radeon X1600 XT @ ExtremeTech

Review of Radeon X1600 XT at extremetech.com:

"Back on Oct 5, ATI announced an entire family of products, including the aforementioned X1800 and X1300 cards, plus a pair of midrange cards, the Radeon X1600 XT and X1600 Pro. Priced from $150 to $250 (depending on model and memory configuration), these cards represent the most interesting part of the market. This is the price sweet spot, where affordability best converges with performance and where most users spend their money. Unfortunately, the X1600 cards weren't scheduled to ship until the end of November, so we decided to hold our review, knowing that upcoming drivers would surely alter performance.
Today, we finally dig into the Radeon X1600 XT with 256MB of graphics memory: a $250 card that one would hope delivers some really fantastic bang for the buck. Let's find out how ATI's new architecture performs in a midrange graphics configuration."

The X1600XT puts ATi square in the thick of the battle for your mid-range graphics card dollars.

6800GS Video Card Review @ Beyond3D

Beyond3D has a review of nVidia 6800GS video card:

"The NV42 chip has a slightly different configuration from the NV40 chip that the rest of the 6800s use, in that NV40's designed configuration contains 16 pixel processing pipelines and 6 vertex shaders, whereas this contains 12 pipelines and 5 vertex shaders. The configuration of the chip does actually match the configuration of the 6800 (standard) graphics card configuration, which shipped with disabled pipelines, using otherwise redundant chips. NV42 also uses TSMC's 110nm process, where NV40 made use of IBM's 130nm process - the smaller geometry size of the NV42 chip reduces its size, this the cost of the silicon per chip, as more chips can fit on a single wafer, which enables this 6800 GS configuration to come in at the mainstream price point."

nVidia's new card looks like a winner in the mainstream PCI-Express space.

X1300, X1600, X800 GTO AGP video cards

As we opined only a couple of days ago that more new AGP cards would be forthcoming from both ATi and nVidia, we feel very prescient today. Why? Because it now appears that not only will we have the nVidia 6800 GS as we announced, but also AGP versions of ATi's X800 GTO, X1300, and X1600 video cards. The X800GTO AGP is expected to be available in stores as soon as next week. The X1300 and X1600 AGP cards will probably be in January sometime. ATi currently says they have not plans to make AGP versions of their X1800 series cards. Yeah, we've heard that before.

I also have heard a very flimsy rumor (meaning, I can neither confirm nor deny any part of it, and only pass it on here because it would be a great story if it were true) that nVidia is considering an AGP version of the GeForce 7800 video card. Will just have to wait and see on this one. I find it difficult to imagine that the video card manufacturers would abandon a market that has clearly not dried up so I will not be surprised to continue to see AGP cards appear for quite awhile.