ATI RADEON X1800 XL: Supersized graphics power?
Written: Nov 23 '05 (Updated May 05 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Shader 3.0 support, Crossfire ready, reasonable power consumption, reasonable price, good DX9 performance
Cons: Not SLI compatible, still expensive, long card, relatively low OpenGL performance
The Bottom Line: It may lag behind the x1900 in performance, but it certainly packs a solid punch for the money.
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| theuerkorn's Full Review: ATI RADEON® X1800 XL, (256 MB) PCI Express Vi... |
In light of the revised nVidia 7800 GTX 512, ATI's Radeon X1800 XL may appear a little handicapped, and by raw numbers that's even true. However, considering money, the lofty 7800 GTX and ATI's response, the Radeon x1800 XT, are in a completely different league with additional $150 to $300 that has to change hands.
PRELUDE
Like most home users (and even some professionals) I am budget driven, and $500+ for a new card were out of the question. At the same time, my MSI RX800Pro-TD256E ran more often into performance problems with the latest games, but also some professional applications. At the time the x850 XT offered too little difference to justify the extra spending, besides not offering any support for the shader 3.0 in DirectX 9.0c (previously only shown by nVidia).
ATI is playing a confusing version game by releasing a family of products which are not easy to distinguish for the average user. Even the x1800 is released in both "XL" and "XT" version. The top dollar "XT" stands for a 625 MHz core speed, 1.5 GHz memory speed, and your choice of 512MB / 256MB GDDR3 memory. The "XL" in theory scores much lower with a 500 MHz core, 1.0GHz memory speed, and 256MB GDDR3 memory. However the commonalities are far greater.
Both sport Shader 3.0 support (for HDR lighting etc.) and 16 pixel pipelines, 512 bit memory bandwidth and many other features that let enthusiast's hearts beat faster these days. Of course that is coupled with the lowered resistance to spend that much money, simply because many recent games already support such functionality (i.e. shader 3.0). Older hardware does not only perform slowly but often cannot display the same quality.
INSTALLATION
ATI's ditched AGP with the x1800 for the first time and with it support for "older" motherboards - or at least those that don't have a PCI-Express slot. I already owned a PCI-E graphics board (x800Pro) and the replacement was relatively easy. Simply unplug the old one and insert the new. Note: Even though the x800Pro already used a secondary power plug (6 pin), it's not compatible with the x1800 due to one additional lead that's actually connected in the newer board. Failure to replace the cable with the included one will result in a VGA boot error. Alternatively, modern power supplies like the ATX12V v2.2 compatible Antec Neo HE 500 include one or two PCI-E graphics plugs which are compatible with both x800Pro and x1800.
The x1800 XL is a single slot card, which means that within the normal slot spacing, it has no interference with the neighboring slot (possible thermal interference aside). The x1800 XT, however, is a double wide card and will cover a slot unless the board provides extra room. The Asus A8N SLI motherboard would be such case where at least the PCI-E(1) slot has plenty room between it and the second PCI-E(2) slot (for SLI).
While the x1800 XL is not wider than a standard graphics card, it's very long and in my case interferes with the hard drive should one be installed in the respective slot of the HD frame. Assuming you want to use eventually 2 graphics cards, that could mean that in my case 2 of 5 hard drive slots are rendered useless due to the card length of the x1800.
Should this be your first Radeon, simply boot up the computer (graphics will be defaulted to safe mode or 640x480 VGA resolution, with no acceleration active for basic compatibility). The new hardware will be recognized and I typically choose to ignore WindowsXP's "hardware found" dialog and install the Catalyst driver directly. (This driver is needed to take advantage of the perfomance increasing hardware.) Simply reboot and then adjust the video parameters in either the control panel or the control center. Done.
MAIN FEATURES
Size: The x1800 XL is a single slot card -- unlike the picture on Epinions which shows the XT version. Length is more of an issue as this card is very long and may interfere with other hardware in your computer (typically hard drives).
PCI-Express: The graphics interface that took the PC world by storm. There is really no denying anymore that PCI-E is on the verge to replace AGP8X as the premier graphics interface, and in fact it's already the only choice for the x1800. Despite the higher theoretical bandwidth, games often are still designed with AGP in mind for a broader audience.
GPU (Processor): ATI's new X1xxx series (1300, 1600, 1800) and related processors is a catchup with nVidia's 6800 and 7800 which both already support Shader 3.0 and especially the 7800 easily outperformed the ATI x850XT-PE. New chip architecture with improved memory management, increased ability to multihread up to 512 tasks, smaller structure allowing for higher frequencies while consuming less power (relatively speaking).
Video Memory: With 256 MByte of video memory, who would ever need more? Well, Quake 4 could raise its (virtual) hand rather quickly by demanding 512 MByte for the maximum texture quality. With that being one of the few exceptions, most games and applications will be fine with the provided 256 MByte for now. The memory utilizes fast GDDR3 memory architecture and runs at 1 GHz. Nice!
Power Consumption: Computers have become silent but significant drain sources for energy. SLI or Crossfire requirements for a power supply rating of 500W should give it away, but you can tell yourself that this is only theoretical. (Then again, you wouldn't leave a 500W lightbulb on 24/7, would you?) Regardless of energy use, it won't help system stability to ignore the needs of modern processors and graphics cards. The X1800 XL clocks in at roughly 80W and peaks at little under 100W. Add the typical 90W to 130W for the CPU and at least 100W for all the other stuff like memory, hard drive, DVD drive etc., and the minimum power supply to run one (!) X1800 XL system is right around 400W. Make that 500W for a potential Crossfire setup! Undersized power supplies will cause stability issues.
Crossfire: Until now there was only one company specific divider within the PC camp. Your motherboard was either Intel vs. AMD architecture and each's processors would not play with the other's hardware (socket etc.). Graphics cards finally seem to enter the same diversion but fortunately not as fundamental. What nVidia calls SLI is similar to ATI's Crossfire. Yet, both are not fully compatible (though both rely on dual PCI-Express slots). Crossfire entered the market late and ATI is to blame for that diversion, but SLI belongs to nVidia and either system has its strengths and weaknesses. In absence of an independent regulation (i.e. AGP or PCI-E) we will have to live with it for a while. However, be advised that there is currently no Crossfire solution for the x1800 XL and while expected soon, it may be quite expensive. So for now you don't have to worry about the motherboard issues as long as it supports PCI-Express.
PERFORMANCE
Hardware alone is barely ever responsible for graphics performance, but also software optimization for one or the other architecture. So it happens that some developers work closer with nVidia and therefore perform better on those boards (i.e. DOOM III), while others do the exact same thing with ATI (i.e. Half-Life2).
DirectX 9: The Radeon series is optimized for Microsoft's DirectX 3D rendering environment. Typically games fall into this category and most even require DX9 compatible hardware to even run. DirectX is Windows proprietary and therefor typically used for programs that are typically released on Microsoft's platform only.
Games: Picking the latest top games, Quake 4 already showed good performance with my previous x800Pro when turning Anti-Aliasing off, but with the x1800XL, the latter was no problem either. Still, high quality textures are not available as those are reserved for 512MByte cards. Superstar F.E.A.R. didn't run all that well on the mentioned x800Pro, and not only soft shadows would slow the game down immensely. Moving to the x1800XL, this was no issue any longer and lighting became even more so beautiful due to the Shader 3.0 support. Soft shadows, however, still take a major hit on the x1800. Call of Duty 2 didn't change much visually, but now allows to set all parameters to maximum (including 4x AA) and still play very smooth. The anti-aliasing alone makes it worth the trouble. A last example is Need for Speed: Most Wanted which had some improvement from the upgrade (x800Pro -> x1800XL), but still shows significant performance lag in my configuration (which seems to be attributed to dual core issues rather than the graphics board). With a few system tweaks, racing at 1600x1200 with maximum settings is quite doable on the x1800 - but not all the time.
OpenGL 2.0: Radeons are optimized for DirectX based video gaming and OpenGL is typically used in "serious" applications like computer aided design (CAD). Slightly different architectures apparently call for different optimizations and hardware design. OpenGL is cross-platform compatible and the format of choice for developers that publish on more sytems than just Windows.
Applications: Pro/Engineer for example performs even on a pricey Radeon x850XT-PE (my work configuration) everything but mind-blowing. While improvements are visible, it's still a far cry from perfect with the x1800XL. This is to be expected and OpenGL is the domain of ATI's FireGL (which in return doesn't do well with gaming applications). Anyway, a medium sized assembly (~50 components) in Pro/E is very workable on the x1800 XL, but still more hesitant than a dedicated OpenGL card would be (i.e. FireGL v5000) with bigger assemblies (> 100 components). Other applications with an OpenGL interface that I use frequently are Lightwave3D and Vue5 Infinite, both perform mostly well. Vue5 seemed to have benefitted most from the upgrade as the improvement over my previous x800Pro was significant, but again no match for a dedicated OpenGL card.
3DMark05: With my configuration I scored an impressive -- though not record breaking -- 7150 points in v1.2 (free) of this popular 3D benchmark. This is not bad considering it's virtually twice the performance of my previous x800Pro. With Control Center's ability to tune processor and memory speed of the card, I achieved 7370 points by simply increasing the GPU frequency from 500 MHz to 540 MHz. However, that's less than 5% increase and realistically not worth it. The memory tweaking turned out to be very sensitive and even a small increase caused my system to crash. A bug in Catalyst prior to v6.3 is the root cause for that behavior. For significant improvements way beyond the x1800 capabilities check out the Radeon x1900 XT.
SUMMARY
The x1800 XL may not have been the fastest card even upon release, but it's an intriguing offer for the ATI fan. Prices already in the $350 range and performance that's not too far off much more expensive models, the package is right for the the transition to 2006. Higher resolution monitor crave graphics power to feed all those pixels, especially in games. The x1800 XL doesn't break into sweat too often when serving a monitor with respectable 1600x1200 pixels (my configuration).
The dark side of the x1800 is that it really doesn't play well with older motherboards (more than 1 year) and even in a typical midsize tower, the length of the card may be problematic. Make sure you have enough space and a good power supply before betting your money on a x1800. As always, make sure to update drivers regularly (ATI releases one update per month). Also in dual core systems, be aware that XP has currently documented performance issues with before you blame the graphics card.
ATI has finally released a Shader 3.0 capable series of boards which also follow suit of the confusing number game ATI plays with all the variations of even 3 base designs in the new generation and 2 - 3 versions of each. I am not sure if such a diversity really pays in the end, and would think it would be easier if they worked on less variants but more dedicated to their markets (price, performance, midrange).
The x1800 is coming late to the recent performance game consisting of Shader 3.0 support and Dual GPU capability (sli, crossfire). Both were the domain of nVidia over the last year. And still there are currently no Crossfire X1800 cards available. (Compare that to the late arrival of the first incarnation of Crossfire for Radeon x800 and x850.) Dual GPU is not for everybody since you basically have to buy two high-end cards. But more important is that motherboards with ATI's XPress 200 chipset are currently very rare and nVidia has a significant head start of more than a year. This puts ATI at a slight disadvantage since it allowed nVidia to dominate the lucrative dual-GPU market (SLI) over the last year and in effect may hurt x1800 sales with very competive prices. Historians will decide if that's of any significance.
© 2005, theuerkorn
[Update: 4-Dec-2005] - Intel announced the first chipset to support both SLI and Crossfire in one motherboard. While that's no relief for any existing motherboard, it's setting the trend and indicates that in the near future others are expected to follow. There is no information currently available on possible "cross-pollination", theoretically one might even find solutions to enable SLI in ATI boards and Crossfire in nVidia boards. I wouldn't hold my breath for it though.
[Update: 9-Dec-2005] - ATI's adaptive antialiasing improves performance but also may cause problems with 3D programs like Myst V, where enabling AA in the game would simply blank out certain textures to black. Further, Need for Speed Most Wanted also improves in performance when turning Adaptive AntiAliasing off. This is counter-intuitive as the "adaptive" is supposedly improving performance by affecting only the needed areas. Maybe we will see a patch sometime. ATI's position is that you should only either Adaptive AA or in-game settings for AA.
ONLINE RESOURCES
- ATI Product Page
http://www.ati.com/products/RadeonX1800/index.html
- ATI Realtime Feature Demos
http://www.ati.com/developer/demos/rx1800.html
- F.E.A.R. game
- Call of Duty 2 game
- Quake 4 game
- Need for Speed: Most Wanted
- Lightwave3D computer graphics software
- AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+ dual core processor
- WindowsXP x64 Professional operating system
- MSI Radeon x800 Pro 256MB PCI-E video card
- ATI Radeon x1900 XT graphics card
- ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe motherboard
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 370.-
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