NDA Expired

[Hovis]

:D

So last week Bread was in the lab benchmarking an ATI X1900 XTX. Who wants to touch meh?

[Ludicrouse]

Not me... but i will ask for details :p

[Derekian]

give details schlag :D

[Hovis]

Okay well a lot of the stuff got leaked anyway, but here's what I've seen in the flesh.

First off it's fucking fast. It has 16 pipelines, but 48 pixel thingybobs (forget the technical term) so it's got something like half a teraflop (didn't make that word up) of computing power. In other words FUCKLOADS of power. It's like having 48 pipelines basically.

Speed wise we're talking stupid fast. We're talking FEAR in 1600x1200 resolution in 4x Anti-Aliasing and 8x Anisotropic filtering with a -minimum- framerate well above 25, so eminently playable (this is something no single card has yet been able to really do and you'd need top SLI cards to do it). We're talking a net speed increase of about 40% over and above the best ATI card currently in production. In Nvidia terms that makes it 40% faster than a 7800GTX 512 and slightly quicker than 7800GTs running SLI, assuming you can find a game that gets a good buff from SLI, most games hate it.

In other news the X1900 XTX is loud and it uses about 300W of power over and above what the rest of the PC uses. You'd be good to run it on a 500W PSU or so, but that's still a helluva hungry card. It's thus a powerful motherfucker in the most basic ways, and not something to install lightly.

The drivers, as yet, are poor. One thing I've got used to with ATI drivers when reviewing their cards though is they do get progressively faster so the 40% speed buff is going to be conservative given what they'll probably be able to do. I'm not sure how well it overclocks yet, I'll ask at work today.

I don't know how much they are costing yet. I'm presuming it'll be a lot, but they ship todayish. They've got a two month head start over their Nvidia rivals so that's a pain, cos I'd like to be able to compare head to head before making a recommendation.

In any case the very top end ATI cards are normally rarer than tits on a fish so don't go betting on ever getting your hands on one of these cards even if you want to.

There's the news. :D

[Derekian]

and my guess is they'll cost around 600euro lol...i think i'll just go with the 7800 :P

[Echor]

Saw them on sale a few days ago!

Here (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/X1900_Series.html) is one site that you can get the idea of how much poorer you'll be if you buy one :)

[James24]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2679

makes my 7800gt look like a dustbin. but £470 bit too much tbh lol. Gonna wait to see what nvidia cook up with g71 or maybe wait for r600 or g80 or whatever.

[Ludicrouse]

Soon as the Nvidia equivilent comes out im sure the x1900's will drop in price by a considerable margin....

[One Armed Scissor]

maybe if i sell a kidney...

[Neuter]

Hmmm THat card or new lap-top :-( Think I go for a lap-top. since that card would mean geting a new power supply also :-)

[Ludicrouse]

but that card is more powerful than most laptops :p