HardwareHeaven: ATI X1800XT 512Mb

Product launches are like buses, you wait ages for an ATI product launch and then two come along almost at the same time. Whilst those of the Nvidia persuasion have happily been playing with their SLI and 7800 series those people holding on for the new ATI products have had quite a wait. ATI went some way to resolving that over the last month when they sent out crossfire reviewer kits to journalists … and in a move I can only assume is meant to ensure we’re kept on our toes here today we have the successor to the X850XT – the ATI Radeon X1800XT.

Our man Panagiotis joined 50 of the world's top journalists in Ibiza at the ATI briefing, asking all the relevant questions while drinking way too much beer.

Meanwhile I've been hard at work back in the less than sunny UK ensuring Driverheaven could bring you the full low-down on the X1800XT. So sit back, relax and let the X1800 XT details wash over you…

Stuart "Veridian3" Davidson.

The Radeon X1800XT

Something ATI are not renouned for with their new products is re-inventing the wheel in their product design. Because of this their cards are pretty easy to spot and the X1800XT doesn’t deviate from this. Infact at first glance you’d be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of X8xx variant. That is of course when you don’t take length into account. Shown below is the X1800XT (middle) alongside the 7800GT (top) and ATI’s last generation part the X850XT (bottom)

As you can see from the above shot, apart from being a very long card, the X1800XT uses a dual slot cooler which is very similar to the X850XT models. Underneath the casing is the usual copper heatsink and the quiet fan sucks the cold air over the heatsink and out the back of your PC case. Something which is a new feature though is the heatsink which runs vertically down the rear of the card between the power connector and the end of the main cooler.

This is something we’ve been seeing on Geforce cards for a while now but never on a Radeon.

Looking at the connectivity a real plus is that this is yet another reference design Radeon which has dual DVI as standard which results in partner cards following the lead for the most part. In past reviews we’ve criticised ATI for the lack of Dual-DVI however maybe we can now put that flaw to rest. Also on the PCIe slot bracket you can see the S-video socket which is commonplace on most cards nowadays.

As expected we can also see that the card features that always appreciated component, the Rage Theater chip which provides the card with its TV-out functionality. Certainly a chip which is not the newest or most exciting component on the market however the fact is it works and what it does it does fantastically well.

Moving to the rear of the card we see that it is surprisingly sparse. The design of the card and its memory bus means that no memory chips are required on the back of the card. So other than the heatsink support bracket there’s not a lot going on.

Memory on the X1800XT comes in the form of 512mb of Samsung GDDR3 chips which are rated at 750mhz (1500mhz effective). The chips are actively cooled by the main heatsink/fan on the front of the card.

Removing the Cooler we can see the core of the X1800XT. It’s a 0.9nm design which features 16 pixel shader processors, (4x Quad pixel shader cores). 8 vertex shader processors, 16 texture address units, 16 texture units and 16 render back end units. The core runs at an impressive speed of 625mhz which is 105mhz more than the X850XT and around 200mhz more than the average 7800GTX.

Next: R520 Architecture