ATI is now on track with a wide range of
new and exciting products, the latest of which is a
terrifying 48 pixel pipeline monster. Known as the Radeon
X1900 this new GPU comes in two flavors.
The Radeon X1900XT features a core clock
of 625MHz, matching that of the now older X1800XT. The
memory frequency is slightly lower than that of the X1800XT
as it has been dropped down to 1.45GHz. However, thanks to
an additional 32 pixel pipelines the X1900XT is more than
likely to compensate for that. The Radeon X1900XT suggested
retail price is
$550, but it is already selling for less at
online shops, with CrossFire master cards costing about $50
more.
All that explanation to present you the
even more impressive, and obviously more expensive version
known as the Radeon X1900XTX featuring slightly higher
memory and core frequencies. The core has been given another
25MHz bringing the overall frequency up to 650MHz. The
memory frequency has been boosted from 1.45GHz up to
1.55GHz. Other than these small differences both X1900
series cards are exactly the same product.
With such specifications it would be
difficult for rival products to outperform the Radeon
X1900XTX; as a matter of fact NVIDIA barely matches it.
Currently the Radeon X1900XTX is considered the fastest
(single) graphics card available in the market. However,
more importantly these brand new X1900 products are already
available in large quantities. This is easily the most
successful aspect of this product launch; it has been some
time since ATI pulled off a hard product launch. Thankfully
they managed to do it with their most powerful graphics card
series yet.
Although the Radeon X1900 series will
obviously replace the older X1800 series there is nothing
wrong with getting an X1800 card, especially if it’s at a
discount. In fact the Radeon X1800XT delivers similar
performance to that of the Radeon X1900XTX in most tests. It
is not until the resolution and visual quality options are
cranked up to their maximum settings that the X1900XTX
really shows its superiority over the X1800XT.
The Card
Gigabyte uses a red PCB for all their
Radeon based products and the Radeon X1900XTX is no
exception. The size and physical appearance of the Radeon
X1900XTX is much the same as that of the previous X1800XT.
The Gigabyte Radeon X1900XTX uses the ATI reference dual
slot cooler, nothing extraordinary. The cooler is made up of
a large, heavy copper base that uses an aluminum surrounding
that extracts heat from the memory chips. The air is sucked
in from inside the case, then directed over the heatsink
using a large plastic heat shroud and finally vented out the
rear of the case.
The Radeon X1900XTX core consists of
more than 384 million transistors and is manufactured using
a 90nm process. Despite featuring such a complex core the
Radeon X1900XTX is designed to operate at very high
frequencies. The total number of Raster Operation units has
not changed, meaning there are still 16 texture samples
taken per cycle. This means that games that use large
amounts of textures will not see the Radeon X1900XTX greatly
outperform the older X1800XT.
The Radeon X1900XTX features a new high
quality Anisotropic Filtering mode designed to make textures
look better than ever before. The added precision for mipmap
LOD and Trilinear interpolation are designed to allow for
shimmer-free gaming. Like most high-end graphics cards the
Radeon X1900XTX uses two 4-pin molex connectors to draw
additional power. The graphics card itself features the
6-pin PCI Express power connector which requires the adapter
for power supplies that do not feature PCIe connectors. This
adapter is supplied with the graphics card and is designed
to draw current from two 4-pin molex connectors.
