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| A Guru3D fact |
| One MHz represents one million cycles per second. The speed of microprocessors, called the clock speed, is measured in megahertz. For example, a graphics processor that runs at 600 MHz executes 600 million cycles per second. Each computer instruction requires a fixed number of cycles, so the clock speed determines how many instructions per second that processor can execute. |
Hey ... you made it to the second page .. welcome .. welcome..
The Radeon X1800 GTO my friends is of course a side-product of the latest X1000 family of ATI GPUs. It's targeted at the mid-range section and offers performance very similar to that 199 USD GeForce 7600 GT. The X1800 GTO however is slightly higher priced at 249,- but is it worth the extra 50 bucks ? We'll definitely show you in today's article.
Right then, the X1800 GTO core you'll find on this new graphics card is running at a tact frequency of 500 MHz accompanied with it's memory running at (2x500MHz) 1 GHz. Speaking about memory, it's gDDR3 memory and there's 256MB of it. Do you recognize the X1800 XT specifications already? More importantly .. do you recognize the X1800 XL already ?
I would not be surprised to see the GTO work with an XL BIOS. But I'm sure a couple of buyers will definitely try that out. It looks like this products comes from the same product line. So yeah .. correct .. it's the same chip yet is has less pixel pipelines active. Now the memory frequency is definitely slower clocked compared to the 7600 GT but there's one very distinct difference .. this is 256-bit memory which efcectively can double bandwidth again. Much like that 7600 GT this graphics core is also based on a 12 pixel pipeline architecture. It has no less than eight Vertex processors and furthermore utilizes the entire feature set that the entire X1000 family of products entail.
Some miscellaneous features:
- Ultrathreaded Architecture with fast dynamic branching
- 12 Pixel Shader Processors
- 8 Vertex Shader Processors
- 512-bit ring-bus memory controller
- 256-bit memory interface
- DX9 Shader Model 3.0 support
- Simultaneous support for HDR and Anti-aliasing
- Avivo video & display feature set
- H.264 playback acceleratio
- Two dual-link DVI outputs
- Full 10-bit display processing & output capability
- CrossFire support
- Single-slot PCI Express board configuration
Since this is card number eight that I tested in the past 48 hours I am going to save me some time by doing a little copy and paste from the X1000 article when it comes to features regarding SM3.0, AVIVO and the funky looking ringbus memory controller.
One of the hotty new ATI features is of course Crossfire. Crossfire allows you the ability (with the proper mainboard) to hook up another X1800 Crossfire edition graphics card into your PS and double up performance. At the moment we are working on an Express 3200 review in combo with the new X1900 XT Crossfire edition graphics card from ASUS .. so keep your eyes open for that one pretty soon. Let's have an overview of the ATI product lineup and it's updated prices !
|
Radeon card |
Pixel Shader Units |
Vertex Shader |
Texture Units |
Core Frequency |
Memory Frequency |
Memory |
Price in USD |
Available |
| X1900 XTX | 48 | 8 | 16 | 650 | 775 | 512 gDDR3 | 549 | Now |
| X1900 Crossfire | 48 | 8 | 16 | 625 | 725 | 512 gDDR3 | 599 | Now |
| X1900 XT | 48 | 8 | 16 | 625 | 725 | 512 gDDR3 | 479 | Now |
| X1900 AIW | 48 | 8 | 16 | 500 | 500 | 256 gDDR3 | 499 | Now |
|
X1800 XT |
16 |
8 |
16 |
625 |
1.5 GHz |
256/512 gDDR3 |
329 /449 |
Now |
|
X1800 XL |
16 |
8 |
16 |
500 |
1.0 GHz |
256 MB gDDR3 |
449 |
Now |
| X1800 GTO | 12 | 8 | 16 | 500 | 1.0 GHz | 256 MB gDDR3 | 249 | Late March 06 |
|
X1600 XT |
12 |
5 |
4 |
590 |
1.38 GHz |
128 / 256 MB |
199 / 249 |
Now |
|
X1600 PRO |
12 |
5 |
4 |
500 |
780 MHz |
128 / 256 MB |
149 / 199 |
Now |
|
X1300 PRO |
4 |
2 |
4 |
600 |
800 MHz |
256 MB |
109 |
Now |
|
X1300 |
4 |
2 |
4 |
450 |
500 MHz |
128 / 256 MB |
99 / 129 |
Now |
|
X1300 Hypermemory |
4 |
2 |
4 |
450 |
1 GHz |
32 / 128 MB |
79 |
Now |
Alright, let me commence the usual blurbs.
The GTO of course has super support for Shader Model 3.0 as it finally became important in the industry and we now see broad support for it.| What is a shader ? |
| What do we need to render a three dimensional object; 2D on your monitor? We start off by building some sort of structure that has a surface, that surface is being built from triangles and why triangles? They are quick to calculate. How's each triangle being processed? Each triangle has to be transformed according to its relative position and orientation to the viewer. Each of the three vertices the triangle is made up of is transformed to its proper view space position. The next step is to light the triangle by taking the transformed vertices and applying a lighting calculation for every light defined in the scene. At last the triangle needs to be projected to the screen in order to rasterize it. During rasterization the triangle will be shaded and textured. |
