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There is no denying it, ATI have done a fantastic job with their high end X1900 cards, and the XTX variant arguably holds the performance crown in a single card configuration, besting the 7900 GTX for raw power and image quality. Not all is perfect for ATI however, and the problem highlights itself when you take a look at there entire product range from top to bottom. Moving to Nvidia's line up for a moment, I can easily name a new card for each market sector in a flat second - the 7900 GTX for the high end, the 7900 GT for mid to high, and the 7600 GT for the mid range. These cards pretty much cover a good percentage of people's needs, especially those who would most likely visit a website like this one, but I could go one further and name a low end part, too, the 7600GS. My point? Try doing that with ATI's lineup right now without suffering a seizure... difficult, isn't it? ATI have the high end covered magnificently with the aforementioned cards, but where to go from there? Well, they have the X1800 XT I suppose, a now discontinued last generation card comparable to the 7900 GT in performance. It's still a wonderful card for the money but it's hardly a mainstream part. They also have the X1800 GTO which performance-wise is comparable to the 7600 GT but once again it is based on an older, bigger, more expensive SKU which consumes more power, thus creating a hotter running card. To make things worse there are plenty of Nvidia AIB partners out there offering overclocked 7600 GT's, making the X1800 GTO appear even less attractive than it already does. Currently ATI's mid range options appear weak compared to that of Nvidia's. Nvidia have brought a full line of products to market in a single swoop, and at key price points while using a significantly less complicated architecture than ATI. To help tackle this quite major problem, ATI have recently released the X1900 GT, a cut down R580 based GPU of which on paper looks to be a real contender to Nvidia's 7900 GT. Once again, this is not exactly a cheap part to produce but that's for ATI to worry about. For us, it's all about the performance! Connect3D were kind enough to send over there retail X1900 GT board and that's what we will be looking at today. | | Model Name : | ATI X1900 GTO | Nvidia 7900 GT | ATI X1800 XT | | Core : | R580 | G71 | R520 | | Core Clock : | 575 MHz | 450 MHz | 625 MHz | Memory Clock : | 600 MHz | 660 MHz | 750 MHz | | Memory Size : | 256 MB | 256 MB | 256/512 MB | | Memory Interface : | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | | Vertex Pipes : | 8 | 8 | 8 | | Pixel Shader Pipes : | 36 | 24 | 16 | | Texture Units : | 12 | 24 | 16 | | ROPS : | 12 | 16 | 16 |
The X1900 GT is built using an R580 core with one of the quads disabled. This allows ATI to start using up those unused R580 cores that didn't make the grade for X1900XT/X boards. What you end up with is a 36 pixel shader, 12 texture unit, 12 ROP part, that when compared against the 7900 GT appears a little under whelming. The X1900 GT attempts to make up for this with a much higher core clock of 575 MHz - 125 MHz faster than a 7900 GT. Taking everything into consideration, the 7900 GT looks to have the edge on paper, but because of the remarkably different approaches to pipeline configuration here it's actually rather tough to guess the outcome. ATI's X1800 XT makes an appearance here as it is still available in retail at an attractive price. It certainly boasts enough welly to give it's replacements a run for there money. We have the 256MB version here on test today, which if you look around can be had for £170 - quite a bit cheaper than the other two here. The X1800 XT will eventually be phased out and to be honest, if you do still want one, grab it ASAP! A stock 7900 GT will set you back around £200, while the Connect3D X1900 GT is currently listed for £188 at OCUK, so it currently is a little cheaper than the 7900GT's out there.
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EVGA e-GeForce 8800 Ultra Superclocked
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