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Nvidia have used
there "ultra" versions of there cards on many occasions, now ATI have
come out with their own beefed up card. The Radeon 9800 XT is a revised
version of the Radeon 9800 pro. Like Nvidia ATI have started with
bumping up the clock speeds on both the core and the memory. This also
increases the already massive peak memory bandwidth. Like the Radeon
9800 Pro the XT version features an 8x1 pipeline system. 8 pixel
pipelines with 1 texture unit per pipeline. In single texturing this
gives the Radeon a big advantage over Nvidia's Geforce fx range. However
it slips back as soon as multitexturing comes into play.
To date this is
ATI's powerhouse offering and you can see why. Take all the things that
ATI already has, make them faster and more refined and you have the
Radeon 9800 XT. Expense unfortunately is a big part of manufacturing
this card and so the same is true for owning one. It gets harder and
harder to own the best technology but it also gives the owners a sense
of exclusivity. There wont be many people you know owning one of these
early in its release.
Radeon 9800 Card comparison
|
Type |
Radeon 9800 Pro |
Radeon 9800 XT |
|
Max Memory |
256Mb |
256Mb |
|
Memory Clock speed |
680Mhz (340Mhz*2) |
730Mhz (2*365Mhz) |
|
Clock speed |
380Mhz |
412Mhz |
|
Memory
Bandwidth |
21.8Gb/s |
23.4Gb/s |
These basic stats show the power increase of the XT version over the
9800 Pro. Its about what you expect from a "ultra" version of a card.
The pixel pushing power has been increased and if your looking for
high-res gaming then the Radeon 9800 XT has the power to deliver.
The Radeon 9800 XT comes with a snazzy new copper cooler to handle the
increased clock speeds. It looks quite cool, however I've never
understood why manufacturers spend time making internal components look
cool. Maybe if your into modding and you can see your graphics card it
might look very nice under a red neon light :).
Radeon 9800 XT features and Specs
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RADEON™ 9800 Visual Processing Unit
(VPU)
MHz
Core Clock
MEMORY CONFIGURATION
MB
of DDR SDRAM - 730MHz DDR
3D
GRAPHICS FEATURES
- Eight
parallel rendering pipelines process up to 3.04 billion pixels per
second
Four parallel
geometry engines process up to 380 million transformed and lit
polygons per second
High
precision 10-bit per channel frame buffer support
256-bit DDR
memory interface
AGP 8X
support
SMARTSHADER™ 2.1
- Full support
for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable pixel and vertex shaders
in hardware
- 2.0 Pixel
Shaders support up to 16 textures per rendering pass
- 2.0 Vertex
Shaders support vertex programs with an unlimited number of
instructions and flow control
- 128-bit per
pixel floating point color formats
- Multiple
Render Target (MRT) support
- Shadow volume
rendering acceleration
- Complete
feature set also supported in OpenGL via extensions
SMOOTHVISION™ 2.1
-
State-of-the-art full-scene anti-aliasing
- New
technology processes up to 18.2 billion anti-aliased samples per
second for unprecedented performance
- Supports 2x,
4x, and 6x modes with programmable sample patterns
- Advanced
anisotropic filtering
- Supports up
to 16 bilinear samples (in performance mode) or trilinear samples
(in quality mode) per pixel
- 2x/4x/6x full
scene anti-aliasing modes
- Adaptive
algorithm with programmable sample patterns
- 2x/4x/8x/16x
anisotropic filtering modes
- Adaptive
algorithm with bilinear (performance) and trilinear (quality)
options
-
Bandwidth-saving algorithm enables this feature with minimal
performance cost
HYPER Z™ III+
- Hierarchical
Z-Buffer and Early Z Test reduce overdraw by detecting and
discarding hidden pixels
- Lossless
Z-Buffer Compression and Fast Z-Buffer Clear reduce memory
bandwidth consumption by over 50%
- Fast Z-Buffer
Clear
- 8.8 : 1 Compression Ratio
- Optimized Z-Cache for enhanced performance of shadow volumes
TRUFORM™ II
- 2nd
generation N-patch higher order surface support
- Discrete and
continuous tessellation levels per polygon for dynamic LOD
- DirectX 9.0
displacement mapping
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VIDEOSHADER™
- Seamless
integration of programmable pixel shaders with video data
High quality,
hardware accelerated de-blocking of internet streaming video
Noise removal
filter for captured video
Integrated
MPEG-2 decode
Hardware
accelerated iDCT, motion compensation, and color space conversion
Top quality
DVD and all-format DTV/HDTV decode with low CPU overhead
Back-end
scaler delivers top quality playback
Upscaling and
downscaling with 4-tap horizontal and vertical filtering
Filtered
display of images up to 1920 pixels wide
Unique
per-pixel adaptive de-interlacing feature combines the best
elements of the “bob” and “add-field” (weave) techniques
FULLSTREAM™
video de-blocking technology
- Noise removal
filtering for captured video
- MPEG-2
decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and color space conversion
- All-format
DTV/HDTV decoding
- YPrPb
component output
- Adaptive
de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
- Dual
integrated display controllers
- Dual
integrated 10-bit per channel 400MHz DACs
- Integrated
165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI and HDCP compliant)
- Integrated TV
Output support up to 1024x768 resolution
- Optimized for
Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon™ 3Dnow!
- PC 2002
compliant
DISPLAY FEATURES
- Dual
integrated display controllers
- Drive two
displays simultaneously with independent resolutions and refresh
rates
- HYDRAVISION™
software provides complete control over multi-display
configurations with a user-friendly interface
- Dual
integrated 10-bit per channel palette DACs operating at up to
400MHz
- Integrated
165MHz TMDS transmitter supports resolutions up to QXGA
(2048x1536) and complies with DVI and HDCP specifications
- Integrated
TV-Out support up to 1024x768 resolution
- YPrPb output
for direct drive of HDTV monitors
DISPLAY SUPPORT
- 15-pin VGA
connector for analog CRT
- S-video or
composite connector for TV/VCR
- DVI-I
connector for digital CRT or flat panel
- Independent
resolutions and refresh rates for any two connected displays
GENERAL FEATURES
- Comprehensive
2x, 4x, and 8x AGP support
- High
performance quad-channel DDR or DDR2 memory interface supports
64/128/256MB configurations
- Fully
compliant with PC 2002 requirements
- Optimized for
Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon™ 3Dnow! processor instructions
- Supports
optional THEATER™ 200 companion chip for NTSC/PAL/SECAM video
capture
- Highly
optimized 128-bit 2D engine with support for new Windows® XP GDI
extensions
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Radeon
9800 XT vs. Geforce FX 5900 Ultra
This is
basically what it all boils down to in the end. How does the two
companies prize assets compare against each other. Firstly lets have a
look at the specs of the two cards in a bit more detail.
|
Type |
Geforce FX 5900 Ultra |
Radeon 9800 XT |
|
Max Memory |
256Mb |
256Mb |
|
Memory Clock speed |
850Mhz (425Mhz*2) |
730Mhz (2*365Mhz) |
|
Clock speed |
450Mhz |
412Mhz |
|
Memory
Bandwidth |
27.2Gb/s |
23.4Gb/s |
|
Pixel Pipelines |
4 |
8 |
|
Textures per Pipeline |
2 |
1 |
|
Pixel Fill Rate |
1800 Mpixels/s |
3296 Mpixels/s |
|
Texel Fill Rate |
3600 Mtexels/s |
3296 Mtexles/s |
The Geforce fx
5900 Ultra still seems like it has the edge on raw power, unfortunately
due to only having 4 pixel pipelines the pixel output is almost half of
that of the Radeon 9800 XT. However as stated before when multi-textured
pixels come into the equation the Radeon 9800 XT falls behind as it only
has one texture unit per pipeline.
How important is
multitexturing performance? To answer this you will need to know what
type of games we are playing (I am assuming that you are using games as
this card would be an overkill for most other things). If you are using
games which claim to have great graphics realism then they are likely to
be using multi-texturing. However it has been said that game developers
and coders will only use multi-texturing where it is needed or it would
kill the available bandwidth. This leaves it as a bit of a toss up
whether the 4x2 or the 8x1 system is better.
I don't think
there is a lot in it. And personal preference may well be the deciding
factor between these two cards.
Definitely a top end only card here. The price tag will put most people
off, however if that doesn't put you off, then your in for a good card
here. The debate of the pixel pipelines and whether the 4x2 or 8x1 is
better is a tricky one. I personally sit on the side of the Radeon's 8x1
architecture here. At the moment anyway, I don't believe that there are
enough games out there that so much multitexturing that the Geforce fx
5900 ultra will have a great advantage. Maybe if your looking for future
proofing then the Geforce is your best bet. But in terms of Performance
now I would go for the Radeon 9800 XT.
Pricing between the two cards is also likely to alter quite a lot over
the coming months so you can use the link below to check the latest
pricings.
Useful Links
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