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Review: ATI Radeon X1900 XT and XTX

by Ryszard Sommefeldt on 24 January 2006, 00:54

Tags: ATi Technologies (NYSE:AMD)

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Reference Board Examination

The ATI Radeon X1900 XT and XTX share an almost identical PCB to the X1800 XT, although the higher power consumption of the X1900 XTX means that their respective voltage regulation circuits are different. Here's the ATI reference example of Radeon X1900 XTX.

Board

Board

Board

It uses an identical cooler to X1800 XT, which sadly means the same loud and annoying noise profile when the fan is doing its work. Even the slowest fan setting on X1900 XTX and X1800 XT is somewhat worse than an NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512 reference cooler at approaching full tilt, in terms of the harshness of the noise. I'd be looking toward the AIBs that change the cooler for something quieter.

It's dual-slot, dual DL-DVI-I, with VIVO ability thanks to an on-board ATI Rage Theater 200. Weighing some 700g and measuring the same 228mm long that the X1800 XT does, it's officially physically the heftiest desktop reference board ATI have ever created. Comparisons to my fat arse at your leisure.

A little label confirms that it's an XTX version. Naughty nudes next.

Nekkid

Bereft of clothes you can see the eight 512Mib Samsung BJ11 GDDR3 DRAMs arranged around the chip package. You can find those particular devices on NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512 boards, and in Microsoft's Xbox 360.

The fastest GDDR3 that Samsung currently produce and rated to 900MHz, BJ11 is likely the last GDDR3 speed grade the company will make before shipping GDDR4 at 1GHz or more in the 2nd half of 2006. Just one DRAM - 64MiB on its own remember - has a date rate of 7.2GiB/sec at 900MHz. This is the bit where you cackle out loud at the big number.

DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!

The R580 GPU is a ~380 million transistor ASIC, measuring 18.5mm square. See? I mentioned the heatsink earlier and it's worth noting that the copper contact patch for the GPU die wasn't exceptionally well polished on the review sample, as seen here. We've got some retail examples of Radeon X1900 XT in the labs whose contact patches are mirror-esque in finish, by comparison.

Physical notes

It's worth noting that the rear of the board doesn't get hot, both DVI-D ports are dual-link capable should you attach something that needs it, the heatsink design still uses skived fins and, while noisy, the heatsink design and fan is more effective than anything NVIDIA have made since the infamous FX-Flow in getting heat out of your chassis.

For those things we salute ATI's board and thermal engineers.

Shall we see how it performs?