Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Special > Miscellaneous > ATi Presents Its PCI Express Product Line

Continued

07:00 - Wednesday 9 June 2004 by Lars Weinand

The last new product is the already known X800 with no changes to the specs so far. All cards offer a native or bridge-less PCI Express interface to ensure the full usage of the new PCI Express bus interface. ATi is confident that they are on a better way than NVIDIA is with their HIS PCI Express bridge solution .

The PCI Express connector of the GeCube X600 XT.

The RV380 graphics processor - bridgeless PCI Express interface.

The GeCube X600 XT stripped.

It's unclear yet how ATi will handle future AGP models. It seems that ATI will continue to use the Radeon 9600SE, 9600, 9800 and X800 for the current AGP product line. Since ATi is not using a bridge solution like NVIDIA - or just didn't announce it yet - they will have to tape out two versions of every new chip. One for the AGP model and one for the PCI Express. One other speculation is that ATI will use a bridge solution for future AGP models. That's the way NVIDIA will go in the future with native PCI Express chips and bridged AGP models.

No doubt, PCI Express will replace AGP in the long term. But the platform is still not officially launched by Intel or others and available on the market so AGP will still be a very important factor for the next 6-12 months, at least in the retail market.

Overview of the new ATI PCI Express card series:

	X300SE	X300	X600	Pro X600
Codename	RV370	RV370	RV380	RV380
Core Speed	325 MHz	325 MHz	400 MHz	500 MHz
Memory Speed	400 MHz	400 MHz	600 MHz	750 MHz
Architecture	4 Pixel Pipes 2 Vertex Pipes	4 Pixel Pipes 2 Vertex Pipes	4 Pixel Pipes 2 Vertex Pipes	4 Pixel Pipes 2 Vertex Pipes
Process Tech.	110 nm	110 nm	130 nm LowK	130 nm LowK
Memory Size	64, 128MB	64, 128, 256MB	128, 256MB	128, 256MB
Memory Interface	64-bit	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit
Performance	163M Tri/s 1.3 Gpixel/s 3.2 GB/s	163M Tri/s 1.3 Gpixel/s 6.4 GB/s	225M Tri/s 1.8 Gpixel/s 9.6 GB/s	250M Tri/s 2.0 Gpixel/s 11.8 GB/s
ATi Features	Smartshader 2.0 Smoothvision 2.1 HyperZ III+	Smartshader 2.0 Smoothvision 2.1 HyperZ III+	Smartshader 2.0 Smoothvision 2.0 HyperZ III+	Smartshader 2.0 Smoothvision 2.0 HyperZ III+
DirectX	9.0	9.0	9.0	9.0
Outputs	VGA+DVI+ViVo VGA+TV DVI+TV	VGA+DVI+ViVo	VGA+DVI+ViVo	VGA+DVI+ViVo
Form Factor	Full Heigh Low Profile	Full Heigh	Full Heigh	Full Heigh

	XT X800 SE ??*	X800 Pro	X800 XT (PE)
Codename	R423*	R423	R423
Core Speed	450 MHz*	475 MHz	520 MHz
Memory Speed	400 MHz*	450 MHz	560 MHz
Architecture	8 Pixel Pipes* 6 Vertex Pipes*	12 Pixel Pipes 6 Vertex Pipes	16 Pixel Pipes 6 Vertex Pipes
Process Tech.	130 nm LowK*	130 nm LowK	130 nm LowK
Memory Size	128,256 MB*	128,256 MB	128,256 MB
Memory Interface	128-bit*	256-bit	256-bit
Performance	640M Tri/s* 3.4 Gpixel/s* 12.8 GB/s*	675M Tri/s 5.4 Gpixel/s 28.8 GB/s	780M Tri/s 8.3 Gpixel/s 35.8 GB/s
ATi Features	Smartshader HD Smoothvision HD HyperZ HD	Smartshader HD Smoothvision HD HyperZ HD	Smartshader HD Smoothvision HD HyperZ HD
DirectX
Outputs	VGA+DVI+ViVo	VGA+DVI+ViVo	VGA+DVI+ViVo
Form Factor	Full Heigh	Full Heigh	Full Heigh