ATI Radeon X1800 GTO Launched

SippinTea writes "ATI has also hastened to market with a launch of their own this week, with a new Performance Mid-Range Graphics Card. The Radeon X1800 GTO is a chopped-down version of the Radeon X1800 XL with 12 pixel pipelines and less expensive, lower speed GDDR3 DRAM on board. It compares well with the new GeForce 7600GT but can it compete with a GeForce 7900GT for only a few dollars more?"

Can you say "soft launch"?

There's one significant difference between the nVidia launches this week and the ATI board launched the same day. The nVidia products were available on launch day from on-line stores but the ATI product won't be available for "a few weeks".

It looks like ATI wanted to steal nVidia's thunder by announcing their latest product the same day. The small issue of not actually being able to manufacture their product yet doesn't seem to be very important to them.

Re:Can you say "soft launch"?

There's one significant difference between the nVidia launches this week and the ATI board launched the same day. The nVidia products were available on launch day from on-line stores but the ATI product won't be available for "a few weeks".

That's becaus

Linux drivers?

The vesa driver is sooooo unacceptable.

Finally proof!!

I am offically an Old-Fart(tm).

I looked at this and I thought, "so what, how many fps do kids need in their games anyways?"
Then the exact next thought was: "Bah the drivers are still fubar in linux so why should I care."
3rd: "How many /.'ers will make the same comments?"

So offically, pass me a hat. I quit.
Ahh games I do miss them so (the best FPS will always be StarSeige Tribes), and eye-candy; nah it'll probably slow down my compile times.

Re:Finally proof!!

I looked at this and I thought, "so what, how many fps do kids need in their games anyways?"

Same as always, but as the cards get beefier the games tear through more and more graphical resources, and then you can activate HDR, Full Scene AntiAliasing (FS

Re:Finally proof!!

I looked at this and I thought, "so what, how many fps do kids need in their games anyways?"

Nope, the right question is "how many polygons at 30FPS."
In some games more polygons = more detailed models. I don't give a shit.
In other games more polygons = more

Speed Check

If you put four of them together you can actually run the first full second of the trailer for the next version of Doom.

With all these new mid-range cards out..

Its a real shame Apple had to shackle its Pro notebook and consumer desktop with the uninspiring x1600. OS X relies on the graphics card for so much and they give it so little attention. I hope they follow the lead of other OEMs and make upgrades to their products as new stuff becomes available and not delay faster stuff so that Steve Jobs has something to talk about at Macworld or WWDC.

Re:With all these new mid-range cards out..

Its a real shame Apple had to shackle its Pro notebook and consumer desktop with the uninspiring x1600.

I think the Radeon x1600 is a fine GPU for their "professional" notebook and a very good GPU for their "consumer" desktop.

The Mobility Radeon x1600 in their mid-sized MacBook Pro is ATI's second-best current-generation mobile GPU. The Mobility Radeon x1800 is ATI's current high-end part and the only noticable difference (for most users) between x1600 and x1800 is 3D gaming performance, which is not worth the extra cost for the vast majority of MacBook Pro buyers. The x1800 is more appropriate for Alienware gaming notebooks or giant Dell XPS desktop replacement notebooks.

I think the (non-mobile) Radeon x1600 in the iMac is a heck of a nice GPU for a "consumer" PC. Any current generation GPU (like Radeon x1300 or GeForce 7300) would be a fine choice IMO because the extra 3D gaming performance would be a waste for the vast majority of iMac buyers. Anyone that needs more gaming power than an x1600 shouldn't be buying an all-in-one computer with non-upgradable graphics. It would be nice, however, if Apple offered a headless upgradable desktop that wasn't a freakin' workstation.

OS X relies on the graphics card for so much and they give it so little attention.

Are you talking about stuff like Quartz Extreme and Core Image/Video? I think the Radeon x1600 gives plenty of GPU power for OS X. Heck, Intel's maligned GMA 900 integrated graphics seemed to have snappy OS X performance [slashdot.org] on the Intel Developer Macs. Core Image only requires a Radeon 9500 or GeForce FX 5200, which are both two generations older than the Radeon X1600.

A quick run down of how this works

1. Spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing top of the line graphics card.
2. Sell it for $500
3. Spend a few more million dollars figuring out how to cripple top of the line graphics card.
4. Sell it for half the price.
5. Profit?
6. Consumers figure out how to re-enabled all the features that were crippled making there $250 graphics card perform almost equal to the $500 version.

Re:A quick run down of how this works

That's completly untrue. These cards are able to be sold for cheaper because they don't need as high manufacturing standards as the top of the line cards. For those, every pipeline has to be perfect (or within an acceptable range of that) in order for it not to be thrown away. The brilliant thing about selling these kinds of cards, is that they don't have to just throw them away. Instead, they disable the faulty pipelines and sell them for cheaper. Thus they make $250 instead of nothing. Some people who buy them get lucky and get ones with mostly good pipelines. They can then renenable the pipelines, and get better performance. However, there will be problems like video corruption.

Oh Yay...

Another graphics chip, in case the 20+ already out there aren't enough choice for you.

FTFA:

Fortunately, years later we find a dramatically different competitive landscape on the graphics card front, as today's mainstream and performance segment GPU's are

Gratuitous product launches

Am I the only one who suspects the reason we now have a ridiculously confusing range of video chips is less to do with product differentiation and manufacturing efficiency than the publicity that accompanies each new launch? ATI and nVidia seem to have themselves stuck in this game where if one were to announce a new product every month and the other every two months, the relative disadvantage in the reporting on the latter company will result in a significant loss of consumer recognition.

So they keep coming up with new variations that are trivially different from the existing products - a clock speed adjustment here, a few pipes disabled there - primarily to keep their name in the media. Even the "unannounced" chips are broadly reported, usually with something like "quietly released" in the headline.

Why?

I once set Q3Arena to deathmatch, one of the void maps, against bots. 300 of them. Frag limit bumped to something like 500 and it wasn't much. The game was completely crazy but incredibly fun. With some luck you lived 10 or 15 seconds, the trick was not to not be killed but to frag at least two before you get fragged. The saw glove appeared to be extremely good weapon because at a good location you could run through a row of 30 or so bots shooting each others' backs, and get 30 frags in a row.

The problem? It was running at about 5 FPS.
Now I'd like to get a card that would enable this kind of gameplay at reasonable speed. Crowded cities, armies of troopers, hordes of demons. Power in numbers, not detail. Completely new gameplay style. Screw high degree of reality, allow me to perform a multi-kill of 40 with one shot.

Re:Why?

Did you play Serious Sam? If not, go buy it. That is that style of gameplay.

These launches are not totally about PR

They are about offering more about bang than the other guy for your buck. The midrange $150-$200 range is where you get the most for your money, and each time one competitor offers a better value, the other can't afford to sit back for too long. The midrange GPU segment is one incredibly efficient market and the that is why there are these frequent releases. Each company is fighting to stay ahead.

One reason for this is that most midrange buyers are enthusiasts, and judging by the # of comments for a product on newegg, one can see that as soon as a better value is offered by a new chip, sales quickly shift towards it. The Nvidia 6800 GS was selling like hotcakes for just the tiny stopgap period it was put out, just to best the ATI x800GTO until the 7600 GT showed up.

I'm shopping for a card for a friend now, and have noticed that the midrange is good, but for high resolution play at 1600x1200 or 1920x1200, the midrange is barely cutting it now, so it becomes important to get the most bang for your buck, especially if you have an LCD with native high res and want to maintain quality. The new 7600 GT is about 15% faster than the 6800 GS, even w/ a 128 bit memory bus, and definitely hits a sweet spot at $190. It should run most popular titles comfortably at 1920x1200 and has next generation shader 3.0, unlike ATI's offerings below $200.

Unfortunately for ATI, they haven't offered the best midrange value since their 9xxx line. ATI took Nvidia's crown a while back but Nvidia has had it back for some time now.

Re:Too many video cards

Is it me or are there just too few silent video cards out there?

Re:Too many video cards

Both Galaxy and Gigabyte are currently exposing fanless GF 7600GT at CeBIT (and are planning fanless 7900GT and GTX).

Fanless graphic cards are becoming more and more common on the retail market, while they virtually didn't exist a year ago...

Re:Too many video cards

From the video card manufacturers' point of view, if they can sell people cards at different prices, then they can reach all the different reservation prices. One guy wants top-of-the-line, another wants midrange, another wants cheap. It's the way the fr

Re:Too many video cards

And too (two) few companies.

Re:Too many video cards

So you start with how the cards fare in FPS type games, then go on to tell people what to look for in linux media servers? This is exactly why there are tons of cards out there, everybody is looking for something different.

Personally I want a card that ca

Re:Too many video cards

I'd say the # of people running 1900x1200 displays is the minority. Specially since most monitors are 1280x1024 or less.

You can get by with decent gaming on a 6600 which will cost you 140$. You don't need to buy a 7800 for 500$ to play Farcry or somethin

Re:FX5200? Why?

Actually a Voodoo 3 would barely be installable to start with, the last official Voodoo3 drivers are for Windows 98, to use a Voodoo3 on a W2K/WXP box you have to use sub-par unofficial drivers (I know it, because I used to run a W2k box with a Voodoo3)

Re:Linux drivers?

Grandparent was confusing things; it's AIGLX which relies on an extension the ATi drivers don't have (texture-from-pixmap), not XGL. XGL just requires a working OpenGL implementation, iirc. (AIGLX and XGL are basically two very different ways of acheiving

Re:Video Card for Photo Editing

Matrox Perhelia if you want colour accuracy, 2d acceleration, features like 10bit colour channels (native!).

http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstation/cre_pro/prod ucts/home.cfm [matrox.com]

It has excellent 3d (in terms of quality) too.

They are still alive in this FPS compa