Introduction

Computex has proven to be especially busy this year. With Socket 939, LGA-775, PCI Express (and ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards to go with them) and Intel’s upcoming 915 and 925 chipsets there’s a lot to see on the show floor. In fact, 2004 is shaping up to be one of the busiest years in the PCI industry in the past five years!

In addition to the normal show stuff – back-to-back meetings – we also threw our first annual FiringSquad Computex Industry Invitational. We invited all of the top manufacturers in the industry to our suite in the Taipei World Trade Center Building to duke it out in Battlefield Vietnam. Everyone that attended walked away with a free copy of the game, posters, and FiringSquad T-shirts, while the participants took home plaques commemorating the event (special thanks to AOpen and Electronic Arts for sponsoring the event!). We’ll be providing more coverage on that, and all of the equipment on display in a later article, today we’re here to talk about the graphics cards that were on display at Computex this year.

LRTC in action

ATI

The buzz around ATI was of course the RADEON X600 and X300 series, as well as the MOBILITY X600, which were launched on the first of this month. Some enthusiasts have already criticized ATI for providing such an incremental technology upgrade over the equivalent mainstream AGP product, RADEON 9600 XT, but speaking with ATI’s board partners, that is, the manufacturers who provide both ATI and NVIDIA graphics lines, they’re quite excited about the X600, claiming it performs better than NVIDIA’s equivalent PCI Express part (GeForce PCX 5750). The PCX 5750 is largely based on NVIDIA’s AGP-based GeForce FX 5700 line, which performed well in comparison to the RADEON 9600 XT, but with the X600’s faster memory clock it should be quite a performer.

PCI Express X800 XT

Note the difference in the connectors, traditional AGP card on left

Another shot of the PCI Express connector

In addition, RADEON X600 is cheaper for a board manufacturer to produce than GeForce PCX 5750, as NVIDIA’s bridge chip, HSI, isn’t required on X600. This also frees up space on the board, allowing for more flexible board designs. Once supply catches up to demand, ATI’s PCI Express boards could fall to prices below NVIDIA’s, although indications suggest this will take a few months to occur.

A few other interesting tidbits we picked up this week:

Like their previous cards, ATI board partners must purchase their cards direct from ATI rather than purchasing the chips themselves and producing the boards on their own. In addition, Sapphire may not end up getting the contract to produce them. This is an interesting development, as Sapphire has produced boards for ATI for years.

Yields on X800 PRO cards are strong, boards can now be found at retail, and nearly all board partners should have boards on shelves in the next few weeks if they aren’t available already. Yields on X800 XT cards however, aren’t as high as hoped, which is why boards are still so scarce. Apparently yields on the XT cores are good, so the holdup must lie somewhere else. Perhaps on the memory side, or the PCBs themselves.

ATI’s “Built By” line of X600 and X300 cards will hit the market first, board partners should follow shortly thereafter. It looks like the X300/X300 SE and X600 PRO lines should hit retail first, with the X600 XT arriving in late June/July.

The PCI Express X800 cards have a new power connector which varies from the standard Molex power connector found on today’s cards. This is the same connector NVIDIA sports on NV45. Board manufacturers like the new connector, as it’s a little smaller than Molex, and will be providing an adapter in the box. Interestingly enough, Gigabyte had a PCI Express-based X800 PRO card running in their booth that was able to run without the connector plugged in.