Introduction

By our count, ATI’s made three attempts to compete with NVIDIA’s high-end GT cards (the GeForce 7800 GT and the GeForce 7900 GT) over the past nine months: the Radeon X1800 XL, the Radeon X1800 XT 256MB, and finally, the Radeon X1900 GT.

Of the three, ATI’s first effort, the Radeon X1800 XL, was arguably their least successful attempt. The card never really got off the ground, early benchmarks of the card often pegged it below the GeForce 7800 GT in terms of performance, and by the time ATI resolved their availability issues with the Radeon X1800 XL, GeForce 7800 GT cards could be had for the same, if not less money. It also didn’t help that the Radeon X1800 XL ran noisy. In our Radeon X1800 XT/X1800 XL Performance Preview article we noted that the card even generated quite a bit of noise at times in the Windows desktop.

The Radeon X1900 XT 256MB

Radeon X1900 XTX (top) X1900 XT 256MB (bottom)

ATI took these complaints to heart and instituted tweaks so that follow-up cards weren’t as noisy, and delivered performance increases with subsequent driver releases, but by then the damage had already been done and production of the Radeon X1800 XL quickly ended. ATI toyed with the idea of a 512MB Radeon X1800 XL but fortunately this proposed card never saw the light of day. Instead ATI ultimately handed the role of GeForce 7800/7900 GT-fighter to the Radeon X1800 XT 256MB and to a lesser extent, the X1800 XT 512MB, and these cards were more than ready for the challenge.

Outfitted with higher clock speeds than the Radeon X1800 XL, the X1800 XT cards had originally been intended to compete with NVIDIA’s flagship card at the time, the 24-shader GeForce 7800 GTX, so by the time they were re-tasked to take on the GeForce 7900 GT, the X1800 XT cards were already quite familiar with their opponent (as the 7900 GT performs closest to the 7800 GTX).

Curiously though it seemed to us at least, that ATI was never fully committed to this strategy. For instance, initially we were told by ATI that they had no plans to produce 256MB Radeon X1800 XT cards themselves, relying on their board partners to produce the cards instead although they eventually relented and began selling retail 256MB cards. And in case you haven’t noticed, reviews of Radeon X1800 XT 256MB cards are hard to come across on the Internet as well. As reviewers, we’d get a wide range of responses on X1800 XT 256MB review inquiries from ATI and their board partners, it was as if the X1800 XT 256MB was the illegitimate card no one wanted to admit existed, even though it was a real product and nothing to be ashamed of.

Most recently, ATI “replaced” the Radeon X1800 XT line with their Radeon X1900 GT GPU. We put the word replaced in quotes because while ATI considers it to be the latest challenger to the 7900 GT, officially replacing the X1800 XT line, we showed you back in May that the older Radeon X1800 XT performs faster than the X1900 GT with today’s games, despite having fewer shader units. Follow-up driver releases from ATI did little to resolve this issue and therefore most ATI enthusiasts in the know opted to purchase the older Radeon X1800 instead of the newer, 36-shader, X1900 GT card.

Meanwhile, while all this was occurring, GeForce 7900 GT sales continued along at a brisk pace.

The newest additions: X1950 XTX and X1900 XT 256MB

The X1900 XT 256MB sits on top of a couple of X1900 cards

With their latest Radeon X1900 variant, ATI hopes to put a stop to that though. This time they’ve enlisted the services of the Radeon X1900 XT GPU, only this time they’ve equipped the board with 256MB of memory. According to ATI, the Radeon X1900 XT 256MB carries an MSRP of $279 and will be hitting retail on September 14th. With more shaders and faster clocks, the Radeon X1900 XT 256MB should be more than capable of handling the challenge right?