Radeon X1800 GTO

ATI’s decided to counter today’s GeForce 7600 GT launch with a new GPU, the Radeon X1800 GTO. The X1800 GTO is based entirely on ATI’s R520 GPU – in other words this is the exact same chip that shipped in $500+ cards just a few months ago – only it has had some of its shaders disabled. The X1800 GTO features 12 pixel shaders, 8 vertex shaders, and is built with the same 512-bit (internal) ring bus memory controller with a 256-bit external memory interface that is used on elder X1800/X1900 cards. ATI also maintains 2x dual-link DVI connectors, while the chip runs at 500MHz on the graphics core, and is equipped with 256MB of GDDR3 memory running at 500MHz memory. The most appealing part about all this? Price. ATI expects boards to sell for about $249.

We posted the complete specs for the X1800 GTO on page 2 of this article.

GeForce 7600 GT and X1800 GTO

The X1600 XT and GeForce 7600 GT

The Radeon X1800 GTO also supports ATI’s CrossFire technology although right now that support is tied to the Radeon X1800 CrossFire Master card, just like the Radeon X1800 XL. This means that you’ll have to fork over $249 for a Radeon X1800 GTO card and then another $349 for a Radeon X1800 CrossFire 512MB card only for the more expensive X1800 CrossFire board to run with half of its memory disabled and only 12 functional pixel shaders. Remember, according to the CrossFire FAQ:

What happens if you pair a 16-pipeline CrossFire™ Edition
graphics card with a CrossFire™ Ready 12-pipeline graphics
card?

In this scenario both graphics cards will operate as 12-pipeline
graphics cards while in CrossFire™ mode.

ATI realizes this is a far from practical solution, particularly for the more price conscious mainstream price segment, which is why they’re working on integrating support for peer-to-peer X1800 GTO dongle-less CrossFire support into an upcoming Catalyst driver (just like the Radeon X1600 and X1300 cards do), but ATI couldn’t provide an ETA on when this feature will be integrated into the Catalyst driver suite. Fortunately this isn’t a huge issue today, as X1800 GTO boards won’t be hitting retail shelves until the end of this month, and even then ATI has no plans to produce X1800 GTO boards themselves, instead ATI will be relying on their boards partners to produce X1800 GTO cards. PowerColor was first out of the gate to announce an X1800 GTO card, although we expect many other board partners to announce their cards shortly.

What concerns us the most about the whole situation regarding the X1800 GTO is how heavily ATI is policing their partners. If you recall the X800 GT/X800 GTO boards, ATI’s board partners were all over the map in terms of features and clock speeds. In response to this question ATI stated that certain critical aspects of the X1800 GTO will be strictly enforced such as the 256-bit memory interface and pipelines, but guidelines for other features such as memory size, cooling, etc won’t be written in stone. In other words, ATI’s board partners may be given some leeway to dress their cards up a little, but hopefully it won’t turn into the confusing mess that the X800 GT and X800 GTO eventually became.