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ATI PCI Express Products Overview June 01, 2004 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: Big Day hits us with the second salvo, as ATI announces their PCI Express lineup. Brandon takes a look at the features and specifications of the X600 and X300 chips as well as some of their mobile variations, and shows where in ATI's product lineup they'll fit. Read on to find out what the next-generation video interface holds in store for us.
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 4 ) |
Of course, we all know ATI’s PCI Express plans for the high-end desktop space, RADEON X800 PRO and X800 XT impressed everyone with their excellent performance and new features such as 3Dc and temporal AA. ATI was also quick to remind the world that their X800 line consumed less power than NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 series and relied on a single-slot cooling design. And of course, it also doesn’t hurt that ATI has beat NVIDIA to market. X800 PRO cards first hit retail in mid-May, weeks ahead of NVIDIA. What does ATI do for an encore? Release more cards of course!
RADEON X600: tackling mainstream
ATI’s RADEON X600, internally codenamed RV380, is designed to address the mainstream PCI Express segment. Unlike its codename suggests, RADEON X600 isn’t a cost-reduced derivative of RADEON 9800/XT, instead its DNA is more closely tied to the RADEON 9600 XT. It sports four pixel pipelines with one texture unit per pixel pipeline and two vertex pipes just like the 9600 XT and the RADEON 9600 PRO before that. The X600 PRO also shares the RADEON 9600 XT’s 0.13-micron manufacturing process with low-k dielectric material.
If you recall, one of the criticisms levied towards the RADEON 9600 XT was its memory subsystem. At 300MHz (600MHz effective), it was clocked the same as RADEON 9600 PRO. To address this, ATI has cranked up the memory to 370MHz (740MHz effective). This change bumps memory bandwidth from 9.6GB/sec in RADEON 9600 XT to 11.8GB/sec in X600 XT, an improvement of just over 2GB/sec. The core clock frequency of RADEON X600 XT is unchanged from its predecessor at 500MHz.
With more memory bandwidth, the X600 XT should be more competitive with NVIDIA’s GeForce FX 5700 Ultra when settings such as anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are applied. These were cases where the RADEON 9600 XT’s 500MHz graphics core was starving for more memory bandwidth.
Just below the X600 XT is ATI’s X600 PRO. The PRO utilizes the same graphics core as the X600 XT, only its clocked lower, 400MHz in the PRO board versus 500MHz in the XT. The X600 PRO’s memory operates at 300MHz (600MHz effective), essentially matching the specs of last year’s RADEON 9600 PRO, which also ran at 400MHz core/300MHz memory.
It’s important to note that the X600 line doesn’t incorporate the newer features added to the RADEON X800, 3Dc (compression for normal maps) and temporal AA. The X600 line will also remain exclusive to PCI Express; AGP versions of either card won’t make their way to AGP.
| MOBILITY RADEON X600 | Page:: ( 2 / 4 ) |
Going mobile with the X600: ATI’s MOBILITY RADEON X600
For the first time, ATI is releasing its mobile and desktop products at the same time, as ATI is also announcing its MOBILITY RADEON X600 today. The MOBILITY RADEON X600 is based on the same architecture as the RADEON X600 on the desktop, only its clocked a little lower to conserve power, which is important for the notebook market. ATI expects initial mobile offerings to top out at 400MHz, with some designs bumping the core up to 450MHz in later models. On the memory side, 280MHz will be the top configuration at first, with the possibility of over 300MHz on later models with additional termination.
One new feature ATI has added to its MOBILITY X600 line is their LCD Enhancement Engine technology. LCD-EE touts one new feature in particular that has caught our interest, LCD response time compensation (LRTC).
As you probably know, the LCD panels used in many notebooks sport high pixel response times, this causes quickly moving objects to appear blurry, an effect known as ghosting. LRTC is designed to address this by enhancing video playback to account for LCD latency.
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ATI has added enhanced POWERPLAY 5.0 technology to MOBILITY X600’s repertoire as well. POWERLAY 5.0 takes advantage of new power management and low power modes that have been added to PCI Express to improve its efficiency. POWERLAY 5.0 also boasts VARI-BRIGHT, a portion of the graphics core has been dedicated to control the panel’s backlight. We’re eager to see this technology in action as NVIDIA added somewhat similar capabilities to their Go 5700.
AXIOM
Last week NVIDIA announced its new interface for PCI Express, MXM. AXIOM is ATI’s equivalent.
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ATI’s AXIOM (Advanced eXpress I/O Module) module provides a standard platform ODMs and OEMs can integrate into their PCI Express notebooks. When a new graphics core is released from ATI, the AXIOM module with the older graphics core can be replaced for one with the newer VPU – just like swapping out a graphics card or memory module on the desktop.
ATI has AXIOM modules that are designed to address the needs of various notebook segments. For the high-end desktop replacement notebooks, power takes a backseat to performance; therefore the AXIOM module for this segment is a little larger and designed to incorporate additional features such as VPUs with wider memory interfaces and more memory. A notebook that’s designed for performance, yet thin, (say for instance, with MOBILITY X600 graphics and utilizing Intel’s Pentium M platform) has different thermal and space requirements and therefore would feature a smaller AXIOM module.
| RADEON X300 | Page:: ( 3 / 4 ) |
Besides the X600, ATI is also releasing a new PCI Express product for the value segment, X300. Fortunately, X300 isn’t just a PCI Express version of RADEON 9200; ATI has begun with a clean slate for X300.
For starters, X300 is a true DX9 product, taking advantage of ATI’s SMARTSHADER 2.0 and SMOOTHVISION 2.1 technologies, as well as HYPERZ III. One of NVIDIA’s key advantages with GeForce FX 5200 in the eyes of OEMs is its DX9 capability, even though it really doesn’t have the horsepower to run DX9 titles in full precision with adequate frame rates. Now ATI’s value part matches NVIDIA in this respect.
Like the X600 line, X300 features a four-pixel pipeline architecture, with one texture unit per pixel pipe, and dual vertex pipelines. The core itself is clocked at 325MHz, the same clock speed as ATI’s previous DX9 value offering, the RADEON 9600 SE and NVIDIA’s GeForce FX 5200 Ultra. This puts all three cards at the same peak fill rate. Unlike the RADEON 9600 SE however, X300’s 200MHz memory (400MHz effective) sits on a 128-bit wide memory interface, giving it up to 6.4GB/sec of peak memory bandwidth, twice that of the RADEON 9600 SE.
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The wider memory interface should make X300 more competitive with GeForce FX 5200 Ultra once AA or AF is applied, but still falls short of the 5200 Ultra by a factor of 4GB/sec. At the same time however, the 5200 Ultra’s NV34 graphics core isn’t the best shader model 2.0 performer, so X300 could prove to be very competitive in 2.0 shader titles such as Half-Life 2: at one point Valve was going to treat the 5200 line as DX8 hardware in HL2, meaning you wouldn’t get eye candy such as high dynamic range lighting.
ATI will also be producing a lower cost variant of X300, the X300 SE. The X300 SE boasts the same clock speeds as the X300, 325MHz core/400MHz effective memory, but relies on a 64-bit memory interface rather than the 128-bit interface found in X300. This cuts memory bandwidth in half, essentially matching the specs of ATI’s RADEON 9600 SE from last year. A low-profile, half-height card X300 SE option is also available for OEMs and card manufacturers that want to conserve space, and since power consumption and heat generation isn’t any greater than RADEON 9200, passive cooling is available as an option on low profile and full height X300 cards.
One first for X300 is its new manufacturing process: X300 is the first graphics product to be built on 0.11-micron. According to ATI, 0.11-micron provides 40% more transistors per unit area than 0.13-micron, freeing ATI to incorporate more features into the chip without needing a larger die. This also allows ATI to produce more X300 chips per silicon wafer, lowering their production costs (assuming good yields). To further reduce manufacturing costs, low-k dielectric material isn’t used at 0.11-micron.
ATI claims that the X300 board delivers up to twice the performance of RADEON 9200, although this figure admittedly comes from 3DMark 03, where the X300 gets extra points for being able to complete the Mother Nature test. In most benchmarks ATI expects the X300 to deliver just shy of 1.5 times the performance of RADEON 9200. We’ll of course provide full benchmarks once we get our hands on a card.
Like X600, the X300 series will be sold in PCI Express configurations only. ATI’s RADEON 9200 family will continue to serve the value segment in the AGP space.
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 4 / 4 ) |
ATI’s RADEON X600 and X300 are poised to round out ATI’s PCI Express strategy for the first half of 2004. Unfortunately, if you were expecting next generation technology with features similar to those found in RADEON X800, you’re likely to be disappointed, as both graphics cores are essentially based on RADEON 9600 series technology; but this compares well to NVIDIA’s current PCI Express offerings, which are based on GeForce FX tech.
Final prices aren’t set firmly just yet, but the X600 XT and X600 PRO will be priced similarly to ATI’s RADEON 9600 XT and 9600 on AGP, while X300 and X300 SE will be priced comparably to the equivalent AGP offerings of RADEON 9200 and RADEON 9200 SE. This means that you should be able to get a DX9 PCI Express board from ATI for $100 bucks or less when the first X300 boards begin shipping later this month, with the mainstream PCI Express offering coming in at roughly $200.
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ATI expects the first X600 boards to be available right alongside the debut of PCI Express. In fact, X600 was first demonstrated at Intel’s Developer Forum last September, with thousands of boards in the field since Q4’03. OEMs have been busy validating both cards, so systems with either solution inside should be ready for PCI Express’ launch day.
On the mobile side, MOBILITY RADEON X600 is similar to today’s MOBILITY RADEON 9700. Since its clocks are slightly higher, the MOBILITY RADEON X600 performs a little better than the MOBILITY RADEON 9700, but we feel that its main advantages will come from POWERPLAY 5.0 and ATI’s LCD Enhancement Engine technology. Therefore, OEMs with MOBILITY 9700 notebooks will likely stick with their existing designs, while those that want to get on the PCI Express movement immediately will adopt MOBILITY RADEON X600. The first notebooks will be based on Intel’s desktop chipset, with mobile PCI Express chipsets coming at a later date.
We should add that all of these VPUs are native x16 PCI Express solutions. Unlike NVIDIA’s GeForce FX products, a bridge chip isn’t necessary.
In closing, with the addition of X300 and X600, ATI has PCI Express offerings in the value and mainstream markets respectively, with X800 serving the high-end enthusiast market. ATI now has a top to bottom offering of DX9 solutions, which should appeal equally to OEMs and consumers alike. On the mobile front, MOBILITY X600 will serve the high-end desktop replacement segment for now, with MOBILITY RADEON 9500 coming later this year for the value sector. This is another M10/M11 variant, but with clocks of 250 engine/200MHz memory. In other words, with PCI Express, ATI has all their bases covered on the mobile and desktop fronts, now it’s time to see how they perform! We won’t be able to report on that story until PCI Express chipsets launch in a matter of weeks.