Date:
Monday , September 20, 2004
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Sean Quinn
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Radeon X600XT PCI-E Roundup

What does mainstream PCI-Express have to offer? We round up three X600XT VPU based video cards from ABIT, MSI, and Sapphire and face off against a MSI GeForce PCX 5750.

Introduction:

When it comes to buying video cards, one of the most important factors is cost. Money doesn’t grow on trees and you pretty much get what you pay for in the world of video cards. Today we are going to look into ATI’s current mainstream market segment. The mainstream segment is just that, geared for the mainstream folk. These are people that don’t have $400-500 to spend or don't want to spend that money on a new video card, but want something a little bit better than what the value segment offers at $100. This $200 price point is much more affordable and offers video cards that can indeed play the latest games. There may be a few sacrifices compared to enthusiast level video cards, but they are video cards capable of delivering a good gaming experience.

As of this date, the current offerings from ATI in the mainstream market segment lie with the Radeon X600XT line of video cards. The codename for the X600 VPU is RV380. If you recall the Radeon 9600 series (9600Pro and XT), the codename for the VPU on it was RV350. Indeed, the X600 VPU is built upon the Radeon 9600 architecture. In fact, you can easily say that the X600 series is nothing more than the Radeon 9600 series with PCI-Express support.

There are two X600 based video cards, the X600Pro and the X600XT, both in native PCI-Express form. The X600Pro is clocked at 400MHz core frequency and 300MHz (600MHz DDR) memory frequency for a total of 1.6 Gpixels/sec fillrate and 9.6 GB/sec memory bandwidth since it rides a 128-bit bus.

The X600 model we are looking at today is a video card based on the X600XT. The X600XT is clocked at 500MHz core frequency and 365MHz (730MHz DDR) memory frequency. This means it has a total of 2 Gpixels/sec fillrate and 11.6 GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

The X600XT is based on a 130 nanometer (.13 micron) Low-K process, has 4 pixel pipelines, 2 vertex engines, and a 128-bit memory bus. Because it is based on the RV350 architecture, it fully supports DirectX 9 Shader Model 2.0. Despite it having an “X” in its name, it does not share any X800 series features.

The format of this review is slightly different from our past reviews. Due to all the video cards we are reviewing, this entire review is many pages in length. We have each video card that is reviewed spotlighted on its own page, which you can get to by clicking Next Page at the bottom of the page. An even more convenient way is to click the Navigation drop down box and select the section you wish to go to. Following our look at the video cards themselves comes our gameplay evaluation with an apples-to-apples comparison and then our overclocking results. On the last page, we present our conclusion.

Reference ATI Radeon X600XT PCI-E:

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Above we have some pictures comparing the ATI Radeon 9600XT AGP8X video card (top) versus the ATI Radeon X600XT PCI-E video card (bottom). The first very obvious difference we notice is the layout of the different connectors, the PCI-Express slot is slightly longer. The component layout on the PCBs themselves is also different. In fact, the X600XT is slightly shorter than the 9600XT video card though the width is the same. Also notice there is no external supplemental power needed.

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The Heatsink/Fan unit on the reference Radeon X600XT is an enclosed type system that has heatsink fins over and around the core with the fan off center from the core blowing over the fins to remove the heat. As you can see above, ours is a “Non Qualification Sample” and is a RV380 VPU.

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Looks are a bit deceiving, as you can see above, the heatsink unit is not cooling the RAM modules. It is instead hovering slightly over them, potentially trapping heat.

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The RAM being used is Hynix DDR1 rated at 2.5ns, which equates to 400MHz at 2.8v. This card has DVI, VGA, and TV-Out. It does not have VIVO, which is optional on the X600XT.