ATi R420 Revealed - X800 XT Platinum Edition and X800 Pro Preview - PAGE 1

Pulling Out the Big Guns

ATi has kept very quiet about the R420 prior to ATi's Technology Days held in Toronto in the middle of April. Speculation about the R420 was rampant, claims of the part being 8-12 pipes and finally, 16 pipes were ravaging the tabloid establishments on the internet. One thing that everyone seemed to agree on was that the NV40 would be faster than the ATi part. Yet ATi kept mum about the specs and speeds of the R420. Well the long awaited time has come, where NDA's have expired and media outlets like Neoseeker are allowed to reveal everything about the R420 part. We've had two R420 cards in the lab for a couple weeks now, and we're ready to reveal all. But first, let's expose our experience out at ATI's Technology Days several weeks ago, where we were first introduced to the R420.

Technology Days took place in Toronto during the middle of April. Full of anticipation, having just seen the NV40 in action over in San Jose, where Nvidia hosted their Editor's Day just a week prior to ATI's own event, Technology Days started out with a real time rendered clip, unveiling ATi's new mascot, the voluptuous Ruby.

Hi I'm Ruby

ATi was coy about numbers (something which we're not at all shy about later in our preview), but they had a few powerpoint slides showing the relative performance of their cards vs the NV40. ATi conceded that it had lost the performance crown- for about 45 minutes. The shocking thing was that they also had a 12 pipeline card for the high end segment that was also outperforming the NV40 on the series of benchmarks that they decided to cover. This of course, snapped everyone to attention fast and ATi finally dropped their poker face to reveal their hand to the shocked audience. The surprises did not end there - ATi also has a 16 pipe part contrary to what was widely being reported in the online media.

Ruby

I admit it. I'm a sucker for tech demos, especially good ones and boy did ATI have a good one at Technology Days. The official name of the Ruby demo is Double Cross and it features Ruby, Optico, and ninjas. No demo, game or movie is really complete without ninjas. RhinoFx was responsible for the development of Double Cross and it was a year long project.

Ruby consists of 80,000 Polys. Optico, 60,000. Each ninja is 30,000 and the environment is an additional 150,000

The pictures do not really do the demo any justice. If Toy Story was a movie experience, this is a computing experience. For the better part of a week, everytime a female coworker passed by the lab, she would request that the DoubleCross demo be put on; and this is from someone who is normally not interested in video cards or games. Ruby struts, smirks and brawls her way through the scene. The texture quality is simply amazing. The polygon count is still relatively low when compared to Hollywood standards, but the normal maps and such do a good job in obfuscating this fact.

The Card

The X800 XT Platinum Edition (which we will simply refer to as the XT from here on) and the X800 Pro look a lot alike; in fact we could not tell the two cards apart visually and had to plug them in to figure out which was which. The X800s are the same size as the 9800XT. The X800 features a similar heatsink to the 9800XT. Something that is surprising is that the back of the card no long has the copper heatsink for the memory. We will see why this is the case later on in the article. The X800 requires only a single molex connector like its predecessor and ATI claims that the X800 will work on a regular 300W powersupply, not a wallet busting 485W one that Nvidia is requesting for the NV40 series.

What is even more amazing is that according to ATI's numbers, the X800 Pro actually draws less power than the 9800XT, roughly 34% less while idle and roughly the same amount while under load. This makes it ideal for SFF systems which ATI was keen on pointing out at Technology Days. Not only is the X800 a single slot solution, but it should be able to run off a SFF power supply and it runs cooler than the 9800XT. Can't really ask for too much more than that. The astute will notice the presence of a yellow connector beside the molex plug. Straight from ATI - [The] connector is an analog video-in connector. It appears on the reference boards but won't likely appear on the ATI retail boards. It is so that you can run a cable from the card that attaches to an analog video-capture port on the front of your case if your case supports it. It isn't something that is as popular in North America, but in Europe it is very popular.

The R420 series is based upon a single chip only. Both the 16 pipeline version and the 12 pipe version of the card consist of 160 million transitors. The pipelines operate in quads and ATi hinted at a 8 and 4 pipe version of the R420. The single chip across all lines solution allows for better binning of parts. If one quad fails, the chip does not become useless as it can be relegated to being a lower end card. ATI is also aware of softmodding and said they have taken steps in hardware to prevent the unlocking of disabled pipelines.

A X800 sitting pretty in a Shuttle Box at Technology Days