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ATI Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB PCI-E Preview |
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Written by Mavke
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Tuesday, 14 March 2006 |
TheTechLounge reveals a
preview on the ATI Radeon X1800 GTO
256MB PCIe graphics card. As you may recall, I wrote a preview of ATI's top-of-the-line Radeon X1900
XTX at the end of January, about a month and a half ago. In an interesting move,
today ATI is taking a small step
back and announcing a new card in the Radeon X1800 line-up, the Radeon X1800 GTO
256MB PCI Express. Notice that I said announcing, not launching; I'll come back
to that... One might ask why ATI
would seemingly make the Radeon X1800 series obsolete only to announce another
card in that series a month later. I assure you, however, that it was not a
random drunken decision by an ATI
executive to pump new blood into the Radeon X1800 line.
 ATI Radeon X1800
GTO 256MB PCI-E Preview
In terms of architecture and features, the Radeon X1800 GTO is identical to
the Radeon X1800 XL with the exception of the pipeline count: rather than 16
pipelines, it has 12. When asked whether there was any difference aside from
pipelines that distinguish the XL from the GTO, ATI said it's a R520 with 75% of the pipes. So basically, it's
the slightly slower sibling to the XL. The product placement for the GTO is
below the Radeon X1800 XL and above the Radeon X1600 XT. As I alluded to
earlier, while ATI is officially
announcing the Radeon X1800 GTO today, they are not going to be launching
today.
After running some initial tests, I'm left with some mixed
feelings. I'm a little disappointed that a high-end card would have trouble at
1600x1200 in some games which, while graphics-intensive, aren't the most
cutting-edge out there. None of these games employed HDR, for example, which has
become popular in some newer titles and is very taxing on graphics hardware.
However, with that said, this is also a pretty mainstream high-end card, priced
at the practically affordable $249 price-point. For me, what will end up making
or breaking this card is the competition.
Not only is there the new
GeForce 7600 GT to consider, but I would also like to see how much of a
difference in performance there is between the Radeon X1800 GTO and the Radeon
X1800 XL, since the only thing that sets them apart is the number of
pipelines.
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