ATi's answer to the 6800GT

[Lonyo]

Pic of ATiTool report

3DMark score

It seems like it may be possible to make the X800Pro into a 16 pipe card after all, which is good news for people who want performance without spending too much $$$, and may provide better competition with the 6800GT for those willing to risk it not working.

Overclockers.co.uk forums post

 

[Bar81]

Well, that's still up in the air. The fact that one person claims to have done it is not nearly good enough. xbit tried twice and failed twice on the same mod. Besides it is a hardware mod so this isn't an easy thing to do even if it were possible.

 

[Schadenfroh]

not worth the risk if the 16piped gt is the same price as the 12 pipe x800 pro

 

[PrayForDeath]

I wasn't surprised by his 3DMark 2k3 score, just look at his CPU's, GPU's and VideoRam speed!!!
I bet he's using a watercooling solution to get to this speed.

 

[ForceCalibur]

Physical mod requireed.

 

[Genx87]

Doesnt look like it is ATIs answer but somebody elses answer.

12 pipe X800 Pro from ATI.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I'm not buying it till I see the result replicated by others. I won't soon forget someone claiming to temporarily get HT working but the results not being verifiable :roll:

 

[Corporate Thug]

as sson as i see a guide and someone here who confirms it works, i may buy

but considdering the 9500 was moddable, i really wouldnt be surprised if the X800 pro is moddable as well

 

[Zebo]

This is a non-issue for me when the card still sells for above $300. IMO that's price gauging when you can get a mobo, chip and ram combo for less money and I know just the CPU alone is much more complex and harder to make. I'm waiting until this "buying the new" frenzy wares off and these companies want to actually start selling in mass. The price/performance is horrendous right now even if you manage to do this.

 

[Ackmed]

CPU speed doesnt matter that much for overall score. Sure it helps, but not much.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Zebo
This is a non-issue for me when the card still sells for above $300. IMO that's price gauging when you can get a mobo, chip and ram combo for less money and I know just the CPU alone is much more complex and harder to make. I'm waiting until this "buying the new" frenzy wares off and these companies want to actually start selling in mass. The price/performance is horrendous right now even if you manage to do this.

Actually, the GPUs in the latest cards are significantly larger and more complex than any modern CPU. The Pentium 4 EE is ~150M transistors (and about 100M if those are L2 and L3 cache), and the 6800U is about 220M (and almost all "GPU").

Also, when you buy a video card, you're paying for RAM (and this is 600Mhz GDDR3, not relatively cheap DDR400), a GPU, and a PCB that is probably almost as complex as the one in your motherboard (most MB PCBs are 3- or 4-layer -- I think even the last generation of video cards were using 6-layer PCBs!) While I have no doubt that there is a significant profit margin in the new cards, it's probably not as big as you think.

And in terms of price/performance, it's actually not *that* bad. If you compare a 256MB 9800XT (~$300) to a 256MB X800XT (~$500), the X800XT is almost twice as fast in some tests, and at least 50% faster all the time, and it costs about 75% more. Of course, if you compare it against a 128MB 5900XT (~$175), it doesn't look so good -- now the new card is 185% more expensive, and unlikely to give you more than a 100% improvement in terms of framerates.

 

[Cat]

GPUs have more transistors than CPUs, but I wouldn't say they're more complex than CPUs. GPUs perform simple streaming operations on an enormous amount of data, but in a very rigid fashion.

Simple, fast, and inflexible, but not so complex.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: Zebo
I know just the CPU alone is much more complex and harder to make.

How do you *know* this?

If you go by transistor count:
Tbred: 38 million
Barton: 54 million
Northwood: 55 million
Prescott: 125 million
P4EE: 178 million

GeForce5950 Ultra: 130 million
R420 16 pipelines: 160 million
GeForce 6800 Ultra: 222 million

Let's not forget that graphics cards like this also include DDR RAM that runs at 500+ MHz, when about the fastest you can get for your system is around half that speed.

I think I'd be hard pressed to say that whatever CPU you're getting in a MB+RAM+ CPU combo for ~$350 is "more complex" than a $400 graphics card. I meanyou're probably talking a Northwood or a Barton so an x800 will have about 3 times the transistors.

I don't disagree that they probably put their largest margins in their highest end cards, but who doesn't do that? (P4EE) These people make their money off early adopters and people willing to pay for performance.

I tend to agree with you that $350 - $400 is too much to pay for a card, but in the market right now, where the x800 Pro is unquestionably the best card available, It's the closest to 'worth the money' that the high end has been in a LONG time. But, yes, it will be far more interesting to see what the x600 Pro can do.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Zebo
This is a non-issue for me when the card still sells for above $300. IMO that's price gauging when you can get a mobo, chip and ram combo for less money and I know just the CPU alone is much more complex and harder to make. I'm waiting until this "buying the new" frenzy wares off and these companies want to actually start selling in mass. The price/performance is horrendous right now even if you manage to do this.

Actually, the GPUs in the latest cards are significantly larger and more complex than any modern CPU. The Pentium 4 EE is ~150M transistors (and about 100M if those are L2 and L3 cache), and the 6800U is about 220M (and almost all "GPU").

Also, when you buy a video card, you're paying for RAM (and this is 600Mhz GDDR3, not relatively cheap DDR400), a GPU, and a PCB that is probably almost as complex as the one in your motherboard (most MB PCBs are 3- or 4-layer -- I think even the last generation of video cards were using 6-layer PCBs!) While I have no doubt that there is a significant profit margin in the new cards, it's probably not as big as you think.

And in terms of price/performance, it's actually not *that* bad. If you compare a 256MB 9800XT (~$300) to a 256MB X800XT (~$500), the X800XT is almost twice as fast in some tests, and at least 50% faster all the time, and it costs about 75% more. Of course, if you compare it against a 128MB 5900XT (~$175), it doesn't look so good -- now the new card is 185% more expensive, and unlikely to give you more than a 100% improvement in terms of framerates.

Well I don't compare to an 9800xt which is also a rip off. I compare a $158 powercolor 9800SE softmodded to an XT. Or an $165 5900NU OCed past 5950. Both scoring above 6500 in 3dmark03, 18000 in 3dmark, and 50000 in aquamark.

Then you go buy one of these new cards which will increase performance by 20-50% but pay 250% more money. No how I like to do things.

Now there is the "does your current card meet your needs factor" which some are very justified in paying the new premium. Not me.

 

[g3pro]

BS! These motherf***ers wouldn't understand the concepts of pipelining if it came up and bit them in the a**. :|

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: Concillian

Originally posted by: Zebo
I know just the CPU alone is much more complex and harder to make.

How do you *know* this?

If you go by transistor count:
Tbred: 38 million
Barton: 54 million
Northwood: 55 million
Prescott: 125 million
P4EE: 178 million

GeForce5950 Ultra: 130 million
R420 16 pipelines: 160 million
GeForce 6800 Ultra: 222 million

Let's not forget that graphics cards like this also include DDR RAM that runs at 500+ MHz, when about the fastest you can get for your system is around half that speed.

I think I'd be hard pressed to say that whatever CPU you're getting in a MB+RAM+ CPU combo for ~$350 is "more complex" than a $400 graphics card. I meanyou're probably talking a Northwood or a Barton so an x800 will have about 3 times the transistors.

I don't disagree that they probably put their largest margins in their highest end cards, but who doesn't do that? (P4EE) These people make their money off early adopters and people willing to pay for performance.

I tend to agree with you that $350 - $400 is too much to pay for a card, but in the market right now, where the x800 Pro is unquestionably the best card available, It's the closest to 'worth the money' that the high end has been in a LONG time. But, yes, it will be far more interesting to see what the x600 Pro can do.

Ram? and CPU's run at 3.5Ghz while GPU's are around 500Mhz. Also the fab facilites of GPU's are insignifgant in cost compared a CPU Fab(s) not to mention the tones more engineers working on the product. The graphics card just has to process graphics and are brutally efficient parallel signal processors but thats it. The CPU has many other things to contend with and still manages to pound graphics card speeds. The transitor count of GPU should be larger since it has high amounts of parralism (16x). CPU's do stages sequentially and a lot more of it when you add things like SSE and 3dNow you increase transitors yet again. Intel *could* make CPU/GPU which would pound these little upstarts catering to a niche market into the ground but then you're talking ^ 500M transistors which has yield problems. Not to mention lack of market for such an expensive chip to produce.

 

[ronnn]

I am waiting for the soft mod. I expect ATI to discover a soft mod when competition heats up. :beer:

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Zebo
and CPU's run at 3.5Ghz while GPU's are around 500Mhz.

...and the GPU in a 6800U takes about 4x the die space of a P4 Northwood. It's significantly more complex, and does a LOT more per clock cycle (although the things it can do are more limited than a general-purpose CPU). And clock speed is not the best measure of performance. I mean, an Athlon64 runs at about 2Ghz compared to a Pentium 4 at 3+Ghz, yet executes code just as fast or faster.

Also the fab facilites of GPU's are insignifgant in cost compared a CPU Fab(s) not to mention the tones more engineers working on the product.

Do you have any numbers on this, or are you just blathering on without anything to go on? NVIDIA has been using IBM to produce their NV40 cores -- in the same fabs they use to make PowerPC CPUs. ATI contracts out with TMSC. There aren't many fabrication facilities that can produce 150M+ transistor chips on a 130nm process; the costs certainly aren't 'insignificant'. I'm sure Intel spends a hell of a lot more on R&D than either ATI or NVIDIA -- but then again, they're a much larger company, and they sell a lot more chips. They benefit from economies of scale much more than a graphics card company.

The graphics card just has to process graphics and are brutally efficient parallel signal processors but thats it. The CPU has many other things to contend with and still manages to pound graphics card speeds.

See above. Your CPU would get "pounded" pretty badly itself if it tried to do what your GPU does, just as your GPU would make a really lousy general-purpose CPU. Do you understand the concept of parallelism? 8 or 16 pipelines of dedicated triangle processing hardware (it's a heck of a lot more than a "signal processor") does a LOT more work in a clock cycle than a conventional CPU. It's just very constrained in the sort of processing it can do.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: Matthias99
And in terms of price/performance, it's actually not *that* bad. If you compare a 256MB 9800XT (~$300) to a 256MB X800XT (~$500), the X800XT is almost twice as fast in some tests, and at least 50% faster all the time, and it costs about 75% more. Of course, if you compare it against a 128MB 5900XT (~$175), it doesn't look so good -- now the new card is 185% more expensive, and unlikely to give you more than a 100% improvement in terms of framerates.

Well I don't compare to an 9800xt which is also a rip off. I compare a $158 powercolor 9800SE softmodded to an XT. Or an $165 5900NU OCed past 5950. Both scoring above 6500 in 3dmark03, 18000 in 3dmark, and 50000 in aquamark.

Then you go buy one of these new cards which will increase performance by 20-50% but pay 250% more money. No how I like to do things.

First off, you can't get a 5900NU for $165 nowadays -- they start at about $200 unless you're buying used (even a 5900XT, which is *very* unlikely to overclock that far, is about $175 new). The 9800SE softmod is hit-or-miss, and an OC to 9800XT speeds is nowhere near guaranteed even if the softmod works. And both void your warranty.

Second, if you want to bring in overclocking, the X800Pro ($400, and already nabbed by some folks from CompUSA for $350) can get close to X800XT performance if overclocked. The 6800GT may reach or exceed 6800U performance. So if you compare a ~$200 "5950U" or a ~$160 "9800XT" (keeping in mind that the softmod/overclock on the 9800SE is far from certain) to a ~$400 "X800XT" or "6800U", the numbers, again, are not that bad -- you're paying 100-150% more for a 50-100+% performance increase (depending on the application and how far the 'cheap' card overclocks).

Now there is the "does your current card meet your needs factor" which some are very justified in paying the new premium. Not me.

I agree. Right now there isn't anything except maybe Far Cry that really pushes my 9800Pro, and so I feel no need to upgrade.

 

[GeneralGrievous]

not worth the risk if the 16piped gt is the same price as the 12 pipe x800 pro

Why not? Right now a 12 pipe X800 Pro pretty much matches the performance of a 6800 GT. A 16 pipe X800 Pro for $400 kills the GT.

 

[Genx87]

GPUs are very complex. I am willing to be they are much more complex than a CPU. The difference is as many say a GPU is rather specialized for what it does. But trying to make an efficient design that has 16 pipelines has to be much more complex than the two pipelines the Athlon and Operton have.

Also with DirectNext GPUs will become general purpose processors and it will be interesting to see what can be offloaded onto the GPU. The GPU may only run at 4-500Mhz but I am willing to bet if you could run SpecFP on it these things would wipe their electronic butts with an operton or Itanium.

 

[Genx87]

The only games I have seen where the X800 Pro matches or even beats the GT is in games where Nvidia has some obvious performance issues across their entire line. If Nvidia can iron out the kinks in those games the chances are the X800 Pro will simply be outclassed by the GT running at 325Mhz. And if the GT ends up overclocking to 400Mhz like some are saying it isnt even close for the money.

 

[GeneralGrievous]

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12443&highlight=

The only games I have seen where the X800 Pro matches or even beats the GT is in games where Nvidia has some obvious performance issues across their entire line.

Nvidia must have a LOT of performance issues then, considering the X800 Pro matches or beats the GT in at least 1/3 of benchmarks.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2044&p=12
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2044&p=13
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2044&p=16
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2044&p=17

There's 4 out of anand's 11 benchmarks, not counting FFXI.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: GeneralGrievous

not worth the risk if the 16piped gt is the same price as the 12 pipe x800 pro

Why not? Right now a 12 pipe X800 Pro pretty much matches the performance of a 6800 GT. A 16 pipe X800 Pro for $400 kills the GT.

at stock clock of course it would, is it fair to compare a softmodded x800 pro to a stock 6800gt? You must take into account that a 6800gt will overclock to levels higher than a 6800 ultra extreme, thus killing the softmoded x800 pro
see here

 

[Genx87]

LOL In the Halo benchmark the 5950 is beating the 6800.

I think it is safe to say the drivers are not working correctly for the 6800 in that game.