Looking very nice, but also looks ready to take over the power pig award. Still hoping power consumption will go down one day.
Nothing wrong with effective, quiet cooling. Would be better if so much was not turning into heat.
Something doesn't make sense to me. Why are there two $600 R600 models coming out at the same time? One is higher clocked but single core, the other is dual core but lower clocked. Both according to the INQ coming at the same time and both same price. Doesn't make sense.
schneiderguy
Lifer
- Jun 26, 2006
- 10,801
- 91
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Text
Late yesterday DailyTech was briefed on the final details for the upcoming R600 retail specifications, just in time for everyone to go on vacation for Chinese New Year. AMD has briefed its board partners on the specifications that will appear on the marketing material for the card launches.
AMD's guidance claims R600 will feature 700 million transistors. By comparison, the Radeon X1900 series R580 GPU incorporated 384 million transistors into its design; the half-generation before that, R520, only featured 320 million.
As disclosed by DailyTech earlier this year, the GPU features a full 512-bit memory interface with support for GDDR3 and GDDR4. R580 was also similar in this regard as it supported GDDR3 and GDDR4.
On March 30, 2007, AMD will initially debut the R600 as the ATI Radeon X2900 XTX in two separate configurations: one for OEMs and another for retail. The OEM version is the full length 12" card that will appear in high-end systems.
ATI guidance claims the X2900 XTX retail card comes as a two-slot, 9.5" design with a vapor chamber cooler. Vapor chambers are already found on high-end CPU coolers, so it would be no surprise to see such cooling on a high-end GPU either. The OEM version of the card is a 12" layout and features a quiet fan cooler.
1GB of GDDR4 memory is the reference configuration for Radeon X2900 XTX. Memory on the reference X2900 XTX cards was supplied by Samsung.
Approximately one month later, the company will launch the GDDR3 version of the card. This card, dubbed the Radeon X2900 XT, features 512MB of GDDR3 and lower clock frequencies than the X2900 XTX. The X2900 XT is also one of the first Radeons to feature heatpipes on the reference design.
AMD anticipates the target driver for X2900 XT to be Catalyst 8.36. WHQL release of the X2900 XTX drive will appear around the Ides of March.
Radeon X2900 will feature native CrossFire support via an internal bridge interface -- there is no longer a need for the external cable found on the Radeon X1000 series CrossFire. There is no Master card, as was the case with other high-end CrossFire setups. Any Radeon X2900 can act as the Master card.
A much anticipated feature, native HDMI, will appear on all three versions of Radeon X2900.
One 6-pin and one 8-pin (2x4) VGA power connectors are featured on Radeon X2900, but both connectors are also backwards compatible with 6-pin power supply cables.
AMD claims the R600 target schedule will be a hard launch -- availability is expected to be immediate. Board partners will be able to demonstrate R600 at CeBIT 2007 (March 15 - 21), but the only available cards will be reference designs.
Why was there such discrepancy with the board layouts and designs up until now? An ATI insider, who wished to remain nameless, states "The original Quad-Stealth design is what we build the R600 on: GDDR4, full-length and dual-slot cooling. As the silicon further revised, [ATI] took up several alternative designs which eventually included GDDR3 and heatpipes into the specification. The release cards demonstrate the versatility of R600 in each of these unique setups."
Final clock frequencies will likely remain estimates until later this month.
Late yesterday DailyTech was briefed on the final details for the upcoming R600 retail specifications, just in time for everyone to go on vacation for Chinese New Year. AMD has briefed its board partners on the specifications that will appear on the marketing material for the card launches.
AMD's guidance claims R600 will feature 700 million transistors. By comparison, the Radeon X1900 series R580 GPU incorporated 384 million transistors into its design; the half-generation before that, R520, only featured 320 million.
As disclosed by DailyTech earlier this year, the GPU features a full 512-bit memory interface with support for GDDR3 and GDDR4. R580 was also similar in this regard as it supported GDDR3 and GDDR4.
On March 30, 2007, AMD will initially debut the R600 as the ATI Radeon X2900 XTX in two separate configurations: one for OEMs and another for retail. The OEM version is the full length 12" card that will appear in high-end systems.
ATI guidance claims the X2900 XTX retail card comes as a two-slot, 9.5" design with a vapor chamber cooler. Vapor chambers are already found on high-end CPU coolers, so it would be no surprise to see such cooling on a high-end GPU either. The OEM version of the card is a 12" layout and features a quiet fan cooler.
1GB of GDDR4 memory is the reference configuration for Radeon X2900 XTX. Memory on the reference X2900 XTX cards was supplied by Samsung.
Approximately one month later, the company will launch the GDDR3 version of the card. This card, dubbed the Radeon X2900 XT, features 512MB of GDDR3 and lower clock frequencies than the X2900 XTX. The X2900 XT is also one of the first Radeons to feature heatpipes on the reference design.
AMD anticipates the target driver for X2900 XT to be Catalyst 8.36. WHQL release of the X2900 XTX drive will appear around the Ides of March.
Radeon X2900 will feature native CrossFire support via an internal bridge interface -- there is no longer a need for the external cable found on the Radeon X1000 series CrossFire. There is no Master card, as was the case with other high-end CrossFire setups. Any Radeon X2900 can act as the Master card.
A much anticipated feature, native HDMI, will appear on all three versions of Radeon X2900.
One 6-pin and one 8-pin (2x4) VGA power connectors are featured on Radeon X2900, but both connectors are also backwards compatible with 6-pin power supply cables.
AMD claims the R600 target schedule will be a hard launch -- availability is expected to be immediate. Board partners will be able to demonstrate R600 at CeBIT 2007 (March 15 - 21), but the only available cards will be reference designs.
Why was there such discrepancy with the board layouts and designs up until now? An ATI insider, who wished to remain nameless, states "The original Quad-Stealth design is what we build the R600 on: GDDR4, full-length and dual-slot cooling. As the silicon further revised, [ATI] took up several alternative designs which eventually included GDDR3 and heatpipes into the specification. The release cards demonstrate the versatility of R600 in each of these unique setups."
Final clock frequencies will likely remain estimates until later this month.
didn't just yesterday Daily Tech insist it was twenty EIGHT hundred?
March ... 30th
ha ha Wreckage was wrong about the April Launch
:Q
by a couple of days
March ... 30th
ha ha Wreckage was wrong about the April Launch
:Q
by a couple of days
Is it really such a big deal that it's using an HDMI? What's wrong with the DVI -> HDMI cable? does the new card also have a sound chip so that sound will pass through the HDMI connector?
It sorta makes sense now.
The dual core version will be on retail and it will be available to all. The OEM version will be available to partners.
The reason is that the OEM is faster and single core but it is 3 inches bigger and thus will require special cases. That's why you can only get it with systems you buy from guys like Dell, Alienware, Falcon etc.
The retail one is dual core not as fast but shorter so it will at least fit.
I am not sure which one I will get.
Originally posted by: apoppin
didn't just yesterday Daily Tech insist it was twenty EIGHT hundred?
March ... 30th
ha ha Wreckage was wrong about the April Launch
:Q
by a couple of days
Sry, Wreckage, but you were off by one businessday...
i don't think that is what they are saying
from my understanding:
there is a OEM and a Retail version of the flagship x2900xtx ... identical cards with identical performance but different size and slightly different power requirements
Where are you getting the dual core idea from? I read the DT article and didn't see them saying anything about dual cores. Were you maybe thinking about the internal Crossfire bridge info?
If memory serves - some of the B3d guys were talking possible dual core - after that photochopped ocm thing.
Wreckage
Banned
- Jul 1, 2005
- 5,529
- 0
- 0
Originally posted by: Nightmare225
Originally posted by: apoppin
didn't just yesterday Daily Tech insist it was twenty EIGHT hundred?
March ... 30th
ha ha Wreckage was wrong about the April Launch
:Q
by a couple of days
Sry, Wreckage, but you were off by one businessday...
It aint over till Newegg posts em online.
Um... no. You're mixing up several different things, there.
First, there is no such thing as a "dual-core" graphics card. What's being discussed here is a dual-chip card - something like the Nvida 7950GX2.
Second, the dual-chip card and the 12" long OEM version of the XTX are not the same thing. If the rumours are correct then there will be an XTX2, which has two separate chips, with each chip having 96 shaders, 256Mb bandwidth and 512MB of memory; then there will be the retail version of the XTX (single-chip, 128 shaders, 512Mb bandwidth, 1024MB memory) which is 9.5" long and uses vapour-chamber cooling; then there will be the OEM version of the XTX which doesn't use vapour-chamber cooling and which needs to be 12" long in order to cool it properly just using fans (and which will presumably be cheaper than the retail version, but not faster).
Of course the rumours may well not be correct.
It's going to take a lot more than HDMI to sell me on this card.
If this card isnt >25% faster than the 8800GTX then DAAMIT is in trouble. All it's going to take from Nvidia is a few price cuts to even the playing field.
Any speculation as to DAAMIT's driver condition? I have a feeling DAAMIT is not going to do much better than Nvidia regarding drivers or we'd be seeing Nvidia sort this driver problem out with a little more sense of urgency.
If this card isnt >25% faster than the 8800GTX then DAAMIT is in trouble. All it's going to take from Nvidia is a few price cuts to even the playing field.
Any speculation as to DAAMIT's driver condition? I have a feeling DAAMIT is not going to do much better than Nvidia regarding drivers or we'd be seeing Nvidia sort this driver problem out with a little more sense of urgency.
20% faster at 1600 x 1200 would be huge! At 2500 by whatever - wouldn't mean much to most of us. Will be interesting to see ati's whole lineup in a couple of months or whatever. In terms of performance and drivers - lets see some dx10 games.
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