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The new ATI dustbuster?

Actually, that looks like it will probably be a fairly quiet solution; a squirrel-cage type blower exhausting from the rear of the system (as in a lot of add-on cooling kits, like the VGA Silencer). It's next to impossible to judge this sort of thing from a photograph, however.

This is interesting:

Radeon X800XL is based on the R430XL chip. Its core is clocked to 400MHz and the memory runs at 500, 1000MHz. The card comes with sixteen pipelines, 256MB RAM and VGA, DVI and TV out. The suggested retail price for this card is $349.
Click to expand...

Of course, it's an Inquirer article, so you can't really be 100% sure of it, but I imagine that would be a very interesting product -- definitely a cut above the X800Pro, and at a lower MSRP than the 6800GT.
 
I personally think dual slot OTES solutions like this are optimal and the way to go, and think ATI is moving in the right direction.

It will be interesting to see what the ATI faithful who've been complaining about nVidia card size and dual slot solutions since the 5800Ultra through the current 6800 Ultra will say.
 
Nice cards, I'm either going for a new x800 for my 2nd box or if I go Nforce4/A64 this pci-e x850 line has similar specs and price points.


Mike G
 
Originally posted by: Rollo
I personally think dual slot OTES solutions like this are optimal and the way to go, and think ATI is moving in the right direction.

It will be interesting to see what the ATI faithful who've been complaining about nVidia card size and dual slot solutions since the 5800Ultra through the current 6800 Ultra will say.
Click to expand...

The problem with Gf cards are their length more than their 2-slot hogging. When you have to start moving hardrives out of the way because the cards are so long, and/or limmiting multiple drives because the card occupies space near the hardrive cage, you do have a real complaint.

Having the rear exhaust is excellent and far more than outweighs any complanint one could have as far as 2-slot hogging, IMHO.

 
If they are near silent like the artic coolers, it may be enough to force me into a pcie solution. But the talk about thermal throttling has me thinking the worst. That with reports that the x700xt is a noisy thing. Also hope it solves availability issues. :beer:
 
Originally posted by: Rollo
I personally think dual slot OTES solutions like this are optimal and the way to go, and think ATI is moving in the right direction.

It will be interesting to see what the ATI faithful who've been complaining about nVidia card size and dual slot solutions since the 5800Ultra through the current 6800 Ultra will say.
Click to expand...

I don't think dual slot has been much of a problem for the so-called "ATI-faithful" as you call it (although it's a fun button to press to get the nvidiots all riled up 😉 . The real issue was the noise of some of the earlier dual-slot designs, and how with the NV30 dual-slot became synonymous with dustbuster. Since the "VGA-silencer" series, however, dual-slot has essentially turned into the best, most intelligent solution and ATI seems to be moving in the right direction with the X850 XT's heatsink design.

The X850XT's alleged clocks of 540/590 PE don't seem that impressive (the current PE already runs at 520/560).

What looks very intriguing are the new 110nm X800's (which should run a good bit cooler and potentially have good o/c potential) and hopefully, better availability for the entire series (as ATI claims).

One reason I think availability will (should) be better than before is that since the X850XT's clockspeed is barely faster than the X800XT, although they've had quite some time to tweak the core, yields should be significantly better. I bet this was a big issue with the X800XT's; they were REALLY pushing the architecture to it's limits on the stock cooling at the stock voltage.

The X800XL's should have phenomenal yields compared to the X800 series in the past; 400 MHz core speed vs 475 Mhz and 520 MHz on a smaller manufacturing process.


ATI's 'new year refresh' looks to be yet another smart move for the company - while the products themselves are only marginally faster than the ones they are replacing, they appear to be cheaper/easier for them to make. I'm betting that Nvidia is a bit more agressive with their refresh, although that remains to be seen. If they've got an 110nm 6xxx card (6900 perhaps?), things should be very interesting!
 
Yeah, the issues with the 5800's were noise and length. I don't think ATi's cards will have grown in length, but we'll see about the noise.

I don't think ATi is going to include SM3 on a X850 name. They'll do something a bit more dramatic for that, no doubt, but the fact that they only bumped to X850 makes me think ATI may stay with SM2.0b with a X900 in the spring, and only show SM3 in the fall. I hope that isn't the case.
 
Originally posted by: Killrose
Originally posted by: Rollo
<snip>
It will be interesting to see what the ATI faithful who've been complaining about nVidia card size and dual slot solutions since the 5800Ultra through the current 6800 Ultra will say.
Click to expand...

The problem with Gf cards are their length more than their 2-slot hogging. When you have to start moving hardrives out of the way because the cards are so long, and/or limmiting multiple drives because the card occupies space near the hardrive cage, you do have a real complaint.

Having the rear exhaust is excellent and far more than outweighs any complanint one could have as far as 2-slot hogging, IMHO.
Click to expand...

I agree - I have a 6800 ultra and the excessive length is extremely annoying - depending on the motherboard, the end of the card overlaps the PATA plugs ( leading to some torturous cable twisting to get around the end of the card ), and in all of the boards I have tried it covers at least part of the RAM, making it necessary to remove it to change DIMMs. Also a fair number of the boards I tried it with ( ironically mostly nforce boards ) have the clip on the AGP slot designed to be operated from the end of the AGP slot rather than the side - having the card overlap it by a fair distance makes it exceptionally aggravating to close and open the clip.

Using two slots was pretty much the least of it's problems, although I could see how people with lots of PCI cards could be annoyed by it.

One thing that does make me wonder though - for SLI solutions, having dual slot cooling is going to make placement of the pci express slots sort of problematic. I would assume you want to minimize distance between the cards for the purposes of the bridging wire/pcb, so having to have an empty slot in between could cause headaches. The rear exhaust would be pretty useful there as well, as I'd imagine having the top card's fan blast hot air onto the top of gargantuan video card under it would be a less than ideal cooling solution.



 
So now, Dual-Slot is a must, what next? 2 years from now and 3-4 slots are a must, this is getting out of control! I think aircooling has reached its limits and by 2006 water-cooling will become a stardard for the regular user :Q
 
Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
Originally posted by: Rollo
I personally think dual slot OTES solutions like this are optimal and the way to go, and think ATI is moving in the right direction.

It will be interesting to see what the ATI faithful who've been complaining about nVidia card size and dual slot solutions since the 5800Ultra through the current 6800 Ultra will say.
Click to expand...

I don't think dual slot has been much of a problem for the so-called "ATI-faithful" as you call it (although it's a fun button to press to get the nvidiots all riled up 😉 . The real issue was the noise of some of the earlier dual-slot designs, and how with the NV30 dual-slot became synonymous with dustbuster.
Click to expand...



...All the Who girls and boys
Would wake up bright and early. They'd rush for their toys (dustbuster 5800's)!
And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!
That's one thing he hated! The NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!

🙂
 
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