***Modern Video Cards FAQ***

[techwanabe]

I found this at HWHELL:

Now you can add in the Radeon X800 SE - I was curious since it is coming in my new Dell:

"Earlier today X-Bit Labs reported that the ATI Radeon X800 SE chip will be hitting retail shelves. This comes as a surprise as the chip was initially an OEM release only with Dell being the main company to offer graphics solutions based on the chip. According to the report the X800 SE chip should be aimed at the mainstream market with performance falling somewhere between the Radeon 9800XT and the X800 pro and using only 8 pipelines instead of the 12 used in the X800 Pro cards.


In an attempt to offer customers in performance-mainstream market segment something more advanced than the RADEON 9800-series, graphics chip designer ATI Technologies is said to offer the RADEON X800 SE product to end-users, something that the Markham, Ontario-based company did not want to do initially.

ATI RADEON X800 SE is the third graphics product in ATI RADEON X800 lineup unveiled in early May. According to Dell, who so far has been the only supplier of such graphics cards, the product has a 425MHz graphics processor, 128MB of 800MHz DDR SDRAM memory with 256-bit bus width along with typical set of connectors, such as D-Sub, DVI-I and TV-Out. It is generally believed that the RADEON X800 SE graphics chip has 8 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex processors. By contrast, ATI RADEON X800 PRO and ATI RADEON X800 XT visual processing units sport 12 and 16 pixel pipelines respectively, delivering greater performance in the majority of cases.

An ATI spokesperson said earlier this year that the RADEON X800 SE was an OEM only product, but Chinese web-site HKEPC.com now reports that the graphics company aims to introduce AGP flavour of the X800 SE part to retail market. The product is said to be positioned for performance-mainstream market segment and cost from $200 to $300"

 

[Gamingphreek]

Time to bump this as we are getting bombarded with people asking the same stupid questions.

-Kevin

 

[Blackjack2000]

The guide doesn't even mention the 6600GT which is probably the best $200 card out right now. It's a good guide, but it needs a lot of updating.

 

[Gamingphreek]

No sh!t... Schad and i just got our guides stickied again, give us some time to revise and edit them. Both of us are in school.

-Kevin

 

[Schadenfroh]

i will try to update, i have to balance my spare time in pre med between the video and keep reviewing the spyware guide and hijackthis logs

 

[stardust]

Calm down Gaminphreek, many of us are eyeing both stickies carefully and appreciate both your contributions.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Calm down from what. All i said was essentially "No kidding"... i mean seriously does he think i dont know or something lol. Right now we are working on an article on AA and AF, and we have an idea how both guides are going to be formatted. All we need now is time Any questions feel free to ask.

-Kevin

 

[BFG10K]

Good god i told you IIRC THe Radeons are able to do that just the same as the NV40.

It would seem that your recollection is wrong.

WHy don't you find somewhere to prove what you are saying!?

I've already explained to you why it's wrong. If you continue to insist with the nonsense in your "FAQ" that's your problem for spreading misinformation.

 

[PrayForDeath]

8679 Views, WOW!
Good to have it stikied again

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Good god i told you IIRC THe Radeons are able to do that just the same as the NV40.

It would seem that your recollection is wrong.

WHy don't you find somewhere to prove what you are saying!?

I've already explained to you why it's wrong. If you continue to insist with the nonsense in your "FAQ" that's your problem for spreading misinformation.

Im not spreading nonsense.Godgod, i even showedyou WHERE. How much more do you want. The 9800Pro can run in a 4x2 array when multi texturing. Also IIRC they cannot use an Xx0 array when doing Z stencil ops. No where does it say they can do that, in any reviews.

Thanks Pray For Death, each guide is going to compliment the other. We are still working it out but in my guide im going to give the very basics and what not, then in Schadenfrohs guide its going to be more advanced definitions.

As for reccommendations i am going to put that at the top, so people dont spend time trying to find it.

-Kevin

 

[BlueWeasel]

I really like the section with all the default clock speeds of the various cards. I didn't bother to read it all for correctness, but nice work.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel
I really like the section with all the default clock speeds of the various cards. I didn't bother to read it all for correctness, but nice work.

this is covered in my section, it helps that sorta thing not to be in a forum post because of the massive ammounts of data

direct links
pre 6800 cards
6800 generation nvidia
x800 generation ati

 

[BFG10K]

Im not spreading nonsense.Godgod, i even showedyou WHERE.

No, you showed the NV40. NV40 != everything.

The 9800Pro can run in a 4x2 array when multi texturing.

No it can't as is painfully evident in the 3DMark multitexture tests.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Simplified a bit, but this argument is getting old-

Three components- pixel pipe, Z unit, TMU. These are arranged either in a fixed format or a flexible format. ATi's parts are all fixed, they can operate as either 8x1/16x1 or 8x0/16x0 part. In order to multitexture they need multiple clocks. They can output 8/16 dual textured pixels every other clock. ATi's R3x0 parts have one Z unit per pipe which is a minimum for all the current parts. They can operate as 8x0 parts or 16x0(providing they have at least that many pixel pipes- the R3x0 parts can't run 16x0 as they don't have that many PPs).

nVidia's parts since the NV30 have had multiple Z units per pixel pipe. That is why the NV30 could operate as an 8x0 part with only four pixel pipes. It had two TMUs per pipe which allowed it to operate as a 4x2 part and it could also operate as a 4x1 part. The GF6(16pp, 32zu, 16 TMUs) series of cards can function as 32x0, 16x1 or 8x2 parts as they are designed in a manner which allows them to use pixel pipes as TMUs, they effectively combine two pixel pipes into one.

In summary, BFG is right.

 

[Gamingphreek]

OK, well now that you gave such an excellent explanation i understand. I will change it and tribute it to BFG and Ben.

-Kevin

 

[BFG10K]

At the risk of creating another debate that goes nowhere, OpenGL is currently at 1.5.x, not 1.4.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
At the risk of creating another debate that goes nowhere, OpenGL is currently at 1.5.x, not 1.4.

Cmon give me time to fix it. Im juggling schoool and work and everything right now. Ill listen i honestly though that i was right back there and was proven wrong. I apologized and everything.

Ok well ill change that too. THanks for pointing it out.

-Kevin

 

[Rebel Nugget]

Question:
I hadn't heard anything about this, but I was looking at the ASUS x800 XT PE on monarchcomputer (http://www.monarchcomputer.com...Category_Code=VC-PCIE) and noticed a little add-on box recommending molex to pci-express power cable adapter. Do you need a special power adapter to run a pci-express video card or what's the deal with that?

 

[Gamingphreek]

On PCI-E cards they require a special 6 pin ::: adapter. You can get converters for the molex though.

-Kevin

 

[jvarszegi]

A nice post. I'm sort of a newbie to this stuff, but I was under the impression that a pixel shader is a small routine written by the game vendor; like, you would write a pixel shader to apply lighting effects to a windshield, etc. When you enter an area where the output of a shader is needed, it's loaded up and run to apply the effect. Is this not true, or are the hardware parts that run pixel shaders also called pixel shaders?

 

[Gamingphreek]

That is how the pixel undergoes shading but the actual things that do [the shading] are done in the hardware.

-Kevin

 

[mickyb]

I really like the CPU charts like on AT and TomsHardware. It would be nice if it was a sidelink that was always there and not an article that was done every once in a while. When a new CPU comes out add it.

Same goes with Video cards. They are especially harder to keep track of. The video card vendors add new models with old chip features, etc. I would like to see a chart constantly kept up that has columns for:

Vendor
Model
Release Date
DX Max Support
Core Speed
Amount of Memory
Memory Speed
# Slots required
Max Wattage
Bus Type
SLI
DVI Out
VGA Out
Svideo Out
Svideo In
3dmark @ 1280x1024 using max dx support
And maybe some other benchies.

If I had a table that was always available to me that I could sort by any column, I would not have to spend hours on the net trying to recap all the things they wanted.

My latest request was to have the best AGP Video Card that fits in a shuttle (no 2 slot) and could hook up to an HDTV that can run HL2 in 720p at 60 fps under $200. If it can record TIVO style that is a plus. If I had a chart, I wouldn't have to go looking at all the reviews again to verify what I remembered.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Ill see what i can do

-Kevin

 

[oynaz]

Is the list still up to date?

 

[Gamingphreek]

Unfortunately not. Its a lot of work lol. As i said in my video cards thread i am asking my ISP for a server. Hopefully then i will do a complete revamp. For now i will update the list a little but, i wont make a version 2 until i find out more about my ISPs server.

-Kevin