***OFFICIAL ATI R360/RV360 Thread*** Anand's Review Part II Online

[Vonkhan]

speak for urselves, i gotta get me one of there!

10% speed difference = life or death gotta have the latest & greatest!

 

[Pariah]

Talk about evolution, not revolution. What was the purpose of this release? I used to knock NVidia for evolutionary clock boost releases, but ATi is taking it to a whole new level. Ati basically owns the public opinion, and now they are going to milk them for all they are worth with these trivial releases? Real smart move ATi. Time to get rid of the 6 month product cycle and release bigger generational gap products.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: Nebor
Does Tom's review seem almost.... ameteurish? I mean, the way he constructs his sentences, and how he seems to be putting both NVIDIA and ATI down at the same time... How about "The copper fins of the heatsink. The workmanship is not high standard. " What the hell does that mean? He makes several statements like that, which just seem baseless and foolish....

Er, anyways, I already got my video card for the coming months. The XT doesn't seem like big news.

You're just now noticing that about Tom? Don't forget, these guys are Germans...

übersetzen ist nicht so einfach!

 

[Luagsch]

EDIT meh...

EDIT 2: firstly thnx guys for putting together the list of reviews :beer:

i have to agree with NFS4 i'm not excited about the 9800xt yet. maybe that will change when there is indication how well the 9800xt is able to oc in general. and at least it might drop the prices of the old cards.

 

[Akaz1976]

Any idea y AT is late on putting up on the review? presumable all the sites got the cards ahead of time so therefore would have had time before hand to have the article ready?

Akaz

 

[Nebor]

I also almost forgot the world's No. 1 philanthropist Gabe Newell, who came down from Olymp to enlighten us with the real deal about NVIDIA chips. Ah, well, thanks for so much clarity, honesty and benevolence! God bless steamy Gabe and innocent ATi, who finally taught us that NVIDIA is actually sponsoring Al Quaida. We were hardly surprised when we heard that NVIDIA's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has been seen hiding Saddam in his back yard.

I must have read to fast and missed that... That's hilarious.

 

[FishTankX]

It seems there were some very powerful low level shader/computational changes made. Look at this benchmark!

High level lighting

In this benchmark, the Radeon 9800 XT eclipses the 9800 pro by nearly 40%!!

 

[Vonkhan]

some1 wake Anand up .... homie's always late!!! sorry boss man!

 

[GTaudiophile]

Shame on ATi for not having the CAT 3.8s ready for this launch!!!

Radeon 9800 XT does potentially bring one rather interesting feature in the form of Overdrive, however its annoying that this isn?t presently enabled by the current driver releases and we weren?t able to get beta drivers that enable it. Although the base clock speed it fairly low, we have heard mutterings of quite outlandish core speed increases, however we?ll reserve further comment until we can test it ourselves. (B3D)

 

[Dug]

Doesn't make sense to spend $500 on this when you can go down to BestBuy and pick up the 9800 for $250 and have 99% of the performance or more if you o/c it a bit.

I really wish they went to .13

 

[Akaz1976]

ATI managed to get multi million-bundle deal with Valve to bundle the single player version of Half-Life 2 with their new Radeon XT cards. Since the release of the game was delayed several times it looks like the early XT card come with a voucher only giving the customer the ability to download the full game via Valve's Steam online service when it becomes available. Maybe this won't change and you never get a full CD. Details are still unknown at the time this article was written.

Sources tell us that the bundling is very expensive for the card makers. ATI is asking for about $15 for a copy, which is 300% more than other game bundles. So you can expect that not every ATI board partner will feature this game bundle.

It's also unknown yet if there will be a chance to upgrade the bundled single player game (about $40) to the multi player version (about $50) will become available later.

WTH? there are suppose to be two versions of HL2? This is the first i have heard of it!

Akaz

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: Akaz1976

ATI managed to get multi million-bundle deal with Valve to bundle the single player version of Half-Life 2 with their new Radeon XT cards. Since the release of the game was delayed several times it looks like the early XT card come with a voucher only giving the customer the ability to download the full game via Valve's Steam online service when it becomes available. Maybe this won't change and you never get a full CD. Details are still unknown at the time this article was written.

Sources tell us that the bundling is very expensive for the card makers. ATI is asking for about $15 for a copy, which is 300% more than other game bundles. So you can expect that not every ATI board partner will feature this game bundle.

It's also unknown yet if there will be a chance to upgrade the bundled single player game (about $40) to the multi player version (about $50) will become available later.

WTH? there are suppose to be two versions of HL2? This is the first i have heard of it!

Akaz

I had heard a rumor that this would be the case.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: FishTankX
It seems there were some very powerful low level shader/computational changes made. Look at this benchmark!

High level lighting

In this benchmark, the Radeon 9800 XT eclipses the 9800 pro by nearly 40%!!

Aren't those the same effects that are meant to be in the final release of HL2, which would truely make the 9800XT the best card to get for HL2, by far, if you want everything on.

 

[XBoxLPU]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
Shame on ATi for not having the CAT 3.8s ready for this launch!!!

Radeon 9800 XT does potentially bring one rather interesting feature in the form of Overdrive, however its annoying that this isn?t presently enabled by the current driver releases and we weren?t able to get beta drivers that enable it. Although the base clock speed it fairly low, we have heard mutterings of quite outlandish core speed increases, however we?ll reserve further comment until we can test it ourselves. (B3D)

they are coming Oct. 8th

 

[GTaudiophile]

I love Techreport's Conclusion:

The Radeon 9800 XT can't claim unambiguously the title of "fastest PC graphics card." In many older games and in some newer ones, the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra still achieves better benchmark scores. However, the Radeon 9800 XT excels at the things one wants from a $499 graphics card. With edge and texture antialiasing turned up, it generally outperforms the 5900 Ultra, and ATI tends not to sacrifice image quality at the altar of benchmark performance with as much relish as NVIDIA. (I wish we had more time to explore that issue in this review, but the patterns are well established by now.) Most importantly, the Radeon 9800 XT provides superior performance and compatibility in true DirectX 9 applications without the need for application specific optimizations or freshly updated drivers.

The same can't be said for NVIDIA's GeForce FX products, and that fact causes us significant concern about future game compatibility and performance. Even the new 51.75 drivers from NVIDIA, with an updated compiler, couldn't make the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra competitive with ATI products in ShaderMark or the high-dynamic-range demo we tested. One gets the impression NVIDIA needs a well-stocked sweatshop full of driver software developers working 24x7 in order to keep the GeForce FX competitive in various games and benchmarks as they are released. ATI's hardware, by contrast, just seems to work right. Whatever the reason for this disparity, ATI cards seem to provide a much smoother user experience, especially for power users and cutting-edge gamers who are always downloading the latest and greatest games and demos.

Because of these concerns, and because the Radeon 9800 XT delivers kick-ass overall performance, we are doing something we don't always do around here: busting out an Editor's Choice award. The Radeon 9800 XT does well on its own merits, but in this case, we also want folks to know there's a clearly superior choice between the two $499 graphic card exotics. Five hundred bucks is a lot of cash to lay out on an AGP card, so making the right call is important if you plan to do so. No, the 9800 XT isn't wildly faster than the Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB that it replaces, but it does perform better at the same price. These cards aren't good values by any stretch?buy a Radeon 9600 Pro if it's value you want?but the Radeon 9800 XT is our graphics exotic of choice.

 

[XBoxLPU]

Excellent conclusion

 

[Lyfer]

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU
Excellent conclusion

:beer::beer::beer::beer::beer::beer::beer::beer::beer:I 2nd that!:beer: :beer::beer::beer::beer::beer::beer::beer::beer:

 

[Aganack1]

when are we going to see these on the shelf?

 

[boyRacer]

Originally posted by: Aganack1
when are we going to see these on the shelf?

2 weeks probably.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: boyRacer

Originally posted by: Aganack1
when are we going to see these on the shelf?

2 weeks probably.

They're on the same truck as the P4EEs and HL2.

 

[PaperclipGod]

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: boyRacer

Originally posted by: Aganack1
when are we going to see these on the shelf?

2 weeks probably.

They're on the same truck as the P4EEs and HL2.

So does this mean NVIDIA's new card is going to be released at the same time? I had heard Oct 10th....

 

[GTaudiophile]

I would expect to see NV38/NV36 reviews in approx. two weeks. But will they matter?

 

[RagingGuardian]

Where's the benches for the 9600XT and when can I get one in my rig?

 

[PaperclipGod]

Originally posted by: RagingGuardian
Where's the benches for the 9600XT and when can I get one in my rig?

i dont think the 9600xt is being released for a couple months

 

[GTaudiophile]

From HardOCP:

ATI isn?t stopping at with the 9800XT though! They are also introducing a new mainstream card, the Radeon 9600XT, previously codenamed RV360. The first very interesting thing about this core is that it is using the "Low k" process for .13 micron. While we are not going to get into writing a Low k white paper here, we will tell you some of the things that this process accomplishes while being used by ATI and others. The Low k process reduces needed power and heat while allowing for increased engine speeds. The 9600XT is the first graphics core to use the Low k process for .13. This means ATI is doing very well with .13 and making very big strides in its use. So what does this mean for you? No secondary power is required even though this core is running at very high clocks.

The engine speed runs at 500+MHz. (We will get into what the + means in a little bit.) This is compared to the 9600 Pro?s core speed of 400 MHz. The memory is set at 600+MHz, which is the same speed as the 9600 Pro?s memory. The memory interface is still 128-bit with 128MB, also capable of 256MB of DDR.

The 9600XT is a 4 pixel pipeline architecture with two vertex engines and 24:1 Z-compression. Basically it is the same architecture as the RV350. You will also find the same AA and AF support.

This card is also shipping in October and will be retailing for $199.

Half Life 2 will be shipping IN THE BOX with the 9800XT AND the 9600XT. This is the full retail version, no demo, no shareware, this is the retail version of the game. This is big news folks, especially on the 9600XT. At $199 that is a very appealing offer for many.

...

A retail version of Half-Life 2 being bundled with this card will hugely benefit its sell through as well. This bundling is a big win for ATI. Most shocking of all was to learn that Half Life 2 would also be bundled with the 9600XT. This brings high-end gaming to a whole new level. People that buy the 9600XT will not only get a great new game, but they will be able to play this game in all its DX9 glory with great performance.

Expect the 9600XT to be the hottest item on everyone's Christmas list this year...including mine!