R520 Benches, Release Candidate hardware + drivers

po0k

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1813.1/

This is as close to a retail config as you're going to see before launch.

Unless they slash the price or wring another 20-30% performance increase out of the R520 series, I'll be getting a 7800 in a few months. And that's without even considering the apparent/rumoured (depends on your pov) res&refresh issues in XFire

gizmo

Heh, ya bet me to it.

I had made a post a few days ago regarding the outline specs and prices of the new x1800 cards in the Computers forum but no one took much interest.

Annoyance has now been replaced with relief however, my GTX is still king of the hill!

WizZard

Wow, well that kinda puts paid to the super-duper nVidia beater card!

Or does it...

OT:
Will you consider SLi SyxPak?

po0k

SLI? no.

If nVidia want to sell me 2x 7800GTXs at €250 euro each, then cool, but they'd need to be 512Meg cards. Otherwise, one 7800GT will do fine.

I don't have silly money to spend like ye boiis do ;)

jesus_thats_gre

Silly money is great

CivilServant

I doubt (with fingers crossed) that they are the real benchies for the R520. We won't have to wait long to find out the truth.

http://www.guru3d.com/newsitem.php?id=3069

dubdvd

TBH i cant see a company like ATI bring out something that cant beat or at least match their arch rivals if not in all games at least some of the top rated games out at the moment ...Theres a lot of money behind them "ATI"..as there is behind nvidia ..as we all know before the luanch of any high end hardware weather its GPU'S OR CPU'S the romour mills do be working over time ...but at the end of the day the proof is in the eating ...when they are on the shop shelves and only then will any of the likes of us know what we will get for our 5 or 600 euros ...i'd say it will be the same old story ...some games will suit the X1800XT and some will suit the 7800GTX better ..same as either crossfire and sli ...
IMO i think the pair of them are in on it together ...if the truth be known they both have cards in theirs labs that are 4 or 5 times faster than their fastest retail top cards at the moment ,but they just want to off load all the cheap memory and chips they have bought in .in bulk ..and between them they are all screwing with our heads and pockets ...

WizZard

dubdvd wrote:

IMO i think the pair of them are in on it together ...if the truth be known they both have cards in theirs labs that are 4 or 5 times faster than their fastest retail top cards at the moment ,but they just want to off load all the cheap memory and chips they have bought in .in bulk ..and between them they are all screwing with our heads and pockets ...

Probably true, but we'll still buy now

Richard Dower

That's always the case, they have GPU's that a 3 generations more advanced then what we have now. It's always the case that performance improvements from generation to generation are small.

They want to make money, they ain't gonna double speeds every year because they'll lose money.

gline

hmm.. its looking more likely that il go for sli now rather than crossfire. have to wait and seee i suppose, but it really isnt looking good for ati at the moment if these rumors are true.. and there has to be some truth in them

po0k

dubdvd wrote:

TBH i cant see a company like ATI bring out something that cant beat or at least match their arch rivals if not in all games at least some of the top rated games out at the moment

It's a reversal of roles again.

It used to be nVidia>>ATI with the GeForce256 and GeForce2 Vs. the Rage128 Fury Maxx and the original Radeon, then things leveled out around the Radeon8500(ish) Vs the GF3/4 etc., then ATI took the lead with the 9800 Vs. nVidia's relatively abysmal fx5800, things leveled out again last generation with the x800s Vs. the 6800s - albeit with SLI as an option, a gamble for nVidia, but one they could easily support with the nForce4 SLI boards and their corner of the performance AMD chipset market. At the time ATI had nothing to contend with it, they hadn't designed the x800 series with multi-gpu in mind as they had neither the chipset logic in people's machines to support it, and tbh, consumer-level multiGPU was still stigmatised by the VooDoo2, VSA-100, 3Dfx fall. It was seen as a nice trinket to have on your resumé, but not worth the cash. Crossfire was the result of the market boiis going "Oh shít" and pushing the engineers to deliver. The lads came up with a dirty hack which had the name CrossFire applied to it and it does work, it's just limited by the low-level design of the image-rastering part of the existing GPUs.
The R520 should've been in people's machines 6 months ago. Fact.
It would've been a great card back then. It's so-so now, and they still didn't implement a ground-up MGPU system even though they now have chipset logic ready to support it. If they can keep afloat, they'll skip the next incremement and drop a bomb of performance silicon on us to stick it to nVidia (a ballsy gamble, but I'd buy the resulting card if they did).
Personally, I'm sick of seeing only 20-50% improvement in real-world performance per generation. If I get a new card I want to be able to slap the settings on the top silicon-burning game from last year up to the max and play with 60fps minimum. How else can they justify $600 price-points for cards?

nVidia have delivered a card that is quieter, slimmer and crucially far faster than their last generation. And you can pair them together.
I certainly hope ATI patch up the apparent small leaks in their ship and deliver something that can compete with the 7800GTX on a performance and price basis. At the launch price and performance from that review, in my mind the x1800XT is a turkey. Drop the price to $450 and tweak the hell out of the drivers and they actually have a decent product.

gline

a lot of speculation seen as how x1800 is not out yet and crossfire also isnt.

only IF the RUMOURS are true then that is valid

po0k

Richard Dower wrote:

That's always the case, they have GPU's that a 3 generations more advanced then what we have now.

Yeah...in the form of concept chunks of VHDL/VeriLog. No point spending resources on designing silicon that won't be sold for another 5 years if you don't know the required hardware featuresets to implement. Look at the Parhelia512.

It's always the case that performance improvements from generation to generation are small.
They want to make money, they ain't gonna double speeds every year because they'll lose money.

Yes, yet the cards that pushed the envelope (eg. GeForce256) sold really really well. I wonder why?

The cost in engineer resources between putting a speed bump of your current arch into silicon and putting a performance revolution into silicon is relatively similar. If you can deliver a product to the market that trounces your competition's efforts at a similar or slightly higher price-point (extra 15% retail cost for 150% extra performance over Brand X's card? Yes please!) you will shift an awful lot of units.

I'm not nay-saying the R520 yet, I still want to see it running in a Xfire setup against a 7800GTX SLI setup with mature drivers, but for the performance ATI is offering, the price is too high. You can't charge a premium for a product that doesn't perform better than the competition's cheaper products.
Look at Intel Vs. AMD over the years.
Price premiums are commanded by the performance leaders.

The x1800XT is simply too expensive given the performance indicated in the above sample review (it's a retail sample card from a card partner running release candidate drivers. RC drivers are not Betas.). Unless there is something ATI have grossly overlooked in their drivers, the x1800XT is not competitive on a price Vs. Performance basis.

gline

the cards arent available to buy so we dont know for sure what the price will be

po0k

gline wrote:

a lot of speculation seen as how x1800 is not out yet and crossfire also isnt.

only IF the RUMOURS are true then that is valid

How is a real-life test of production hardware a rumour?

If the benches are faked, fair enough, but I doubt it - sadly. I still hold on to a hope that the R520 has some sekrit nvke butt0n that is magically enabled in the launch driver release that boosts performance at high IQ by 50-100%. I also hope that cold-fusion energy will be common-place within my life-time, but I aint holding my breath.

gline

well until they are out....... we just dont know yet

po0k

gline wrote:

the cards arent available to buy so we dont know for sure what the price will be

The HA guys got the details from a board partner they know. This is a company that makes and sells the boards. They are quoting the R.R.P. - Reccommended Retail Price.

gline

SyxPak wrote:

The HA guys got the details from a board partner they know. This is a company that makes and sells the boards. They are quoting the R.R.P. - Reccommended Retail Price.

fair enough, well see when the hit the shops anyway, cant be long now

Gone West

heh. tbh I stopped really caring who made the best high-end graphics card back around the time the VooDoo 3/3500 came out.(still have it, btw)
I find that buying 2nd generation gear is the best value for money. I mean, a single 6800 will run BF2 or any other game at the highest graphics settings, but is much cheaper than a 7800 or an x1800.

astrofool

remember the post on here about 4 months ago of the 3dmark score of an ATI card over 10,000 2k05 marks, 700mhz, 32 pipeline, and about to be released?

looks silly now.

Hopefully ATI can develop a proper mvpu system, a la SLI, now that they actually have shipping boards (apparantly), and Intel supporting xfire on their 975 chipset, and the r580 will be alot more to ATI than 5900 was to nVidia.

Either way, it looks right now that the real battle will be another few months off, when r580 appears and 7800 gets refreshed, and thats bad for the consumer.

Also watch for the SM3.0 being the best thing since sliced bread from the ATI camp now.

po0k

Aye, the base-spec for SM support will be SM1.1 afaik, with the high-end spec being SM3.0, SM2.0 is going to be left by the wayside completely. Which sucks for me with my x800XL :)

po0k

SyxPak wrote:

And that's without even considering the apparent/rumoured (depends on your pov) res&refresh issues in XFire

In relation to X800/X850 CrossFire and the 1600x1200@60Hz:
http://www.penstarsys.com/#xfire_sil

I had an idea that this wasn't really a limitation, DVI being digital data as opposed to a set of continuous analogue signals.

nVidia have let the dogs loose on CrossFire though: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/CrossfireTruth

The major thing I find worrying about that is the performance of the CrossFire chipset and its lack of performance in PCIE, PCI, USB etc. etc.
Makes it look like a 2nd tier chip ie. VIA, SiS, ULi etc. - which is funny as these companies will be supplying the southbridges for the boards.

gline

SyxPak wrote:

In relation to X800/X850 CrossFire and the 1600x1200@60Hz:
http://www.penstarsys.com/#xfire_sil

I had an idea that this wasn't really a limitation, DVI being digital data as opposed to a set of continuous analogue signals.

Phew.. it isnt going to be as limited as the 1st "reviews" stated. I may still consider getting it

WizZard

SyxPak wrote:

nVidia have let the dogs loose on CrossFire though: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/CrossfireTruth

Wow, they really are out to kill! :eek:

gline

WizZard wrote:

Wow, they really are out to kill! :eek:

yeh that is pretty bad alright, i hope ati come back with something good ...

CivilServant

SyxPak wrote:

nVidia have let the dogs loose on CrossFire though: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/CrossfireTruth

Nvidia talks about ati tech as the truth, purleassee.. This is the same company lowered its own image quality so as to compete with ati during the FX era. When you get the opposition talking about your product you can hardly expect the full truth can you?

Crossifre can be used for any game. Let me say that again, crossfire can be utilised for ANY game. Nv have to code specifically to make that game work in SLi mode otherwise you get half a screen rendered or it just won't work at all. Both setups have their pros and cons. Just don't believe everything nv feeds you.

po0k

Wasn't believing it :)
They're Morketing pe0ns who haven't read the bible according to Hicks yet.

gline

"Sander’s benchmarks do not reflect ATI R520 hardware, nor do they reflect the performance of products currently being evaluated by partners.
The real performance of R520 clearly dominates the fastest competitive hardware
Sander never tested a board
Sander used ‘custom benchmarks’ so he’d have an excuse later for his mistakes (his numbers fall far outside the range of what is reasonable for those games in any custom benchmark)"
From http://www.rage3d.com/

as the article states - "For now enjoy the soap opera that makes this industry so interesting"
so true

Inquitus

I spent an hour reading all this crap today. To summarise.

ATI are trying to launch a broadside against him (Sander) and have rather unprofessionally, imo, published texts of emails sent between it two. I find this unprofessional in so far as neither publishing emails is professional nor is an ATI PR / Marketing Exec getting involved in a public slanging match / Flame war with a Reviewer.

They have vaguely denied his Benchmarks, but have concentrated more on criticising his character then his methods.

He has then responded in kind publishing the ATI Marketing / PR fellas email address and the content of the emails. abania@ati.com maybe we should ask him for a comment :O)

I just get the feeling that if the R520 is going to blow Nvidia out of the water then they would not have responded in this manner. Just issue a press release saying that the results are unfounded and don't bother to dignifying it with a response. Clearly in this case the results would speak for themselves - 9000 in 3DMark05 would clearly speak for itself.

I think that a big corporation like ATI clearly are handling this very badly. Maybe they are running scared.....The R520 should have beaten the 7800GTX to the market, now they are in the process of a paper launch for the top end card with only the R530 and R515 being readily available at launch.

If when the R520 is launched it merely is on a par with the 7800GTX then they are in big trouble, as 1) They wont be easy to get hold of, and 2) the 7800GTX has sold Tens of thousands already.

There is a big Driver update for Nvidia due on the 4/5th October that will drastically improve the way SLI works, alledgedly allowing you to mix and ,match manufacturers cards AND to make use of the highest overclock of each card ie. 1 @ 455 / 1250 and 1 @ 495 / 1300 aswell of improving the performance of the cards.

In conclusion I reckon ATI are fecked and are going to release an R520 that offers the same kind of performance as a 7800GTX, costs more, and is harder to get hold of.

Crossfire has no chance, due to the inferiority of the chipset features and speeds and the SLI improvements mentioned above.

Inqui

gline

on paper yeh, but we'll see when the hardware comes out.

WizZard

Andrzej Bania, ATI Technologies wrote:

Emailing several people at ATI to explain that you are very important, that you have a series of specific demands that must be met as soon as possible and then going on to explain just how bad a job we are doing of keeping you happy is one thing.

However, including ATI's direct competition on 'cc' in such an email is another thing entirely.

That was low in fairness...