Although video cards like ATI Radeon X800 XT or NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra have been released recently, they are still not very popular. There is a lack of such models in the market. ATI uses a specific approach to solve this problem. The company announces two new models X800 on the chip R430 immediately after the release of the line R480 or Radeon X850. Due to the new technology of the video processors producing, there should be a sufficient quantity of the chips in the nearest future.
Both chips R430 and R480 are native solutions for the PCI Express. ATI develops AGP versions that will work via the bridge ATI PCIe-AGP (RialTo). The video cards Radeon X850XT will be the following generation on the base of R430 and R480. These video cards are going to replace the Radeon X800 XT, Radeon X800 XL and PE on the chip R423, which will leave the market soon.
A visual difference of the video card Radeon X850 XT PE from the previous model Radeon X800 XT is in a two slot cooler. This system requires more space, but it covers this disadvantage with a much better quality of cooling with a lower noise. At the same time, the performance of 3D functions is on the same level as for the Radeon X800 XT. The difference in performance is presented only with the growth of kernel and memory clock rates.
Actually, only the Radeon X800 XL and X800 can be called really new chips. All their new features appear due to a changed technological process. The TSMC used a less expensive 110 nm production for the new chip instead of the 130 nm technological processes with a "Low-K" technology that was applied for making the chip R430.
Here is a short list of new video cards on the base of updated chips:
-Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition (R480): sixteen conveyors, the clock rate for the kernel / memory 540 MHz/ 1.18 GHz.
-Radeon X850 XT (R480) - sixteen conveyors, the kernel clock 520 MHz, the memory clock 1.08 GHz.
-Radeon X850 Pro (R480) - twelve conveyors, the kernel clock 520 MHz, the memory clock 1.08 GHz.
-Radeon X800 XL (R430) - sixteen conveyors, the 256 MB memory, the clock rates for the kernel is 400 MHz and for the memory is 1 GHz.
-Radeon X800 (R430): twelve conveyors, 128 MB, the kernel clock 400 MHz, the memory clock 700MHz. This is a budget version and its cost is about two hundreds dollars.
These models will replace existing video cards PCI-Express X800 which are still present on the market, such as:
-Radeon X800XT PE (R423) - sixteen conveyors, 256 MB, the clock for kernel 520 MHz, the memory 1.12 GHz.
-Radeon X800 XT (R423) - sixteen conveyors, 256 MB, the clock for kernel 520 MHz and the clock for the memory 1 GHz
-Radeon X800 Pro (R423) - twelve conveyors, 256 MB, the clock for kernel 47 MHz, the clock for the memory 950 MHz.
-Radeon X800 SE (R423) - eight conveyors, 128/256 MB, clock for kernel 425 MHz, memory clock 800 MHz.
New video cards provide some technical improvements. Hence, the performance of FFP (T&L) emulation was increased. In the older versions the R3XX was worse for Radeon cards than for NVIDIA chips. The reason is an absence of special hardware blocks for the lightening calculation. This technology enforced the T&L emulation for the first generations of NVIDIA chips. New releases of ATI video cards contain fixes for the T&L emulation, since many applications use it.