When a new generation of GPUs arrive, ATi and Nvidia fight each other at every price level. In terms of sales, the real battles are between the cards that use affordable, mid-range GPUs. However, there's a point of pride to be won, lost or taken in seeing who can build the fastest, most expensive GPU. The stops are pulled out, value for money goes out of the window and the result is a giant brawny thug of a GPU with more grunt than a tribe of wild boars.
In ATi's case, its most beastly GPU is the Radeon X1800XT, which takes pride of place on the PCB of MSI's new RX1800XT. MSI has stuck to the ATi reference design, but unlike most reference designs, it isn't remotely restrained. The clock speeds are brutal, with the GPU running at 625MHz and the 512MB of GDDR3 memory at 750MHz (1.5GHz effective).
The cooler is a giant dual-slot affair, which provides active cooling for the RAM as well as the GPU. At full speed, the fan sounds like a pair of vacuum cleaners on honeymoon. Thankfully, the fan is temperature-controlled, so it doesn't run at full speed all of the time.
As expected, the RX1800XT is very fast. The Radeon X1800XL and GeForce 7800 GT can both deal with Battlefield 2 at 1,600 x 1,200 with 4x AA and 8x AF, so not surprisingly, the RX1800XT strolls through the game with an average of 68fps. The RX1800XT's main competitor, the Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX 512, also has few problems with Battlefield 2, making round one a draw.
We saw an X1800XT in the Vadim PC last month, and it performed poorly in F.E.A.R., averaging 23fps at 1,600 x 1,200. F.E.A.R. is a tough game that punishes even the latest GPUs, but it turns out that the card's shabby performance wasn't entirely due to the game engine - ATi itself was partly to blame. ATi's drivers, up to Catalyst 5.11, contain optimisations for F.E.A.R., but due to a bug, these are turned off when FEAR.exe is launched. Just change the name of the FEAR.exe file, and the optimisations are turned back on. This done, the RX1800XT averaged 38fps at 1,600 x 1,200 with 4x AA and 8x AF. This is a great score for a single graphics card, but it isn't enough for a consistently smooth frame rate. However, the game was fine at 1,600 x 1,200 with 2x AA and 2x AF, and at 1,280 x 960 with 4x AA and 8x AF.
The RX1800XT is slightly quicker in F.E.A.R. than the 7800 GTX 512, which averaged 35fps at top settings. However, the MSI's advantage isn't enough to produce any real, discernible difference - the 7800 GTX 512 can still hack it at 1,600 x 1,200 with 2x AA and 2x AF - so again, round two is a draw.
ATi has well-documented problems with OpenGL games such as Doom 3 and Quake 4, so it's no surprise the RX1800XT is slower than the 7800 GTX 512. However, neither GPU can produce the goods at 1,600 x 1,200 with 4x AA and 8x AF.
At 1,280 x 1,024 with 4x AA and 8x AF, the RX1800XT's average of 52fps was fine, but its minimum of 25fps was on the slow side, although the game was smooth enough to enjoy. The 7800 GTX 512's minimum frame rate at these settings was 32fps, making round three a draw as well.
We couldn't overclock the RX1800XT using ATITool, although we could with the driver. This limited the potential overclock to 700MHz for the GPU and 800MHz (1.6GHz effective) for the memory. We aimed for these right off the bat, but the RX1800XT and its mighty cooler were unfazed. While these speeds are insanely fast, as a percentage, they're not too far above the RX1800XT's unhinged default speeds, so we didn't see a huge speed boost.
concluSION
There's virtually no difference between the RX1800XT and the 7800 GTX 512. Unfortunately, both find 1,600 x 1,200 with AA and AF hard work, which is disappointing considering their cost. To run games at this setting, you need SLI or CrossFire. At £417, the RX1800XT certainly isn't cheap and there's no denying that it's poor value for money, but if you want the fastest Radeon money can buy then for the moment, this is it.
Author: Phil Hartup
Custom PC Online