R600 3DMark06 bench and pics.

[[EOCF] Tim]

We saw some R600 cards at CeBIT but any form of photography is restricted as AMD is keeping a close watch making sure nothing is leaked outside. Nevertheless, we still managed to get some shots on the retail R600XTX (Radeon X2900 XTX) card. The frontal shot contains sensitive information so we can't show it here.

Just a recap of what we have told you before, R600XTX retail card is codenamed Dragonhead 2. It is a 12-layer card at 9.5" long with a max TDP of 240W. It is clocked at 800MHz on 80nm process technology, 512-bit memory interface and has 1GB GDDR4 memories onboard. It has 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe connectors but two 2x3 PCIe power can be used. Rumors surfaced over at CeBIT that the final product may be on 65nm if it can be produced in time with reasonable good yield. So far we have yet to get a confirmation that the first shipping R600 cards will be on 65nm but we can't rule out that there are experimental R600 chips at 65nm now. If our source is right, the yield at 65nm is poor at this point of time and expect a limited quantity of 20,000 pieces of R600XTX by middle of April.

Next, we got hold of some preliminary benchmarks figures of the R600 XTX card with core clock at 800MHz vs a GeForce 8800 GTX card. Using a Core 2 Extreme 2.93GHz processor on an Intel 975X board, the 3DMark06 score at 1600x1200 resolution is 97xx on the R600XTX compared to 95xx on the 8800GTX. Seems like R600XTX is running slightly faster than 8800GTX on the early release of drivers for R600. AMD is still working hard on the drivers and there are some more performance left to unlock. However, the DX10 benchmarking war between ATi and NVIDIA has not started yet. The targeted display driver version for launch in May is 8.361 or later (Catalyst 7.4 or 7.5).

Source : http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=4830

[CaptNKILL]

Heh, looks like a red 8800GTX to me. :p

[jAkUp]

Looks smaller than an 8800GTX to me, but it might just be the angle.

[Xion X2]

Well worth the 6 month wait... :bleh:

[yooyo]

All you need is to OC 8800GTX a bit and R600XTX is KO (I suppose R600XTX 80nm version is clocked to max).

[DRen72]

I would not be surprised one bit if ATi/AMD put this on shelves with better drivers out of the box than Nvidia has out for the 8800GTX cards. I'd easily trade 5% performance for better drivers, IQ, and stability. All these factors are yet to be proven. I guess we will see next month.

[Toss3]

I would not be surprised one bit if ATi/AMD put this on shelves with better drivers out of the box than Nvidia has out for the 8800GTX cards. I'd easily trade 5% performance for better drivers, IQ, and stability. All these factors are yet to be proven. I guess we will see next month.
Instead of trading performance you'll be trading money, as you gain 5% going from an 8800gtx to an r600. :)

[loafer87gt]

The guys at Rage3D say that this was an older 80nm version of the card running early alpha drivers, and that the faster clocked 65nm could hit as high as 20,000 (2X as fast!) with the final drivers.

Should be an exciting summer for the GPU wars.

[shabby]

he faster clocked 65nm could hit as high as 20,000 (2X as fast!) with the final drivers.

Pffft-hahahahaha funny!

[Buenamos]

Well worth the 6 month wait... :bleh:

I don't get comments like this. Some of you are making comments like ATI/AMD is late to the game. This is a dx10 card, there are no dx10 games even out yet so who cares? If anything, you're waiting 6 months for a bigger e-penis rather than actually using all of its functions.

[J-Mag]

If anything, you're waiting 6 months for a bigger e-penis rather than actually using all of its functions.

Well G80 is significantly faster than anything ATI/AMD has, so yeah they are late based on performance reasons alone. Anyway, it's not like we aren't using the card to its full capacity, we just aren't using it most efficiently yet.

[Xion X2]

The guys at Rage3D say that this was an older 80nm version of the card running early alpha drivers, and that the faster clocked 65nm could hit as high as 20,000 (2X as fast!) with the final drivers.


Typical fanboy talk.

(not you, Rage3D)

[Xion X2]

I don't get comments like this. Some of you are making comments like ATI/AMD is late to the game. This is a dx10 card, there are no dx10 games even out yet so who cares? If anything, you're waiting 6 months for a bigger e-penis rather than actually using all of its functions.

You have a point, but most of what will be played on this card is DX9, not DX10. The majority audience isn't going to go out and get Vista--especially with it performing so bad in gaming right now. And while there are a truckful of DX9 games already out, there are only around 10-20 DX10 games on the horizon that look to be out this year.

But I do agree that we won't know the entire story until the DX10 benchmarks are out. I was just commenting on what we do know at this point in time. And it's not looking good for ATi if the card doesn't perform much better in DX9 than G80, considering that will be the type of content that is played on it the most.

[Blacklash]

So that 700|2200 clocked 8900 is probably going to keep pace with this thing nicely.

Like others have said, I got the 8800 because it was the strongest single gpu card available with the best filtering as well. Nothing can match its performance or IQ currently. When DX10 is in swing I'll probably have an 8900 or whatever is the top dog at that time.

I hope the R600 does compete well with nVidia. Consumers will benefit from the competition.

[Red_Shift]

Originally Posted by Buenamos
I don't get comments like this. Some of you are making comments like ATI/AMD is late to the game. This is a dx10 card, there are no dx10 games even out yet so who cares? If anything, you're waiting 6 months for a bigger e-penis rather than actually using all of its functions.

This alone should make you understand why the comments:
Just a recap of what we have told you before, R600XTX retail card is codenamed Dragonhead 2. It is a 12-layer card at 9.5" long with a max TDP of 240W. It is clocked at 800MHz on 80nm process technology, 512-bit memory interface and has 1GB GDDR4 memories onboard.
...the 3DMark06 score at 1600x1200 resolution is 97xx on the R600XTX compared to 95xx on the 8800GTX.

Higher TDP, higher clock, wider mem interface, higher amount of memory, yet it just makes 200 more points than a 8800GTX? Efficiency has gone through the pipe. Ok, final drivers can make maybe more 500 points, still I'm not impressed, for a card that comes half-year later than 8800GTX.

[kevJ420]

why doesn't image quality matter to anyone besides me?

I guess because everyone knows ati isn't going to fix the problems they already have, which just screw up the whole thing for me, I don't know about any of you.

I'll be damn impressed if they get trilinear filtering and angle invariant af, and fp16 HW filtering. I also want to be able to force trilinear filtering in old games.

But since people only care about the benchmarks and b/c ati makes really dumb decisions, that won't ever happen. I think they actually totally want there to be aliasing on games played in their hardware. Nvidia 1/2 wants aliasing when games are played on their hardware.

What isn't fast enough about doom3 engine games when the frame rate is capped at 60 anyway? You could not only have the highest settings on 2 gtx in sli w/ doom3 engine games, but you could have 2.5-3x the image quality load on the "highest" current setting and it wouldn't go under 60fps (at least not much, and even if it did it would still be perfectly playable.)

I can't, for the life of me, comprehend why benchmark scores need to be higher.

Don't flame me, I'll never be able to comprehend why in any way.

I was just born to care about image quality and to be able to be satisfied with framerates of 60+ fps.

[J-Mag]

why doesn't image quality matter to anyone besides me?


Huh?

Everyone here thinks image quality matters. Guess what? Image Quality is a function of performance when it comes to increased resolution, AA, and AF samples.

[|MaguS|]

BWAHAHAHAHAHA

Nvidia -> :nutkick: <-AMD

[TG01]

ATI-> :nutkick: <- |Magus|

Fixed..

[|MaguS|]

Fixed..

Why because 200 points faster is such an amazing score? Lets not forget to take into consideration the cost difference that we will see if they even can produce enough of the cards to make it regularly available for people to purchase.

[Uberpwnage]

Funny thing is how little it takes to get 200 pts, I've had that much variation from one day to another, with the same system, same drivers. With some tweaking of registry files and cutting down on system processes, I could probably add 200 pts to my score. The question is has ATI tweaked this system as much as possible? or is this a base score with a clean installation?

[nopp0x00]

Funny thing is how little it takes to get 200 pts, I've had that much variation from one day to another, with the same system, same drivers. With some tweaking of registry files and cutting down on system processes, I could probably add 200 pts to my score. The question is has ATI tweaked this system as much as possible? or is this a base score with a clean installation?

No kidding. I can get a higher score just by overclocking. It makes you wonder what driver settings were used. An easy way to inflate the score in the past was through setting 'High Performance' mode in the drivers. I always run at High Quality in the drivers so my 3dmark06 score always is lower than most of the larger ones.

[Dazz]

The X2800 shown from VR Zone is the retail version and is slightly smaller then a 8800GTX

[a12ctic]

Woah, because we all know that 3d mark is a perfect representation of every game out there and supports dx10!!!:rolleyes:

[Xion X2]

I think they actually totally want there to be aliasing on games played in their hardware. Nvidia 1/2 wants aliasing when games are played on their hardware.

Yeah. Both ATi and Nvidia want games to look like #*(! on their cards.

What are you smoking?