HIS X1900XTX reference card, Asus EAX1800XT Top compared

HERE IT IS right this afternoon, following a shipment delay, and the NDA veils, which I never signed, are lifted, we look at the first batch of what are right now the fastest PC 3-D graphics cards - the ATI X1900XTX reference design.

In this case, the package comes from HIS in Hong Kong (though you may want to look forward to their custom IceQ-cooled version next month instead), and I compare it against what is the most advanced (cooling-wise at least) X1800XT card, the Asus EAX1800XT Top: the rock-solid black monster with top-notch cooling using an external power supply to feed the card well even if the PC main PSU is not up to the task.

This makes for an interesting comparison as basically the two cards should be able to run at exactly same clocks at the upper end of their overclocking capability, or for that matter in every-day operation: the 650 / 1550 MHz clock default for X1900XTX is awfully close to 650 / 1550 MHz stable operation rate for most X1800XT cards, and this Asus can do 700 / 1600, too.

So, let's do an apples-to-apples comparison in the newest NovaBackYard reference system, the dual-core 4.27 GHz Presler on Intel D975XBX board with the usual 1 GB of Corsair 5400UL DDR2-533 RAM at 3-2-2-6 latency. WinXP SP1 with newest DX9c December update and even newester Catalyst 6.1 runs 3DMark05 and the brand new 3DMark06. Both cards run at around 688 MHz GPU / 1588 MHz RAM (take these are the luckiest numbers I could settle on)... here's the tally!

GPU	X1900XTX	X1800XTT
3DMark06
SXGA	5836	5012
UXGA	5183	3971
3DMark05
XGA	10658	9517
SXGA	9642	8091
UXGA	8754	6939
UXGA 4AA	7193	6105

As you can see, despite the same GPU and RAM clocks, and identical graphics card board design by the way, the benchmark performance differences are obvious across the board: those 48 pixel shaders do help in both 3DMark05 and 06, across all resolutions and settings I used. So, the R580 is noticeably better in 3DMarks across the board, with performance delta varying between 12% and 20% in this early round - those tripled pixel shaders help the.

Keep in mind I only ran the card for past three hours, so no tweaking except the clock, or any other play. I'm awaiting the updated drivers that would be more tuned for these cards, as well as, of course, second-round edition with better cooling and, hopefully, using the 1.1 ns GDDR3, able to break the 700 / 1600 barrier in stable use without extreme measures. µ

HIS X1900XTX

Asus X1800XT