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Videoshader

Here are a few shots demonstrating videoshader technology.

Classical interleave on the left. Competitor solution in the middle. ATI solution on the right. The Gixxer does not look half bad. Luckily it is not the atrocious 2005 model

Sound Tests

Noise levels are something that we are always concerned about but not something that we necessarily always touch base on. When something is very loud or very soft we usually make a comment to that effect. However, the X700 Pro that was unusually loud. In fact I would say that it is the loudest cards that we have had in the lab in a long time. How loud is it? Well let's say that last year when we measured the noise from the 5950 it came in at around 50.8 decibels while the 9800 Pro was roughly 46 DB. Our test area is a bit on the noisy side with a Thermaltake 480 TWV PSU but the X700 Pro was clearly heard above ambient. The idle level is around 61.3 DB while the X700 Pro under load comes in at 65.4 DB . This is a lot louder than the ATI cards we're usually accustomed to. The X700 Pro according to our testing is roughly 4 times as loud as a 9800 Pro. As a point of reference take a look at this page from our affiliate TweakFactor. We're at the busy street noise level.

Conclusions

The X700 Pro has already proved itself to be a very fast part. It is not quite on par with the 6600GT in every case but it makes a good run at it being only the mainstream solution instead of the enthusiast solution that the X700 XT is destined to be. The X700 Pro offers pretty compelling performance across our entire benchmark set but as usual, ATI usually takes second place behind Nvidia in OpenGL applications and this is especially noticeable in DOOM 3. In Direct 3D however, the story changes. We see very close performance in many games and in most of the others the X700 Pro is not too far off from the 6600GT also. At higher resolutions with AA/AF both the Nvidia and ATI mainstream parts are hampered by the 128-bit memory interface.

As we saw with the 5700 Ultra and the 9600XT last year, both ATI and Nvidia are here to scrap it out and the relatively tight performance from both the X700 Pro and the 6600GT will please consumers. It is hard to believe that 9800XT level performance is available in sub-200$ video cards now. Gamers will also be happy with the number of choices that have - on the ATI side it will be a hard sell between the X700 XT and the X700 Pro at the 199$ price point. We already see that there are games pushing the 256MB memory limit and beyond and this trend will likely continue with the advent of Half-Life 2 in the coming weeks. Gamers will need to make a choice between visual quality or faster overall speed but with reduced texture sizes.

Again, it is already shaping up to be an interesting fall especially for gamers on a budget who cannot justify four or five bills for a higher end card. Stay tuned for a few more surprises later this week