Radeon X1600 XT, formerly known as RV530, is ATI's latest mid-range graphics. We’ve got a reference sample for this model from ATI, so we will compare its performance to other members of the Radeon X1000 series, to previous ATI chips and also with competing products from nVidia. The main issue with this video card is that it will reach the market only in December!
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Figure 1: Radeon X1600 XT reference board.
We’ve posted a complete article explaining what’s new on Radeon X1000 series, so we won’t be repeating here everything we have already explained there. The big news is that all chips from this series are finally supporting Shader 3.0 model (DirectX 9.0c).
So far ATI announced two chips on Radeon X1600 family: X1600 XT and X1600 Pro. X1600 XT runs at 590 MHz and accesses its memory at 1.38 GHz (22.08 GB/s) and it will reach the market only on November 30th, 2005 at a suggested price of USD 199 for the 128 MB version and USD 249 for the 256 MB version. X1600 Pro runs at 500 MHz, accesses its memory at 780 MHz (12.48 GB/s) and will also arrive at the market on on November 30th, 2005, at a suggested price of USD 149 for the 128 MB version and USD 199 for the 256 MB version.
Our review will help us to say what are exactly the competitors to Radeon X1600 XT because we can’t figure this out by simply observing the price ranges. Actually, pricing for this series is a little bit confusing: Radeon X1600 Pro 256 MB will cost the same thing as Radeon X1600 XT 128 MB. This can be really misleading to the average user.
You can see in our tutorial “ATI Chips Comparison table” the difference between this new chip and the other chips from ATI, while on our tutorial “nVidia Chips Comparison Table” you can compare it to its competitors from nVidia.
You can see the Radeon X1600 XT reference board on Figures 2 and 3.
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Figure 2: ATI Radeon X1600 XT reference board.
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Figure 3: ATI Radeon X1600 XT reference board, back view.
Let’s now take a closer look on the Radeon X1600 XT reference board from ATI.
