LOSTCIRCUITS

The X1600 family of graphics card is based on the R530 GPU, manufactured using a 90 nm process and featuring a total of 157 million transistors on 132 mm². A total of four different versions is listed, comprising the X1600GT and the X1600 Pro, both with 256 and 512 MB of onboard memory. ATI's description of the memory bus interface is nebulous at best, in that the respective product pge lists a "a 256-bit ring-bus memory controller" (Source: ATI) which is in confict with the Sapphire product information showing a 128 bit memory interface. The explanation is actually rather simple: since the ring-bus uses two unidirectional links internally, the internal bus width is doubled as we described in our article covering the x1900XTX architecture. In other words, the statement needs to be read as "a memory controller tied to a 2 x 128 bit ring-bus"..... marketing at its best.

Or not quite: The X1600 architecture is advertised as featuring a 12 pipeline architecture. This is true since the R530 features 12 internal pixel processors, however, at the backend, three of these pixel processors are combined into a single output with a single texturing unit which leaves the R530 with the capability of delivering a total of four pixels per clock. To be complete, the R530 features five vertex processing units to provide the geometry backbone.

Note the auxiliary power connector in the floppy drive power form factor. An appropriate Y-splitter cable is provided with the bundle.

In the case of the X1600 XT, clocked at 590 MHz, this results in 2950 MVertices per second and 2360 MPixel/sec peak fill rate for single textures, for the X1600 Pro with a core clock of 500 MHz, the equivalent numbers are 2500 MVertices/sec and 2000 MPixel/sec. For multitextured output, the situation is a bit more complex, in theory one should assume high efficiency use of the of the peak fill rate but the bottleneck of a single texture for each three pixel processors still prevails and this could cause some interesting issues in highly complex texture applications.

X1600 Tech Specs Compared

• *as outlined above, three pixel processor units each are tied into a common backend with a single texturing unit
• ** memory data rates vary from one vendor to another

Next Page:    => The Bundle =>