# X1600 Pro 4 pipelines activated?



## Areios (Jun 29, 2006)

Hello to all and gratz for a very usefull forum  

I bought recently a Sapphire x1600Pro 512MB AGP graphics card.
Im using the ATITool 0.25 Beta 14 and Catalyst version 6.05. My question is that Atitool informs that 4 pipelines are active but i know that the card's architecture consists of 12 pipelines.
Am i doing something wrong, do i need to change anything? or is this normal?

thx for listening


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## nick_1992 (Jul 1, 2006)

its perfectly normal mine says that to


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## TXcharger (Jul 20, 2006)

ok so its totally normal right?, but is it running at 12 pipes? o also is i am about to DL the beta .25 of ATi Tool and i was just wondering if i was goin to be able to overclock my card now because for some reason it wasnt allowing me to


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## Chewy (Jul 20, 2006)

I had the same type of prob with ati tool 25 ati tool.24 told me that I had 12 though. 

Yeah I guess its normal cause they are there, just .25 dont see ti or somthing.


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## Cybie1111 (Jul 20, 2006)

The ATi X1600 Series has 12 shader processors, not pipelines. There are 4 pipes with 3 shader units in each pipe.


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## TXcharger (Jul 20, 2006)

Cybie1111 said:
			
		

> The ATi X1600 Series has 12 shader processors, not pipelines. There are 4 pipes with 3 shader units in each pipe.



r u serious! omg im gonna send it back to newegg, it said it had 12 pipes and thats the whole reason i got it over the X1300, well if this turns out to be true im getting the X800GTO i think


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## zekrahminator (Jul 20, 2006)

It says 4 pipes because ATItool is good at detecting PIXEL PIPELINES. The X1600 series is tricky because they have 4 pixel pipelines and 12 vertex pipelines, which makes no sense to me, but makees games run really pretty. Oh well...I'm happily using my X850XT.


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## TXcharger (Jul 20, 2006)

well i ran ati tool .24 also and it said 4 active, then installed .25 and it still says 4 active


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## mikeownage (Jul 20, 2006)

so an ati x850 is better then an ati x1600?


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## zekrahminator (Jul 20, 2006)

If you're not obsessed with SM3, yes . 16 pixel pipelines, 16 vertex pipelines, 6 vertex shaders SM2 520Mhz core vs. 4 pixel pipelines, 12 vertex pipelines, and 5 vertex shaders SM3 500mhz core lol. And the best part is, X850XT's are getting cheap...you can get a newegg refurb for about...$120? Just need a PCIeX16 slot lol.


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## 15th Warlock (Jul 20, 2006)

The X1600 has 4 ROPs (otherwise known as render operator units), 12 pixel shaders and 5 vertex shaders. (not 12 vertex pipelines ) Atitool is telling you the amount of ROPs available in your card.

The term pixel pipeline is no longer used for the X1x00 series, as each ROP can have multiple shader units. Take the X1900 for example, it only has 16 ROPs, but it can perform 48 pixel shader operations per cycle, making it faster than the 7800GTX's 24 ROPs, 24 pixel shaders when it comes to rendering pixel shader intensive games.

Ati chose to put way more pixel shaders in their GPUs when they realized future games would be more pixel shader intensive than vertex shader intensive. This will change once the R600 with its "unified shader" architecture is released, and game programers will be able to decide how to put its (rumored) 64 shaders to use with the right balance of pixel, vertex and geometry shaders, once DX10 becomes the norm.

In terms of raw performance, the X850 (16 ROPs, 16 pixel shaders and 6 vertex shaders) is waaaay faster than the X1600, it doesn't support some newer rendering technologies, but with DX10 cards just around the corner, it shouldn't matter that much.


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## TXcharger (Jul 20, 2006)

im gonna send my HIS X1600 back for a Sapphire X800GTO because of this problem, if u got it from newegg and u wanna do the same u might wanna do it fast because there probaly gonna change it to 4 pixel pipelines soon


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## zekrahminator (Jul 20, 2006)

15th Warlock said:
			
		

> The X1600 has 4 ROPs (otherwise known as render operator units), 12 pixel shaders and 5 vertex shaders. (not 12 vertex pipelines ) Atitool is telling you the amount of ROPs available in your card.


...Oh .


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## strick94u (Jul 21, 2006)

15th Warlock said:
			
		

> The X1600 has 4 ROPs (otherwise known as render operator units), 12 pixel shaders and 5 vertex shaders. (not 12 vertex pipelines ) Atitool is telling you the amount of ROPs available in your card.
> 
> The term pixel pipeline is no longer used for the X1x00 series, as each ROP can have multiple shader units. Take the X1900 for example, it only has 16 ROPs, but it can perform 48 pixel shader operations per cycle, making it faster than the 7800GTX's 24 ROPs, 24 pixel shaders when it comes to rendering pixel shader intensive games.
> 
> ...


again my 9800 pro was faster than my x1600 pro was so an 850 is way beyound faster


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