Wednesday, September 7th 2005
R520 spy pics
HKEPC has the R520 core picture (here), we have the full PCB.
The card you are seeing is the R520 XT. It is a dual slot solution and uses a cooler similar to the X850. ATI will also offer one-slot versions which will have less performance.
The will only be PCI-Express boards. AGP versions are definitely not planned.
Internally the chip will use 512-bit memory transfers. However, the external memory interface will still be 256-bit - expect some nice marketing from ATI regarding that "feature".
Right now the product lineup is:
R520 XT
In the thread at HKEPC linked above (translated) "it is likely that the ATI R520 will change its name to ATI Radeon X1800 series, the estimated release date for the ATI X900 series is early October".
One of these two names is correct my source says, he didn't want to reveal which one though. The October release date is correct.
The will only be PCI-Express boards. AGP versions are definitely not planned.
Internally the chip will use 512-bit memory transfers. However, the external memory interface will still be 256-bit - expect some nice marketing from ATI regarding that "feature".
Right now the product lineup is:
R520 XT
- 512MB RAM
- ~600 MHz core
- ~650-700 MHz memory
- Dual slot cooling
- Dual DVI
- 256MB RAM
- ~500 MHz core
- ~500 MHz memory
- Single slot cooling
- VGA + DVI
- 256MB RAM
- ~450 MHz core
- ~450 MHz memory
- Single slot cooling
- VGA + DVI
- 256MB RAM
- ~600 MHz core
- ~650-700 MHz memory
- Dual slot cooling
- VGA + DVI
In the thread at HKEPC linked above (translated) "it is likely that the ATI R520 will change its name to ATI Radeon X1800 series, the estimated release date for the ATI X900 series is early October".
One of these two names is correct my source says, he didn't want to reveal which one though. The October release date is correct.
150 Comments on R520 spy pics
-Dan
I think I will keep my 7800GTX's, never been a fan of ATI, never will be. I think that the 512MB of RAM is ridiculous, just make us pay more money for something we dont need / cant utilize, BLEH.!
-Dan
nuff said
tough i won't be noticeable until Windows vista i think
greetz
Even if you set it at that mode with less than 512 MB and it loads fine, it is in essence using High Quality and not Ultra Quality.
Hook your card up to an interposer and protocol analyzer and see for yourself. Alot of people like to think that they actually use Ultra Quality mode when in fact it is defaulted to High.
256 MB VRAM = Compressed lower quality textures (High Quality even when you set it to Ultra Quality)
512 MB VRAM = Uncompressed high quality textures (TRUE high quality)
Cheers.
When Id was questioned about this weird behaviour, a programmer who worked in that game said that Doom3 doesn't load the whole 512 MBs of textures for a single frame, it's just that in certain parts of any given map the game has to dump the textures and load new ones when using a 256 MBs video card, thus, slowing the framerates a little bit, but the difference is almost imperceptible...
One game that benefits greatly from having 512 MBs of video ram is Half Life 2, as some benchmarks show a noticeable improvement when compared to using a 256 MBs video card, but as framerates in HL2 already are very high, you won't notice any difference during gameplay...
Ati Forever Nvidia Is Shit!!!!!
reality, if your really a computer fan you will have a new pc every 6 months, especially when you play games on a 23 inch apple display @ 1920x1200!!!!! I cant even play doom3 100% with a 3.73EE and a x850xt PE
PS nvidia sucks so bad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I heard that the R520 will use some thing called a 'Rialto' chipset that will allow the card to run on AGP and PCI-ex. This would help out anybody such as myself who dont want to haveto buy a new socket 775 CPU and PCI ex board. And before you argue that if I've got the money for a r520 why not cough up the money for a new board and CPU, well consider this: the r520 will not be as expensive as everyone is guessing, the 7800GTX is already down as low as 430 USD so the r520 would need to be at a similar price to be competitive, if not cheaper seeing as it may be a little less powerful, plus Nvidia are already talking about lowering the 7800GTX to 400 USD to stifle the r520 sales when it is released. Suddenly the r520 isn't looking so expensive.