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ATI RADEON X1900XTX is evidently a new 3D graphics king. That's indisputable and out of any doubts. Taking into account that GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB is not available on sale yet (but NVIDIA promises to start shipments), if the X1900 XTX appears on the shelves right after the announcement, it will become the most wanted product for fans and enthusiasts, who are ready to spend any sum of money for the most powerful accelerator.
The new top product from NVIDIA must be launched in early March. We don't know anything about it so far, the battle will come up with a bang in early spring. As for now, the round is won by the Canadian company. I hope that the company will keep the promise to start sales right after the announcement and that such an opportunity will be given not only to customers in Canada and the USA, but also in Russia.
What concerns the expedience of the new 3:1 formula accepted in Toronto (computing:texturing) - we have grounds to expect it bear some fruit. We can see that the newer the games, the more requirements they pose to shader computations. And vice versa, the older the game, the paler the efficiency of the X1900 XTX. It's obviously foolish to buy such a card for playing Quake3 or Serious Sam 1.
I also want to note that the efficiency of Shaders 3.0 in terms of (dynamic) branching is manifold higher in the X1900 XTX than in the competitor from NVIDIA, which may also have a positive effect in future games. But there is still one question remaining: how well will SM 3.0 be used in the light of the nearest appearance of DX Next (MS Vista), when games and engines have to be developed in a totally different way. Low dynamic branching performance in Shaders 3.0 in NVIDIA, as the main and only recent owner of these technologies, led to reluctant introduction of SM 3.0 into games. Even despite the texturing features in vertex pipelines, which are not available in the X1xxx. The time will show who was right.
ATI RADEON X1900XT is probably a more interesting product, differing from its elder brother by just 25 MHz of the core (and its memory frequency is lower by 50 MHz), while its price is lower by $100! That's why we have seen it many times outperform the 7800 GTX 512MB, even being cheaper. The rest of the above said can apply to this product as well.
In conclusion I want to congratulate the Canadian company once again with a new successful product and the 3D Graphics throne.
But don't forget that it's a challenge throne, not eternal :) Who wins the next round? We'll be the first to inform our readers! Always stay with us! :)
