r & d BREAKING DOWN TECH —PRESENT AND FUTURE
56 MA XIMUMPC MARCH 2006
A
lthough the dust has barely
settled on ATI’s messy
launch of the X1800
series of videocards,
the company is ready to
introduce a whole new
set of high-end GPUs:
the X1900 series.
This development
couldn’t have happened soon enough
for ATI, considering that the company’s
current top-of-the-line videocard—the
X1800 XT—doesn’t come close to beat-
ing nVidia’s 512MB 7800 GTX in most
benchmarks. If nVidia’s edge can be
attributed in signifi cant measure to the
7800 GTX’s 24 pixel-pipeline architec-
ture, versus the X1800 XT’s 16 pixel
pipelines, it will be interesting to see how
ATI’s X1900 series fares. It still has just
16 pixel pipes, but it sports 48 pixel-
shader units—like the 7800 GTX.
ATI says the increased number of
pixel-shader units will not only enable the
chip to handle more pixel-shader opera-
tions simultaneously (166 billion opera-
tions per second, compared with just 60
billion/sec on the X1800), but that the
new processor can also handle longer
and more complex shader instructions
than the previous generation.
The Pixel Shader 3.0-compliant X1900
will be available in two base confi gura-
tions. The top-of-the-line X1900 XTX
will feature a 650MHz engine clock, and
its 512MB of GDDR3 memory will be
clocked at 775MHz. This card will be
priced at $650. The core on the more
mainstream X1900 XT (if you consider a
$550 videocard to be mainstream) will run
at 625MHz and its 512MB of memory will
run at 722.5MHz. Ever sensitive to ques-
tions about availability at launch, an ATI
spokesperson told us that even the high-
end board will be available “in quantities
at launch that we think will be greater than
those of nVidia’s 512MB GeForce 7800
GTX during its entire life cycle.”
ATI assured us that both an X1900CrossFire Edition and an All in Wonder
X1900 will also be available in volume at
launch. Curiously, the GPU and memory
clock speeds on the X1900 CrossFire
Edition ($600) will match those of the
slightly slower X1900 XT, as opposed
to the X1900 XTX. The videocards in a
CrossFire system can run at asymmetric
clock speeds, however, so the faster
1900 XTX card won’t need to throttle
down to match the slower CrossFire
Edition card. The $500 All in Wonder
implementation, meanwhile, will feature
a single-slot cooler, made possible by
its relatively sedate clock speeds of
500MHz for both core
and memory.ATI Radeon X1900
The Red team is preparing a second salvo of
90nm graphics processors, including new
All in Wonder and CrossFire editionsPreview
ENEMY TERRITORY:
QUAKE WARSQuake 2 meets Battlefield 2, with a
dash of Doom 3Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has become our
most-anticipated game of the Quake franchise
ever since it was unveiled at last year’s E3 trade
show. We sat down with the game’s designers for
a multi-hour briefi ng, and came away with high
hopes for the online frag-fest.
Not familiar with Quake Wars? Here’s a
little background: It’s an online-only multiplayer
game being developed by Splash Damage (the
creator of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, a free,
online-only, multiplayer game set in the Return to
Castle Wolfenstein universe). Quake Wars will be a
strategic combat game—a la Battlefi eld 2—that
pits the half-man, half-machine Strogg against the
human Earth Defense Force (EDF). When you join a
server, you’ll decide whether you want to be part of
the EDF or play as Strogg, choose from one of fi ve
player classes, and then jump into the fray. Splash
Damage doesn’t envision any single-player com-
ponent, although it might create a limited mode
with bots for training and practice.
Quake Wars will feature persistent ranks, in-
game voice chat, gigantic maps, and both day and
night missions, just like BF2. But whereas the action
in BF2 involves real-world weapons and enemies,
Quake Wars will deliver a sci-fi experience. The
Strogg and EDF soldiers couldn’t be more different
from each other, and each force will have dissimilar
capabilities, vehicles, and defense structures. We’re
especially looking forward to playing as Strogg—
they pilot hover vehicles and stab their needle-like
appendages through their enemies’ necks.
The game will use a modifi ed version
of the Doom 3 engine, featuring id’s new
MegaTexture technology to render massive
outdoor areas—something the Doom 3 engine
isn’t capable of. Quake Wars is scheduled to
ship this year, so we hope to be impaling EDF
weenies in the very near future.MINI PREVIEW
ATI hopes to get a second chance to
steal the performance crown from
nVidia when the company introduces
its 48 pixel-shader Radeon X1900
series of videocards.500MHz for both core
and memory.ATI assures us it’ll ship large quantities
of the Radeon X1900 CrossFire Edition
(shown here), All in Wonder X1900, and
two other Radeon X1900 SKUs, all on
the same day.lthough the dust has barely
settled on ATI’s messycouldn’t have happened soon enough
for ATI, considering that the company’sATI Radeon X1900
The Red team is preparing a second salvo of
90nm graphics processors, including new
All in Wonder and CrossFire editions