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The Differences
Now, we shall take a look at the differences between these two cards in this comparison :
|
Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB |
Radeon X800 Pro |
|
| Architecture |
R350/R360 |
R420 |
| Manufacturing Process | 0.15 Micron |
0.13 Micron |
| Transistor Count | 115 Million |
160 Million |
| DirectX Support | 9.0 |
9.0 |
| Vertex Pipelines | 4 |
6 |
| Vertex Shader Version | 2.0 |
2.0 |
| Pixel / Texture Pipelines | 8 x 1 |
12 x 1 |
| Pixel Shader Version | 2.0 |
2.0 |
| Core Speed | 380 MHz |
475 MHz |
| Fill Rate | 3040 MTexels/s |
5700 MTexels/s |
| Memory Bus Width | 256-bits |
256-bits |
| Memory Type | DDR/DDR II |
GDDR3 |
| Memory Speed | 340-350 MHz |
475 MHz |
| Memory Bandwidth | 21.76-22.40 GB/s |
30.4 GB/s |
As you can see, the R420 core is based on the 0.13 micron manufacturing process. This allowed ATI to fit more transistors into the core without increasing its size.
ATI also managed to bump the core speed up to 475MHz, 95MHz higher than in the Radeon 9800 Pro. With 12 pixel pipelines and a core speed of 475MHz, the theoretical fill rate increased by 87%, almost doubling the fill rate of a Radeon 9800 Pro.
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ATI also discarded the DDR memory chips and used in the improved GDDR3 memory chips instead. The GDDR3 chips boast a much higher clock speed as well as lower running voltage. These memory chips also have reduced thermal output, which is why no heat sinks or heat spreaders were needed on the new X800 cards.
