ATI’s Radeon X1900 Video Card Series Part II

Conclusion

In our second look at the ATI Radeon X1900 series we again see that ATI has delivered a product that competes and even outperforms the 7800GTX 512. At this price point enthusiasts don’t spend $500+ to get a card that plays last years games well, this is the cutting edge and a major concern are those new upcoming features.

The latest buzz word is High Dynamic Range (HDR) and when it comes to HDR nobody does it like ATI. Judging by Serious Sam 2 there is no comparison between any ATI or nVida card, the X1900 line is the obvious choice. For HDR+AA in all situations right now there is no other choice than ATI because this is something not supported on any Nvidia product. Nvidia will need to step it up with their upcoming releases but rumors are that the only changes are speed increases. It will be interesting to see what move nVidia makes next, but knowing the people at nVidia they know what has to be done.

The final concern on these high end cards is pricing. Neither the ATI X1900 CrossFire and nVidia 7800GTX 512 cards are cheap.

nVidia 7800GTX 512 SLI Pricing:

eVga 7800GTX 512 — $899.00 each (mWave)
Grand Total: $1798.00

ATI X1900 CrossFire Pricing:

ATI RADEON X1900 CrossFire Edition — $599.99 (pricing)
ATI RADEON X1900 XT — $516.66(pricing)
Grand Total: $1116.65

After lookng at the ~$680 price difference between and the performance numbers in the benchmarking we performed the price versus performance value it clearly lies in ATI’s favor. With the X1900XTX and X1900XT widely available at or below MSRP I have to wonder how the few Nvidia 7800GTX 512’s trickling into the channel are still selling at $899 ($910 this past week on ebay).

Brian’s thoughts:

With a lower price than the competition, better availability, better performance in most every game, and the best feature set on the market it is clear that ATI has stepped up to the plate and put one out of the yard (Yes, we are talking baseball) with their X1900 series.