Zowel bij FiringSquad als bij good old Anand zijn net hands-on previews online gekieperd van ATi's nieuwste videokaart gebaseerd op de totaal nieuwe Rage6C core, de Radeon. De chip gebruikt een 0.18 micron procede en heeft 2 rendering pipelines die elk 3 textures per keer kunnen verwerken. Verder is de kloksnelheid 183MHz en heeft-ie een fill rate van 366Mpixels/s oftewel 1.1Gtexel/s. Met behulp van HyperZ technologie die ervoor zorgt dat sommige niet-zichtbare pixels achterwege worden gelaten kan dat echter oplopen naar 1.3Gtexels/s. Net als nVidia met de GeForce deed krijgt de Radeon verder ook een T&L unit mee die ATi de Charisma Engine noemt. Deze kan 30 million triangles per seconde verwerken en ondersteunt verder nog extra features zoals 4-matrix skinning en keyframe animation. Voor het geheugen is er gekozen voor 32MB of 64MB 366MHz DDR RAM. Later dit jaar staat een 32MB SDR versie gepland.
In de praktijk betekent dit alles dat de ATi Radeon qua snelheid tussen de GeForce2 en de Voodoo5 bengelt. Voor de videobewerkers en DVD freaks onder ons is de kaart wel errug compleet uitgerust dus voor hen is de Radeon ideaal. Hier een hap uit de conclusie van de preview van AnandTech:
With all it has going for it, the Radeon most definitely still has some problems. By far the biggest let down of the Radeon 64MB DDR is its poor 16-bit performance. ATI argues that people are really not playing in 16-bit anymore, and this could very well be the case for many out there, however it would be nice to know that if you need it, 16-bit performance is there. Radeon owners will most likely find themselves always running in 32-bit color primarily as a result of the poor 16-bit rendering. This is fortunate due to the fact that the Radeon's 16-bit speed is essentially the same as its 32-bit speed.
The compatibility problems with some VIA chipsets may cause headaches for some users; luckily there are ways to solve the problem. Also, the drivers are still not up to par with the rest of the competition. Finally, more FSAA options would have been nice so that the user could find the best image/performance setting. Too bad that we are limited to FSAA 4x.
Is the Radeon 64MB DDR for you? Well, that depends on what you want to do. If you want a fast, full featured card, it seems that the Radeon is the best thing out there. It offers many of the advanced video features that we have come to expect from ATI while giving us some unexpected performance. The Radeon is also for those out there who are sure that high resolution 32-bit color is the only way to go. In a way it is nice that the Radeon scores top card at these settings, as scenes do look best here. The only downside is that if newer games come along that may be too powerful for the Radeon, one would be stuck playing the game about the same speed regardless of color depth. This is unlike other video cards out there, that show substantial performance increases when switching from 32-bit to 16-bit color.
Thanks [CoSD]Headbanger, teus en Edward voor de tip.
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