PowerColor X1650 PRO aka X1600 XT

RADEON X1600 XT in different pants? That’s right. One of the things that may lead you to buy this card is the retail price of $99 green — supposedly. Pretty sekzy if you ask considering the price of X1600 XT holds tight at $110-140 depending on the vendor. If all goes well, you should be able to pick one of those boards in mid September.

Introduction

Back in January this year I’ve reviewed X1600 XT and X1300 from PowerColor. We now have end of August and some of you’ve been curiously waiting for new middle class cards to come out of ATI. I don’t usually start off reviews from disappointments, but in this case it will be just that. You have to realize, RADEONs X1650 and X1300 XT are also known as RADEON X1600 XT and X1600 PRO. There are few differences here and there, but for the major portion, it’s old stuff we’ve seen from Q1.

The card I have today is a PowerColor X1650 PRO. It’s not a high-end product, more like a middle class GPU with newer / lower price tag. Just as X1600 XT it’s got the same pipeline configuration, 10 MHz higher core clock / memory and is manufactured using 80 nanometer process. No GDDR4 that we’ve seen on X1950 although it’s technically possible. This RV535 uses 128-bit GDDR3 modules and supports the same technology back from Q1 2006. I will reveal more details as you read this article.

Should you require more detailed information on X1K please revisit our article: The X1000 series – ATI goes SM3.0

PowerColor is a consumer brand focused on providing cutting-edge graphics card products to retail customers. Our goal for the Tul brand is to be the industry’s number one provider of technology product solutions. Our goal for the PowerColor brand is to be the world’s number one brand of graphics cards. PowerColor is in effect owned by Tul Corporation, however the brands are operated independently of each other.

VPU Specifications

As with every new generation of GPUs the feature set becomes larger and more complex. The newly introduced X1K family of products is exactly what we have here. Most importantly, the X1000 line now sports Shader Model 3.0 which has been available from NVIDIA for over a year now. The X1600 GPU is similarly designed as X1800, but with few important differences. It uses 128-bit memory bus and features different pipeline architecture. The card boasts 4 pipelines (known as ROPs, Render Output Pipelines). Do not get confused (as I did), I’ll explain.

ROPs are actual pixel pipelines. Shader pipelines or pixel shaders consist of ROPs and fragment pipelines. With X1600 / X1650, each ROP consists of 3 pixel shaders (giving us 12 PS units) and 8 Z-samples per clock. In other words X1600’s / X1650’s pipeline configuration is as follows:

• 12 PS units
• 4 ROPs
• 4 TMUs (1 TMU per pipeline)
• 8 Z-samples per clock

The biggest of all changes is the introduction of what ATi calls Ultra-Threading Dispatch Processor and Ring Bus (old SMARTSHADER). Without going into much detail here, the dispatch processor (as the name implies) routes or relegates the workload to four pixel shader cores (also known as Quads). Each quad consists of four mini-pixel processors. The process between them is called threading and means:

• Large Scale Multi-threading
  • Hundreds of simultaneous threads across multiple cores
  • Each thread can perform up to 6 different shader instructions on 4 pixels per clock cycle
• Small Thread sizes
  • 16 pixels per thread in Radeon X1800
  • Fine-grain parallelism
• Fast Branch Execution
  • Dedicated units handle flow control with no ALU overhead
• Large Multi-Ported Register arrays
  • Enables fast thread switching

Now the Ring Bus technology. This isn’t Marry-go-around or anything like that — well sort of. The bus itself consists of two 128-bit rings which run in the opposite direction. This way routing latencies are reduced to a bare minimum and clockrate scaling is far more efficient. Among other things we have:

• New cache design – fully associative for more optimal performance
• Improved Hyper-Z – better compression and hidden surface removal
• Programmable arbitration logic – maximizes memory efficiency and can be upgraded via software

Video card	PowerColor X1650 PRO	PowerColor X1600 XT	PowerColor X1300
GPU (256-bit)	RV535	RV530	RV515
Chip Architecture	.08µ (TSMC fab)	.09µ (TSMC fab)	.09µ (TSMC fab)
Transistors	~157 Million	~157 Million	~100 Million
Memory Architecture	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit
Frame Buffer Size	256 MB GDDR-3	256 MB GDDR-3	256 MB GDDR-3
Pipeline architecture1	4:12:4:5	4:12:4:5	4:4:4:2
TMU(s) per Pipeline	1	1	1
Engine	Ultra-threaded	Ultra-threaded	Ultra-threaded
Bus Type	PCI-e 16x	PCI-e 16x	PCI-e 16x
Core Clock	600 MHz	590 MHz	600 MHz
Memory Clock	1400 MHz	1380 MHz DDR	800 MHz DDR
RAMDACs	2x 400 MHz DACs	2x 400 MHz DACs	2x 400 MHz DACs
Memory Bandwidth	22.4 GB / sec	22.1 GB / sec	12.8 GB / sec
Pixel Fillrate	2.4 GPixels / sec	2.36 GPixels / sec	2.4 GPixels / sec
Texel Fillrate	2.4 GPixels / sec	2.36 GTexels / sec	2.4 GTexels / sec
DirectX Version	9.0c	9.0c	9.0c
Pixel Shader	3.0	3.0	3.0
Vertex Shader	3.0	3.0	3.0

The Card

PowerColor utilizes ATI reference design cooling system for all their cards. As with X1600 XT, there are no external power inputs — everything is powered from PCI-Express bus. One big difference is addition of ATI Rage Theatre chip with VIVO functionality.

Click a picture to see a larger view

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Focusing on the top image reveals the size of X1650 PRO. The die is covered by a reference ATI HSF with PowerColor sticker. Notice it’s a tad different than the one found on X1600 XT. Again there is no external power socket so you don’t have to worry about additional energy being fed to the GPU. Size wise the PCB is similar to that of RADEON X800. The cooling device is held in place by 4 screws, no back plate here. Our test sample exhibits dual DVI-I outputs as well as S-Video out. The card carries standard display support: VGA compatible, VESA compatible BIOS for SVGA and DDC 1/2b/2b+

As far as memory is concerned this board carries the same GDDR3 chips as its older X1600 XT SKU: Infineon HYB18H512321AF-14 (TFBGA-136 rated at 700 MHz).

Bundle

The front and back of the box highlight cards specifications and features. In the middle of the box you are presented with a hot angel chick. The back of the box sports specs. The sides show system requirements. Additionally you’ll find major features being listed in 6 different languages.

Click a picture to see a larger view

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As for accessories, here it is:

• S-Video Cable
• Composite Cable
• 1 DVI-I connector (? I assume there should be 2)
• S-Video to AV connector

Setup and Installation

All of our benchmarks were ran on Athlon64 3000+ clocked at 2.5GHz. I will stack PowerColor X1600 XT and X1300 against each other. I’ll be comparing this X1650 PRO to X1600 XT and X1300. Overclocking section will consist of 3DMark05 scores from different cards. The table below shows test system configuration as well benchmarks used throughout this comparison.

Components	– DFI NF4 Ultra-D – Athlon64 3000+ Venice – G.Skill F1-4000BIU2-2GBHV DDR500 – Thermaltake 550 Watt PSU – PowerColor X1650 PRO – PowerColor X1600 XT – PowerColor X1300
Software	– Windows XP SP2 – DirectX 9.0c – nForce4 6.86 drivers – CATALYST 6.7
Synthetic Benchmarks	– 3DMark 2005 v1.2.0 – 3DMark 2006 – D3D Right Mark 1.0.5.0 beta 4
Gaming Benchmarks	– F.E.A.R / ingame benchmark + Fraps – Half-Life 2 / custom d13c17 timedemo + Fraps – Doom 3 / default timedemo + Fraps – Quake 4 / custom timedemo – NFS: Most Wanted / Fraps – Far Cry 1.32 / custom timedemo + Fraps
Notes	CPU clocked at 2.5GHz

Important CATALYST notes:

For X1600 XT

CATALYST A.I: standard
Mipmap detail level: quality

For X1300 PRO

CATALYST A.I: advanced
Mipmap detail level: quality

As far as installation goes I cannot report any problems. The card booted without any problems, however included drivers were CATALYST 6.7, but I’m told retail package contains WHQL 6.8.

Synthetic Benchmarks

I’ve used Futuremark’s 3DMark 2005 to measure the actual throughput of PowerColor X1650 PRO and compared it against X1600 XT, X1300 and X700. Additionally I’m including scores from Futuremark’s newest 3DMark06.

F.E.A.R

On August 5th this year, VUGames have released F.E.A.R demo to the public. The game is being made over at Monolith Productions studio and should be out later this year. Since almost everyone has been waiting for this demo, I’ve decided to give it a shot and bench it with X1600 XT and X1300 from PowerColor.

Texture caching in retail F.E.A.R has been improved a little. You won’t see a lot of chugging when abruptly turning around. Our benchmarking method was simple. I used default F.E.A.R benchmarking utility which nicely shows all effects and technology used throughout the game.

Game Overview

An unidentified paramilitary force infiltrates a multi-billion dollar aerospace compound, taking hostages but issuing no demands. The government responds by sending in special forces, but loses contact as an eerie signal interrupts radio communications. When the interference subsides moments later, the team has been obliterated. As part of a classified strike team created to deal with threats no one else can handle, your mission is simple: Eliminate the intruders at any cost. Determine the origin of the signal. And contain the crisis before it spirals out of control.

As you probably know, F.E.A.R uses a very sophisticated game engine (FEAR).

• Rendering
  • FEAR is powered by a new flexible, extensible, and data driven DirectX 9 renderer that uses materials for rendering all visual objects. Each material associates an HLSL shader with artist-editable parameters used for rendering, including texture maps (normal, specular, emissive, etc.), colors, and numeric constants.
• Lightning Model
  • FEAR features a unified Blinn-Phong per-pixel lighting model, allowing each light to generate both diffuse and specular lighting consistently across all solid objects in the environment. The lighting pipeline uses the following passes:
    • Emissive: The emissive pass allows objects to display a glow effect and establishes the depth buffer to improve performance.
  • Lighting: The lighting pass renders each light, first by generating shadows and then by applying the lighting onto any pixels that are visible and not shadowed.
  • Translucency: The translucent pass blends all translucent objects into the scene using back to front sorting.
• Visual Effects
  • FEAR features a new optimized, data driven effects system that allows for the creation of key-framed effects that can be comprised of dynamic lights, particle systems, models, and sounds. Examples of the effects that can be created using this system include weapon muzzle flashes, explosions, footsteps, fire, snow, steam, smoke, dust, and debris.
• Sample Lights
  • FEAR’s lighting model is very flexible and allows developers to easily add new lights. Existing lights include:
    • Point Light: The point light is a single point that emits light equally in all directions.
    • Spotlight: Similar to a flashlight, the spotlight projects light within a specified field of view. The spotlight can also use a texture to tint the color of the lighting on a per pixel basis.
    • Cube Projector: Similar to the point light, the cube projector uses a cubic texture to tint each lit pixel.
    • Directional Light: This lighting is emitted from a rectangular plane and is used to simulate directional lights like sunlight.
  • Point Fill: Although similar to the point light, the point fill is an efficient option because it does not utilize specular lighting or cast shadows.

A more detailed overview of other F.E.A.R technologies can be found over at Touchdown Entertainment. These include: Havok Physics Engine and Modeling / Animations System.

Quake 4

This is another good title worth looking at. With success of Quake 3, id Software decided (after few years) it would be proper to have a sequel. Designed over at Raven Software’s farm, Q4 features rich single player as well as intensive and popular multiplayer mode.

It uses Doom 3 engine so you should be familiar with available effects. In any case, I listed them below

• Unified lightning and shadowing engine
  • Dynamic per-pixel lightning
  • Stencil shadowing
  • Specular lightning
• Realistic bumpmapping
• Dynamic and ambient six-channel audio

Half-Life 2

We all love Half-Life 2 and we all want best performance out of our hardware. This has to be one of the most graphic demanding games currently on the market. Half-Life 2 is built around Source engine which utilizes a very wide range of DirectX 8 / 9 special effects. Those include:

• Diffuse / specular bump mapping
• Dynamic soft shadows
• Localized / global valumetric fog
• Dynamic refraction
• High Level-of-Detail (LOD)

Note that users with DirectX 7 and older hardware (NVIDIA MX series for example) will not be able to enjoy the above effects. Let’s see how middle-end / low-end X1K graphic cards perform.

Need For Speed: Most Wanted

We have quite a few sequels in this review and this is another one, this time from Electronic Arts. If you’ve played NFS Hot Pursuit you know what I’m talking about. There are a lot of ideas taken out from the older NFS. The main difference between Most Wanted and Underground (in terms of graphics) is addition of HDR-type effects. It’s pseudo-HDR (more like bloom), but looks lovely nonetheless. Additionally the game sports flashy new reflections, better object geometry, improved lightning system and finally physics engine.

Overclocking & Conclusion

Unfortunetely I was unable to overclock this X1650, no support yet in provided drivers. No support for this card either in CATALYST 6.8 suite. I will do this section whenever possible. I can only assume the GPU overclocks tad higher than X1600 XT due to 80nm fabrication process.

As always, I’m including consolidated 3DMark05 list for your viewing pleasure

What can be said about PowerColor’s RADEON X1650 PRO? Well first of all, I’m not a fan of refresh products that bring nothing new in terms of performance. As I said on the very first page this product is nothing more than X1600 XT in different pants. ATI has always been a bit behind when it comes to mid range products. Although I haven’t tested it against GeForce 7600 GS it’s clear that the difference between X1600 XT and X1650 PRO is marginal, next to nothing. Performance scales similarly across all modes. RADEON X1650 PRO gains few FPS here and there due to higher core / memory clocks, but overall it performs like the older part. RV535 however brings you ATI Rage Theatre chip which was not available in PowerColor’s line of X1600 XT. Supposedly HDCP ready soon with a driver update.

One of the things that may lead you to buy this card is the retail price of $99 green — supposedly. Pretty sekzy if you ask considering the price of X1600 XT holds tight at $110-140 depending on the vendor. If all goes well, you should be able to pick one of those boards in mid September.