Rage3D ATI Radeon X1650 XT Crossfire Review Rage3D ATI Radeon X1650 XT Crossfire Review
A couple weeks ago ATI again released another graphics card for budget minded folks, the Radeon X1950 Pro, this time with a brand new graphics core and some very welcome new features. The X1950 Pro was the first of ATI’s graphics cards to sport internal “native” Crossfire and, thanks to a very nice price-to-performance ratio, was also given a positive reception from the hacks and fanboys.
Released on the same day as the X1950 back in August, and thoroughly overlooked by everyone, were the Radeon X1650 Pro and the Radeon X1300 XT. These new mainstream parts were slotted into the sub $100 price range so it’s no surprise that they got passed over in favor of the $449 X1950 powerhouse and the $279 X1900 XT 256MB screamer. Further adding to the “meh” factor was that these cards weren’t really new at all; the X1650 Pro was simply a rebranded X1600 XT, and the X1300 XT a rebranded X1600 Pro. Things moved down, basically. There was nothing new, no one could be bothered.
ATI is still chugging along and adding further refinements to their lineup. Today they are announcing yet another new graphics card, another of the X1600-family, but this time one that moves performance and features forward. The X1650 XT, based on a new 80nm RV560 core that features native Crossfire support, has finally arrived and fills in the $149 price gap in ATI's lineup.
Technically speaking that’s seven new SKUs in just over two months. Not bad for a company that was supposed to have thrown in the towel.
Here’s what the updated lineup looks like:
| ATI's Lineup | ||
| Market Segment | Product | MSRP ($US) |
| Enthusiast | X1950 XTX X1950 Crossfire |
$449 |
| X1900 XT 256MB | $259 | |
| Performance | X1950 Pro | $199 |
| X1900 GT | $195 | |
| Mainstream | X1650 XT | $149 | X1650 Pro | $99 |
| X1300 XT | $89 | |
| Value | X1300 Pro | $79 |
| X1300 256MB | $59 | |
| X1300 64bit | $49 | |
In this review we are checking out two of these new cards from ATI in both Crossfire and single card configurations.
We are comparing the performance of the X1650 XT to the original X1600 XT and the X1650 Pro released a couple months ago, two obvious choices. We are also comparing it to a X1950 Pro which might be within your budget if you can afford an extra $50, and we're throwing in an X1900 XT 256 which, going by MSRP prices, is about $40 cheaper than two X1650 XT's in Crossfire. Unfortnately I couldn't get my hands on NVIDIA's 7600 GT in time to use in this review so you'll have to use your imagination or something to fill in the gaps.
Games Benchmarks (click for settings)
Image Quality Settings
| Test Systems | ATI |
| Motherboard ( chipset ) |
MSI K9A Platinum (ATI RD580/SB600) |
| CPU | AMD Athlon FX-62 @ 2.8GHz |
| Graphics Card | ATI Radeon X1650 XT x2 |
| Driver Version | ATI 8.301 Beta |
| Memory ( Timings ) |
2GB (2x1024MB) SuperTalent PC2-6400 DDR2 @ 800MHZ ( 4-4-3-8 2T) |
| Hard Disk | Western Digital Caviar WD2500KS SE16 250GB |
| Sound | Onboard |
| Network | Onboard |
| PSU | PC Power & Cooling 1KW Turbo-Cool Quad-SLI |
| OS | Windows XP Pro SP2, DX9c (August 2006) |
| Card Specifications | ATI X1650 XT | Sapphire X1650 Pro | ATI X1600 XT | ATI X1950 Pro | ATI X1900 XT |
| Core | RV560 | RV530 | RV530 | RV570 | R580 |
| Silicon Process | 80nm | 90nm | 90nm | 80nm | 90nm |
| Transistor Count (millions) |
330 | 157 | 157 | 330 | 384 |
| Core Speed MHz | 575 | 590 | 590 | 575 | 650 |
| Memory Speed MHz (Effective) |
675 (1.35GHz) |
700 (1.4GHz) |
700 (1.4GHz) |
690 (1.38GHz) |
1,000 (2.0GHz) |
| Memory Size | 256 MB | 256 MB | 256 MB | 256 MB | 256 MB |
| Bus Standard | PEG x16 | PEG x16 | PEG x16 | PEG x16 | PEG x16 |
| Bus Width | 128bit | 128bit | 128bit | 256bit | 256bit |
| ROPs | 8 | 4 | 4 | 12 | 16 |
| Pixel Shaders | 24 | 4 | 4 | 36 | 48 |
| Vertex Shaders | 8 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 8 |
| Peak Memory Bandwidth (GB/s) |
21.6 | 22.4 | 22.4 | 44.2 | 64.0 |
| Pixel Fillrate (million pixels/sec) |
4,600 | 2,360 | 2,360 | 6,900 | 10,400 |
| Texel Fillrate (million texels/sec) |
4,600 | 2,360 | 2,360 | 6,900 | 10,400 |
| API Compliancy | DX 9.0c | DX 9.0c | DX 9.0c | DX 9.0c | DX 9.0c |
The Windows XP desktop was set to 1280x960 with a 32bit color depth and 85Hz refresh rate for all tests. Refresh rate lock for 3D was not enabled. V-Sync was forced off via the graphics card control panel as well. All graphics card control panel settings for the ATI cards were left to their default settings.
Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropy were applied in the game engine where the options existed. For games that did not support those options natively, the graphics card control panel was used.
Custom batch files were used when possible for automated benchmarking, which are available upon request. When manual benchmarking was necessary Fraps was used.
Benchmarking was done with Windows set to the "Adjust for best performance" profile and all unnecessary Windows services and hardware devices were disabled. The latest drivers for each necessary hardware component were installed prior to testing and kept consistent throughout.
Sound and networking interfaces were enabled for all tests.
The first thing you’ll probably notice about the X1650 XT is how small the card is. It’s only about 6.5 inches long tip-to-tail, or 2.5 inches shorter than the X1950. You won’t have any problems getting this one to fit in your case, that’s for sure. It doesn’t need any external power either, getting all it needs from the PEG x16 slot, so you probably don’t have to worry about your PSU being up to the task either.
 X1950 Pro vs X1650 XT |
 X1650 XT Top |
 X1650 XT Profile |
 X1650 XT End |
The standard cooling unit is very small, maybe just a bit larger than the cooler found on NVIDIA’s 7900 GS and 7950 GT. It has a small plastic shroud covering a copper cooling core. The fan pulls in air and forces it through an array of copper tunnels that are soldered to the cooler base, drawing heat away and blowing it out the back of the cooler toward the rear of the card. This approach seems typical of most graphics coolers these days. The fan does get a little loud when the card is being stressed for extended periods, but it’s not going to drive you insane.
 X1650 XT Cooler |
 X1650 XT Cooler |
 X1650 XT Cooler |
 X1650 XT Cooler |
Beneath the cooler is the RV560 GPU, of course, around which are four Infineon HYB18H512321AF GDDR3 memory modules rated for 1.4ns (700MHz, or 1.4GHz effective) that make up the 256MB of frame-buffer space. The memory modules aren’t being cooled in any way, but that doesn’t seem to have hurt overclocking potential very much as you’ll see later.
 Component Layout |
 RV560 Graphics Core |
 Infineon 1.4ns GDDR3 |
On the front of the card are two Dual-Link DVI-I connections along with a TV-out (there is no VIVO functionality here). The X1650 XT also supports HDCP, of course, like all nicely conforming graphics cards should these days.
 Dual Dual-Link DVI-I |
 Crossfire 'Golden Fingers' |
 X1650 XT Crossfire |
You’ll also notice along the top edge of the card that the X1650 XT features native Crossfire, which we were introduced to with the X1950 Pro release a couple weeks ago. This is a welcome change from the software, dongle-less, Crossfire that the X1600-series cards made use of previously and which hurt performance considerably. Scaling with the bridges is obviously going to be far better than sending data over the PCI-Express bus. If you’re interested in learning more about the new native Crossfire, I talked about it at length in my X1950 Pro review right here.
To overclock the X1650 XT we made use of the Overdrive feature found in ATI’s Catalyst Control Center. As we’ve discovered in previous Radeon overclocking tests, the maximum overclock was limited by the Overdrve tool itself. We pegged out the slider at 621MHz core frequency and 766MHz (1.53GHz) memory frequency without any problems. That’s 46MHz over the stock core frequency and 91MHz over the stock memory frequency. Very respectable overclocking, that. With more headroom in ATI’s Overdrive tool I feel confident that the card could easily go much higher.
Here are the performance results when using these overclocked settings in Quake4 and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory:
|
[ No AA / No AF ]
[ 4x AA / 16x AF ]
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|
[ No AA / No AF ]
[ 4x AA / 16x AF ]
[ With HDR ]
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What we’re left with is a nice, compact card that performs very well in its market segment. Yeah it’s probably not going to be enough to get by with when you’re running around in Crysis in a couple weeks, but for the majority of today’s games it’s enough to get you playing, even with AA and AF enabled in some cases. Not bad for a $149 card.
Looking at the comparisons we’ve made in the benchmarks it’s pretty clear that you’d be better off with a single X1900 XT 256MB rather than two X1650 XT’s setup for Crossfire. The performance results show that the single X1900 XT beats out two X1650 XTs in many tests, and additional to that are the limitations a multi-GPU configuration automatically brings with it that tilts the scales in the single X1900 XT 256MBs favor. The fact that the X1900 XT 256 is $50 cheaper than two X1650 XTs ultimately makes the decision there a no-brainer.
Depending on how tight your budget is you might also want to consider the X1950 Pro too. It can’t touch two X1650’s in Crossfire, but an extra $50 seems to be really worth it to get the extra performance offered there, especially if you plan on hanging onto the card for a while. You also get the same internal Crossfire feature too, which can’t be overlooked.
Overall, however, I would have to say that the X1650 XT offers very good performance at the $149 price point.
It’s certainly a significant step-up from the X1650 Pro/X1600 XT, that’s for sure, which is no surprise considering the R580 heritage hiding under the cooler. In fact the performance improvement is almost two fold in a few cases. It’s unfortunate that I couldn’t get my hands on a 7600 GT from NVIDIA to provide a complete picture of this market segment, but given the performance and price I don’t think you can go wrong with an X1650 XT.
