ATI Radeon X1600 XT Review

[Hardware Secrets Team]

There has been a new article posted.

Title: ATI Radeon X1600 XT Review
URL: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/230/

Here is a snippet:
"Radeon X1600 XT, formerly known as RV530, is the fastest graphics chip inside the new mid-range graphics chip family from ATI. We’ve got a reference sample for this model from ATI, so we will compare ..."

Comments on this article are welcome.

Best regards,
Hardware Secrets Team
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com

[stryke3]

In the Conclusion section, when describing the Far Cry performance, the article describes the GeForce 6800GT as performing better at low resolutions with no image quality settings enabled, and the X1600 XT performing better at the other (1600x1200 resolutions). This is backwards. The GeForce 6800GT actually performs worse than then X1600 XT at low resolutions but beats the X1600 XT at high resolution. The numbers are below:

Far Cry 1024x768 Low
X1600 XT: 144.44
GeForce 6800GT: 132.76

Far Cry 1280x1024 Low
X1600 XT: 140.49
GeForce 6800GT: 127.71

Far Cry 1600x1200 Low
X1600 XT: 121.01
GeForce 6800GT: 127.64

A few suggestions:

• I think it would also be useful to mention the Far Cry Very High numbers, since the X1600 XT consistently has frame rates around 60-70% of the GeForce 6800GT, which I believe would be a direct competitor with the X1600 XT.
• You may also wish to change your phrasing from "the fastest graphics chip inside the new mid-range" to "the newest graphics chip inside the new mid-range".
• At times, the article's grammar detracts from the readability, and having an editor review the articles before publication/posting would definitely help.
• The article doesn't state that the "reference" card is overclocked, and I think the average reader wouldn't pick up on this. More than likely, the overclocked card is going to perform better than a standard card, so I think mentioning the overclocking would help the reader make a more informed decision. Optionally, a comparison between overclocked and non-overclocked versions would also help to see if it is worth overclocking the card.

Thanks for taking the time to review the card, it helped me to decide which chip to buy.

[Gabriel Torres]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for you feedback.

You are right and the conclusions section has some errors about Far Cry results, I am correcting it right away.

Regarding grammar errors, please, post here these errors so we can correct them.

As for the reference model being overclocked, this is not true. It works exactly under official clocks announced by ATI. This is so true that the first commercial version of Radeon X1600 XT we reviewed, from HIS, runs at the very same clock rates:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/290

Once again, thank you very much.

Cheers,
Gabriel.

[stryke3]

Very quickly, I'd like to note that the link at the top of this thread is not the link to the article. "http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/" should be "http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/230/".

From Page 1 (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/230):
"So far ATI announced two chips on Radeon X1600 family: X1600 XT and X1600 Pro. X1600 XT runs at 590 MHz and accesses its memory at 1.38 GHz (22.08 GB/s). . ."

From Page 3 (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/230/3):
"Main Features

* Graphics chip: Radeon X1600 XT running at 625 MHz.
* Memory: 1.2 ns 256-bit 512 MB GDDR3 memory from Samsung (K4J52324QC-BJ12), running at 1.5 GHz.
* Bus type: PCI Express 16x.
* Connectors: Two DVI and one mini-DIN for S-Video output.
* Number of CDs that come with this board: N/A.
* Games that come with this board: N/A
* Programs that come with this board: N/A.
* More Information: http://www.ati.com
* Price: Suggested price of USD 199 for the 128 MB version and USD 249 for the 256 MB version."

These two sections of text are why I raised a question about whether the reference model was overclocked. At the beginning of the article you state that the chip runs at 590MHz and the memory at 1.38GHz stock. However, on page 3, you post the specs as 625MHz/1.5GHz. I hope that the specs on page 3 were simply an oversight and that the model reviewed was stock from ATI.

As for grammar, I did a quick once-over of the article and came up with these:

• On Page 2: This video card uses four GDDR3 512-Mbit 1.2 ns chips from Samsung (K4J52324QC-BJ12), making its 256 MB video memory (512 Mbits x 4 = 256 MB). This should probably read ". . .to give it 256 MB of video memory. . ." or something similar.
• On Page 4: "Between our benchmarking sessions the only different device was the motherboard being tested." Could be changed to something like ". . .the only variable. . .".
• On Page 5: "It is a very good software to evaluate the performance of games from previous generation, programmed using DirectX 8." Could be changed to ". . .it is very effective software for evaluating the performance. . ." and ". . .games from the previous generation. . ." or ". . .previous-generation games. . ."(to be more concise).
• First noticed on Page 5: The tense of the verbs you use seems to jump between the present and the past. It's best to adopt a single tense and use it throughout the article. I think most reviews write in the past tense.
• On Page 5: ". . .then we put the antialiasing at 4 samples and triple frame buffer." Could be rewritten ". . .and the frame buffer at triple-buffering." The way it is currently written either sounds a bit awkward or else sounds like you are setting the antialiasing at triple frame buffering.
• On Page 5: ". . .valid to all video cards included in our bechmark. . ." Benchmark should either be "benchmarks" or "review", because you ran several benchmarks with antialiasing, but if you wanted the singular, you only did one review.
• On Page 5: "To us, as important to know the performance of a video card with the latest games is to know its performance in an older game." Should be ". . .it is as important to know. . ." and ". . .as it is to know. . .".
• For all the graphs: "At 1024x768 configuration", or any other resolution, it sounds much better (and more correct) to say, ". . .At a resolution of 1024x768".

One last suggestion I have is your graphs. For each graph, you must have some script that mentions how much each chip over- or underperforms versus the chip in review. I think you could make the articles much cleaner and easier to read if you just included the percentages in the graphs, or in separate graphs, rather than in paragraphs.

This is as much as I have time to look into at the moment, but I hope it gives you a good jumping-off point to improve the grammar of future reviews. Overall, I really enjoy the comparisons you do for the cards, but the manner in which you present the comparisons is a little difficult to read. I look forward to improved reviews in the future.

[Gabriel Torres]

Hi,

First, thanks a lot for pointing out the errors.

Page 3 had errors. I've just corrected them. The correct numbers are the ones shown on page 1. This was cause by copying and pasting things around from other reviews.

As for grammar errors, I've just corrected them. Please let us know all other errors you find on our texts. English isn't my first language and from time to time you may find something odd here and there and I appreciate if you could point them out to me, so we can have not only a clearer and more accurate text, but also for my learning experience.

Also thanks for the suggestions.

Thank you very much for your help.

Cheers,
Gabriel.