x1600 pipes?

[dano]

Hi all,

Got a quick query for those in the know

A friend just got himself an ATI Radeon X1600Pro 512Mb which doesn't seem to perform very well at all, everything appears to be installed correctly and he's using the latest Cats with Ray Adams Ati Tray Tools rather than CCC.

I know it's only a mid range card but it should be outperforming my 9800Pro 128Mb right? even given CPU differences? (AMD64 4000+ for me, Pentium D of some sort for him, fairly recent, I'll get more details later if needed)

ATT gives the following information on it:

Display adapter Radeon X1600 Series (0x71C2)
Core Name RV530
SubVendor ATI (1002)
SubDevice 2342
BUS 1
Device 0
Function 0
Base Address 0 D000000C
Base Address 1 00000000
Base Address 2 FDEF0004
Base Address 3 00000000

Bus Type PCI Express
SMARTGART Installed No

Driver Version 06.7
Release Version 8.282-060802a-035179C-ATI
QuadBuffer Stereo Support No
Catalyst Registry Path
System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{736A7452-5758-4002-A719-5BA7F233DD38}\0000

______________________________
Clock Information
BIOS VPU 500.00
Current VPU 499.50
BIOS MEM 405.00
Current MEM 400.50

______________________________
Radeon PCI configuration space
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F
00 02 10 C2 71 07 00 10 00 00 00 00 03 08 00 80 00
10 0C 00 00 D0 00 00 00 00 04 00 EF FD 00 00 00 00
20 01 EE 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 10 42 23
30 00 00 00 00 50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 12 01 00 00
40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 10 42 23
50 01 58 02 06 00 00 00 00 10 80 01 00 A0 0F 00 00
60 10 08 00 00 01 0D 00 00 00 00 01 11 00 00 00 00
70 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
80 05 00 80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
90 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
A0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
B0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
D0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
E0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
F0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

______________________________
Hardware Information
Installed memory 512 Mb
Memory Type GDDR3
Memory Width 128 bit
Active Rendering Pipelines 4

______________________________
ASIC details
Family 62
Emulated Revision 10
Gfx Engine ID 3

______________________________
Radeon Registers
RADEON_BIOS_0_SCRATCH 00000200
RADEON_BIOS_1_SCRATCH 0100C000
GB_TILE_CONFIG 01410011
HWDREG_00000000 2100126C
HWDREG_00000001 00000001
HWDREG_00000002 00000000
HWDREG_00000003 0000000D
HWDREG_00000004 24000B08
HWDREG_00000005 00000001
HWDREG_00000006 00000000
HWDREG_00000007 0000000D
HWDREG_00000008 00000001
HWDREG_00000009 00000000
HWDREG_0000000A 00010090
HWDREG_0000000B 110FAC8F
HWDREG_0000000C 44221100
HWDREG_0000000D 00073011
HWDREG_0000000E 00000000
HWDREG_0000000F 0F3FF01A
HWDREG_00000010 0F3FF01A
HWDREG_00000011 0F3FF01A
HWDREG_00000012 0F3FF50A
HWDREG_00000013 0F3FF01A
HWDREG_00000014 0F3FF01A
HWDREG_00000015 000000CA
HWDREG_00000016 000001CA
HWDREG_00000017 0000018A
HWDREG_00000018 0000010A
HWDREG_00000019 0000014A
HWDREG_0000001A 0000060A
HWDREG_0000001B 0000040A
HWDREG_0000001C 0000001A
HWDREG_0000001D 00000012
HWDREG_0000001E 00000017
HWDREG_0000001F 00008028
HWDREG_00000020 00000000

______________________________
Video BIOS Information
Version 009.012.008.002
Part Number 113-A67611-107
Date 2006/02/21 16:09
Vram Type DDR2

______________________________
Controller Configurations
Controller 0
Active Connections:
-Second Monitor (CRT2) (0) 1152x864x85
Controller 1
Active Connections:
No Active Connections

______________________________
Displays supported by adapter
0 (1) Monitor (CRT1)
1 (2) Second Monitor (CRT2)
2 (4) TV
3 (8) Digital Flat Panel
4 (16) Component Video Output

______________________________
EnumDisplays
Display Type 0, Extended Type 1 , Max Resolution 1600x1200
Display Type 0, Extended Type 2 , Max Resolution 1920x1440
Display Type 1, Extended Type 0 , Max Resolution 1024x768
Display Type 3, Extended Type 1 , Max Resolution 2560x1600
Display Type 4, Extended Type 0 , Max Resolution 720x480

I'm new to PCIe stuff so if there's anything amis please let me know, could the fact that it says 2nd monitor be something to do with it? Or my initial reaction was that he may have a faulty card as all the data I've seen on the x1600Pro says 12 Pipes yet his is detecting only 4, which would definetly impact performance.

Any help will be greatfully recieved,

thanks

Dano.

 

[MrWizard6600]

k well dano you by the simple fact that you copied and pasted all that crap id say your more intelligent then me

but i dont think that you beeing new to pci-e leads to your confusion, i think it has to do with you being new to X1k.

i have never owned an X1k product and i have no idea where you got that information.

a "Pipe" (Prior to X1k) was one TMU and one Shader in one pipe. ATI thought this configuration lead to too much texture horsepower, so the changed the architecture to 3 shaders for every one TMU via a crossbar.

since then naming pipes on ATI products has been rather trickey, some would call the X1600 a 12 piped beast, others a 4 piped kitten. it all depends on what you wanna measure, shaders, or branches. i spose thats what i would call your card, not 12 piped nor 4 piped, but 4 branched.

only 50% of the cards in the X1k series use this architecture, the X1600, and the X1900. to follow this architecture the X1300 just wouldnt have enough texture mapping horsepower. and the idea hadnt been thought up by the time the X1800 was released.

the X1900 didnt just cram in more shaders, it completly changed pipe architecture, into more of a branch. ATI kept the same ammount of Texture mappers, but added 2 extra shaders to each texture mapper, making for the new architecture.

NV still uses the traditional 1:1. 1 TMU per Shader and as such Per Pipe. and as far as i can tell still believe that that is the best way to go and will suit them well on the 8 series generation.

as for your friends card, this is why i hate the X1600, it really doesnt work. it, imho, just like the X1300, doesnt have enough texture horsepower even with 4 tmus.

if you have the pro, you should have a fair bit of overclocking head room, because we know those cores can run at 590, and the core rejection rate for the X1600 XT due to failure to run at XT speeds is minimal (IE your X1600 PRO should be able to do X1600XT speeds)

the 512MB version is dumb. really dumb. the fact that it has 512MB leads people to believe its a nice card. it isnt. its neither here nor there. its to powerful for a movie watcher/e-mail checker, and its not powerful enough for a game player.

well thats not entirly true. if you check e-mails and watch videos on a 24" 1900X1200 monitor this could be the card for you.

to put it in perspective, an X1600 512MB has a little less the texture fill rate of the regular Ge-Force 6600. sux huh...

the upside to the 512MB framebuffer is, it can buffer 512MB worth of frames meaning high resolutions... that is to say if the pixel fill can keep up :\

so all and all, what the X1600 is capible of is really really high resolutions on old engines :/,

(PS for all your "how good is this card compaired to this card" needs go to www.gpureview.com)

 

[PWMK2]

If it says something along the line of "X1600 Series - Secondary" for the monitor, then not to worry. He simply plugged the monitor into the non-default plug (in many cases, this is the analog D-SUB - if the card has two DVIs, it's usually the one on the right).

I don't know why it isn't performing as well exactly, but yes - the X1600PRO should definitely outperform the 9800PRO. But you need to give more information? How exactly is the X1600PRO not performing as well? Games? What resolutions / settings, etc? We need to know this before we can guess what might be happening.

 

[dano]

Thanks for the input and information, very helpful

More intelligent? LOL, with an clear and highly informative reply like that you need to stop that attitude

He definitely got hoodwinked by the fact it had 512Mb on the card, nothing I could do as he already had it by the time I was informed

The fillrate and bandwidth was what had me concerned too, but again I wasn't too sure how much the 128bit memory interface was hurting things as it the specs show a 256bit ring or something (I am so out of date with gfx card tech)

The reason I can't give a lot more informatuion is that I only had a limited time with his system, I'll try and grab more information next time I get the chance.

As for a direct comparison:

EverQuest2, we went through and changed all his settings to match mine exactly, he was getting slighly better frames than I was but suffered heavy stuttering when turning which screamed to me that he was running out of memory on the gfx card, that however didn't make any sense as it has 512Mb so I'm guessing it's soemthing else causing it.

One other thing that had me slightly concerned was the fact that his motherboard has onboard gfx too, which to me says 'budget and not great performance' but when he installed the x1600 it automatically switched to it in preference and he says he could find no option to disable the onboard in the BIOS, again I need more details so I can go grab a manual for the motherboard here.

I'll see if I can grab some detailed information later today and post back

Thnaks all,

Dano.

 

[dderidex]

Regarding the 256-bit "ring bus" - that just refers to an internal bus on the card. Basically, the memory on a card is address in a 'ring', and has 128-bit access to the rendering system. The "ring bus" simply provides 2x 128-bit paths 'around' the core to get to the memory.

Anyway, regarding the 'exact same settings' as your PC...keep in mind that the X1Ks support SM3.0, while the Radeon 9800s do not even support SM2.0. So, it's entirely possible that it has enabled some additional effects on his card that make it work much harder (and should look better, too).

 

[PWMK2]

What about system RAM? Do you and he have the same amount? Sometimes stuttering problems happens in certain games because it has to go as far as put textures into the swap file, which can cause stuttering when turning, as you can believe.