ATI Radeon X1900 XT vs XTX - What's in $100?

On the day of R580's launch, we took a look at the cream of the crop of the Radeon X1900 series - The X1900 XTX, courtesy of Club 3D.  Of course, this wasn't the only SKU launched that day - For $100 dollars less, you could grab yourself the X1900 XT, giving you the same number of pixel pipelines and pixel shader units, but at lower clock speeds.  Indeed, we commented at the time about the small disparity in clock speeds between the XT and XTX parts (with just 25MHz difference in core speed, and 50MHz discrepancy in RAM clocks), but the official line was that, due to R580's architecture, the benefits of core clock speed increases per MHz would be greater than that seen with other architectures.

Of course, being inquisitive types that we are (as well as tight fisted - Imagine what else you could spend $100 on?!), we've decided to put that theory to the test, and see exactly how much performance you gain with a Radeon X1900 XTX over an X1900 XT part.

Real-world pricing - How much more are you paying for the X1900 XTX?

Despite the supposed $100 gap in price between the Radeon X1900 XT and XTX, we all know that prices drop and change over time, so it seems only logical to begin our exploration with a look at the real-world price differences between the two parts at the time of writing this article.  To do so, we've focused on looking for ATI's own branded X1900 XT and XTX cards at a variety of online US retail outlets, to get a feel for what kind of premium you need to pay to get hold of an X1900 XTX part. 

Tiger Direct:

ATI Radeon X1900 XT: $529.00
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX: $629.00
Price difference: $100

Monarch Computer Systems:

ATI Radeon X1900 XT: $550.69
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX: $625.69
Price difference: $75

Zip Zoom Fly:

ATI Radeon X1900 XT: $549.00
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX: $649.00
Price difference: $100

Allstarshop:

ATI Radeon X1900 XT: $533.00
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX: $613.00
Price difference: $80

From our brief foray through US retail outlets, it seems as though a $75 price difference between the X1900 XT and XTX (When it comes to Built By ATI boards) is the best you can find at present, with many outlets still offering the XTX at a $100 price premium.

It has to be said, there must be some pretty impressive price margins for ATI and its partners when it comes to sales of Radeon X1900 XTX parts - As far as we are aware, there is no real speed binning going on with regard to R580 cores, meaning that whether you pick up an X1900 XT or XTX part your board will most likely be capable of the same clock speeds, with only the card's BIOS deciding on the clock speeds for the part.

So, now we've seen how much you'll be paying for these two boards, let's see how much more performance you get for your extra $100.

Test setup

All of today's testing has been run on the following:

- AMD Athlon 64 3500+
- 1GB PC3200 DDR-RAM
- Asus A8N-SLI nForce 4 SLI motherboard (Socket 939, PCI Express)
- 74GB Western Digital Raptor
- Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM
- Club 3D Radeon X1900 XTX 512MB
- 480W power supply

- Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2
- DirectX 9.0c

The following drivers were used:

- Catalyst 6.2 for both ATI boards

Catalyst A.I. was left in its default state ('Low' setting) at all times.

Benchmarks used

Below is a list of all the tests and applications used for benchmarking:

- 3DMark 06 (Version 1.0.2)
Overall score, fillrate, perlin noise and batch size tests, 1280x1024, AA/AF disabled
- ShaderMark 2.1 (Build 129)
All tests, 1024x768, AA/AF disabled
- RightMark 1.0.5.0 (Beta 4)
Pixel and vertex shader tests, 1024x768, AA/AF disabled
- Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
Elite Bastards custom timedemo, application AA/AF
- Day of Defeat: Source
Elite Bastards custom timedemo, application AA/AF
- Quake 4 (Version 1.04)
Guru3D custom timedemo, application AA/AF
- Far Cry (Patch 1.4 Beta)
Custom timedemo, application AA/AF
- Age of Empires III (Version 1.03)
FRAPS, application AA/AF
- F.E.A.R. (Patch 1.2)
Built-in timedemo, application AA/AF
- Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (v1.05)
Default timedemo, application AA/AF
- Need For Speed: Most Wanted (v1.3)
FRAPS, application AA/AF
- Call of Duty 2 (v1.01)
Elite Bastards custom timedemo, application AA/AF