The Card & Details

As mentioned earlier, the graphics card used prior to starting this trial was a NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX 256MB (G70). The ATI graphics card to be used for the duration of this experiment is an Radeon X1800XT 256MB from Sapphire Technology. The card is a rough equivalent to the GeForce 7800GTX. However, this experiment is not to nail out specific differences between two individual models within a whole array of products from both companies, but is rather to look at the proprietary Linux support in general. To prevent any possible confusion, this card was bought independently and was not provided by ATI Technologies nor any other partner. The X1800XT Sapphire OEM model can be found for approximately $240 USD. Some of the features for the ATI Radeon X1800XT include a 625MHz core clock, 1500MHz memory, 16 pixel pipelines, and 256-bit 256MB GDDR3 memory. The Phoronix launch-day preview can be found here from the 8.24.08 fglrx driver release that had delivered on the long awaited X1000 series support. In that article are some performance numbers from various NVIDIA and ATI cards -- including the X1800XL and X1300PRO. Below are a few views of the Sapphire X1800XT.