ABIT Radeon RX600XT-PCIE

     It looks like PCI Express is here to stay. Standard PCI has done a great job for the past ten years, but now it can no longer keep up with today's technology. PCI Express is here to replace PCI with a blazing fast data transfer rate of up to 4GB/sec up and down. In fact, PCIE is so fast that it has been chosen by graphics card companies to replace current AGP technology. AGP only has a data transfer rate of up to 2.1GB/sec one way, so with such a huge boost in performance, you can easily see why the industry is rapidly adopting PCIE.

     I'm glad to see PCIE being pushed out, but there is only one problem, PCIE is tomorrows technology today. What I mean by that is there is nothing on the market that can take advantage of PCIE performance. So even though we have some cool PCIE video cards, they are not going to be much faster than their AGP brothers, if at all. Not just yet anyway... The big jump in performance will probably be with the next generation of video cards. It is also possible that the next generation video cards will be PCIX only. However, we probably wont see that happening for at least another 6 months, maybe longer. With that said, let's take a look at what is available right now in PCIE.

     ABIT has sent over one of their newest video cards, the Radeon RX600XT-PCIE. From what I understand, this card is basically the PCIE version of the Radeon 9600XT. I guess we'll find out soon enough.! Let's get to it!

Specifications

     Double bandwidth of current AGP 8X, ABTI RX600 XT-PCIE is fully adapting the newest PC architecture standard – PCI Express™ to support current and upcoming game titles, operating systems and multimedia applications. With up to 12 pipelines, 500MHz core clock and breakthrough image technologies, ATI® SMARTSHADER™, SMOOTHVISION™, VIDEOSHADER™, ABIT RX600 XT-PCIE ushers in a whole new gaming category.

Features
- ABIT RADEON™ X600 XT Visual Processing Units (VPU)
- VPU Core: 500MHz
- 128-bit DDR memory interface
- 4 parallel rendering pipelines powering
- 2 parallel geometry engines
- Full Floating Point Precision in real time
- PCI Express bus architecture
- Fully PCI Express x16 spec 1.0a compatible
- Adaptive de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
- Dual integrated display controllers
- Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
- Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0/HDMI compliant and HDCP ready)
- Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution

Native PCI Express support
- Provides Dual-simplex connection capable of 4GB/s/direction in x16 configuration
- Capable of supporting bandwidth hungry application
- PCI-Express native x16 support

SMARTSHADER™ 2.0
- Defines the level of realism in latest 2D/3D games and applications
- Complete hardware-accelerated Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable vertex and pixel shader support
- Full hardware support for OpenGL® 2.0

SMOOTHVISION™ 2.1
- Improves image quality by smoothing jagged edges, improving blurriness and refining background details during on-screen motion and at lower resolutions
- 2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
- Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
- 2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes
- Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-linear (quality) options

HYPER Z™ III
- Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 24:1)
- Fast Z-Buffer Clear

VIDEOSHADER™
- Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
- FULLSTREAM™ video de-blocking technology for Real, DivX, and WMV9 formats
- VIDEOSOAP™ noise removal filtering for captured video
- MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration
- DXVA Support
- Hardware Motion Compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion
- All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
- Adaptive Per-Pixel De-Interlacing and Frame Rate Conversion (temporal filtering)

Operating Systems Support
- Windows® XP/Windows® 2000

System Requirements
- Intel® LGA775 ,Pentium® 4 or AMD® mainboard with one PCI-Express x16 slot
- 128MB of system memory
- Installation software requires CD or DVD ROM drive

Package Contents
- ABIT RX600 XT Board
- CD Driver & Power DVD5
- S-AV adapter cable
- S-Video Extension Cable
- Composite (RCA) cable
- DVI-I adapter for 2nd CRT output