Powercolor offers "HyperMemory 2" board
The latest spin is an interesting one. The TUL Corporation launched ATI's new X series into the world of virtual memory, where graphic processor uses half of its memory controller to address system memory. Yup, it's Hypermemory time again.
Powercolor dubbed the product "PowerColor X1300 HyperMemory 2 supporting 512MB". Don't be worried by the presence of the number two, because TUL marchitects added that to make their product different from its competitors. The positive part about the board is the fact that the GPU is overclocked from the reference 450MHz clock to a X1300Pro-worthy 600 MHz, while on-board DDR-II memory is clocked to 400 MHz DDR (DDR-II 800). The clock amounts to relatively poor 6.4 GB/s of available on-board bandwidth, so the speed of the board is hanging onto the system memory - if you have DIMM banks filled with modules running at 533 MHz, the X1300's external 64-bit memory interface will result in additional 4.2 GB/s of bandwidth, DDR-II 667 gives another 5.34 GB/s and DDR-II 800 MHz will boost the board by additional 6.4 GB/s.
Although Powercolor has to mention all the shenanigans about HDR with anti aliasing, you're free to rule this one out of the equation, since you won't be seeing games like Need for Speed: Most Wanted running in all of its HDR glory on anything less than X1800... X1300 and X1600 just didn't cut the mustard. Of course, having the game costs as much as the board in question does not help the marchitecture talk. The board is priced very competitively, so we'll see how it will fare.
In case you've been wondering, X1300 HyperMemory should work in Crossfire - then you need 2GB of memory, but hey. The boards are on their way from the Far East, we'll tell you more when we see the thing. We wonder how it will work on an Athlon 64 platform with DDR-I memory
The latest spin is an interesting one. The TUL Corporation launched ATI's new X series into the world of virtual memory, where graphic processor uses half of its memory controller to address system memory. Yup, it's Hypermemory time again.
Powercolor dubbed the product "PowerColor X1300 HyperMemory 2 supporting 512MB". Don't be worried by the presence of the number two, because TUL marchitects added that to make their product different from its competitors. The positive part about the board is the fact that the GPU is overclocked from the reference 450MHz clock to a X1300Pro-worthy 600 MHz, while on-board DDR-II memory is clocked to 400 MHz DDR (DDR-II 800). The clock amounts to relatively poor 6.4 GB/s of available on-board bandwidth, so the speed of the board is hanging onto the system memory - if you have DIMM banks filled with modules running at 533 MHz, the X1300's external 64-bit memory interface will result in additional 4.2 GB/s of bandwidth, DDR-II 667 gives another 5.34 GB/s and DDR-II 800 MHz will boost the board by additional 6.4 GB/s.
Although Powercolor has to mention all the shenanigans about HDR with anti aliasing, you're free to rule this one out of the equation, since you won't be seeing games like Need for Speed: Most Wanted running in all of its HDR glory on anything less than X1800... X1300 and X1600 just didn't cut the mustard. Of course, having the game costs as much as the board in question does not help the marchitecture talk. The board is priced very competitively, so we'll see how it will fare.
In case you've been wondering, X1300 HyperMemory should work in Crossfire - then you need 2GB of memory, but hey. The boards are on their way from the Far East, we'll tell you more when we see the thing. We wonder how it will work on an Athlon 64 platform with DDR-I memory
