Quote:
Originally posted by Firing Squad
in addition to the X800 XT Platinum Edition, ATI also offers the X800 PRO. The X800 PRO differs from the XT Platinum Edition in the number of pipelines (which has been reduced from 16 in the XT to 12 in the PRO) and the clocks, which are reduced to 475MHz core and 900MHz memory. Both boards sport 256-bit memory interfaces with 256MB of GDDR3 memory, and the same 160 million transistor count.
Modders will be disappointed to hear that ATI has physically disabled four of the X800 PRO's pipelines, so you won’t be able to enable all sixteen pipelines in the core via software solutions, including flashing to an X800 XT Platinum Edition BIOS. Since the rendering core is split up into independent quad pipes, some pipes can be disabled without affecting the rest of the chip. This will also help reduce manufacturing costs. If a manufacturing defect occurs in one of the 16 pipes, the entire block can be disabled and the card can be sold as a 12-pipe PRO board.
It’s rumored that ATI may eventually provide an 8-pipe X800 SE card, since the architecture can operate in 4, 8, 12, and 16 pipeline configurations this is certainly possible.
adam u were wrong about the soft-mod thing :P