![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , September 06, 2005
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
PowerColor Radeon X800 GT Review
Looking for an ATI-based midrange challenger to NVIDIA’s 6600 GT? Read inside for our review of the PowerColor X800 GT, which utilizes a brand new VPU from ATI that takes direct aim at NVIDIA’s mainstream leadership position.
Introduction:
The ATI Radeon X800 GT is an example of what you might call a “silent launch.” There weren’t any large media events associated with this new video card or any major launch previews or reviews. This product was released onto the market silently, “under the cover of darkness” (so to speak), with the NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT GPU set firmly in its sights. In fact, the launch of this new graphics card, chipset, VPU, or what have you, is so silent that ATI doesn’t even have it listed on their website. Under their product lineup for the X800 series, you cannot find mention of the X800 GT model. Although ATI may disavow the existence of their undercover mainstream operative, we can assure you that it does exist, and it is being produced and sold by add-in-board partners as we speak.
Upon initial inspection, the Radeon X800 GT is a very interesting configuration that almost appears to be unbalanced. If we keep in mind the target of this card -- the GeForce 6600 GT -- the design begins to make more sense. To start, the Radeon X800 GT is based on the X800 series so it contains the same 3D features that you will find on the high-end models. There is support for Shader Model 2.0, 3Dc, and 2x, 4x and 6x Antialiasing, and up to 16x anisotropic filtering. In comparison, the GeForce 6600 GT supports Shader Model 3.0, and has 2x, 4x, and 8x antialiasing and up to 16x anisotropic filtering along with something the X800 GT does not have, a Floating Point 16 buffer for the best quality HDR. Speaking purely in terms of 3D features, NVIDIA’s offering brings more to the table.
While features are indeed important, we also need the performance to push those features. The GeForce 6600 GT utilizes 8 pixel pipelines and 3 vertex units. The new Radeon X800 GT also uses 8 pixel pipelines but retains the full 6 vertex units of its high end brethren. Speaking in terms of theoretical performance, the ATI Radeon X800 GT is faster at vertex processing.
The Radeon X800 GT’s default clock speed is 475MHz, and the GeForce 6600 GT’s default clock speed is 500MHz. So speaking in terms of theoretical texel fill rate, the GeForce 6600 GT is slightly faster (4 GigaTexels/second versus 3.8 GigaTexels/second). This creates an interesting situation as the GeForce 6600 GT has a higher texel fill rate, but the ATI Radeon X800 GT has more vertex performance.
While fill rate and vertex processing make up part of the equitation, the other part is memory size and bandwidth. The GeForce 6600 GT has 128MB of GDDR3 on a 128-bit memory bus, which runs at 1GHz providing 16GB/sec of bandwidth. To combat this, ATI is making the standard memory width 256-bits wide. ATI will give you the option to have either 128MB or 256MB of GDDR3 on the card. At the 980MHz frequency that is standard with the 256MB version, this gives the ATI Radeon X800 GT a whopping 31.3GB/second of memory bandwidth, which is almost double that of the GeForce 6600 GT.
This is what we meant by a configuration that seems somewhat imbalanced. You have a 256MB framebuffer with a whole lot of memory bandwidth available, but only around 3.8 GigaTexels a second of fill rate available to it. Therefore, it begs the question as to whether or not this is overkill for the shader and fill rate performance the video card provides. We hope this review will help to answer this and other questions about ATI’s new midrange card.
Today we have a PowerColor X800 GT video card to test. If we look at PowerColor’s product lineup page for PCI-Express X800s, you will see that they have a lot of different models to fit your needs. PowerColor has X800 cards from the regular X800 all the way up to the Radeon X800 XT-PE.
PowerColor’s newest card listed at the top is the PowerColor X800 GT. The PowerColor X800 GT comes with 256MB of GDDR3 on a 256-bit memory bus. There are 8 pixel pipelines operating at 475MHz. It is also great to see dual DVI and HDTV output support. There is also something about the card that is not officially announced by PowerColor. Apparently, there is a special chipset on this video card to aid in overclocking. While PowerColor won’t announce the overclocking potential officially, this video card is supposed to allow for very high overclocks. See our overclocking section to see if this potential translates into real-world results. At $170, the price of the PowerColor X800 GT is very attractive and it competes directly with the 6600 GT, which can now be found at or about this price.
PowerColor X800 GT:
The PowerColor X800 GT is a single slot video card built on a red printed circuit board. In terms of length, the PowerColor X800 GT is half an inch longer than a GeForce 6600 GT as it is a full 7” in length. It is, however, half an inch shorter than a Radeon X800 XL. The entire heat sink is made out of aluminum so this video card is very light. On the rear of the video card, a bracket applies pressure on the heat sink to ensure adequate contact with the VPU. In addition, this bracket also has some thermal material making contact with the back of the VPU. All of the RAM modules are exposed and they are not passively cooled by any heat sinks.
The RAM used is Samsung GDDR3 modules rated at 2ns (500MHz) operation. Just like the Radeon X800 XL 256MB video card, no external power is required for the PowerColor X800 GT; the video card draws all of its power from the PCI-Express bus. The PowerColor X800 GT comes standard with dual DVI, TV-Out, and HDTV out support.
Inside the box, you will find a full version of the game Pacific Fighters. There is also a CD containing a complete CyberLink DVD solution that includes PowerDVD, PowerProducer DVD, Power2Go, MediaShow SE, and PowerDirector SE+. On the driver CD, DirectX 9.0c is included with ATI Catalyst 5.7 drivers. There is a user’s manual included and a Pacific Fighters reference guide. Rounding out the package is a DVI to VGA adapter, and an HDTV, an S-Video, and a Composite (RCA) cable.