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PowerColor Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Saturday, 22 April 2006 |
FiringSquad comes with a review on the PowerColor Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB PCIe graphics card. Although ATI had no problem competing closely with NVIDIA on the high-end of the 3D graphics market for the past six months, for whatever reason they haven't had as much success capturing sales in the mainstream segment of the market over the same time period. Like the Radeon X800 GTO, ATI's Radeon X1800 GTO starts life out as a high-end GPU that's been adapted for use in the mainstream market. In the case of the Radeon X1800 GTO, ATI relies on the exact same R520 GPU that was used previously in Radeon X1800 XT graphics cards, only they've disabled a few of the GPU's features in order to serve the mainstream market.
 PowerColor Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB PCI-E Review
The most critical change comes to the Radeon X1800 GTO's pixel shading units. Whereas the R520 GPU housed inside Radeon X1800 XT cards ships with 16 pixel shaders, for the Radeon X1800 GTO four of the pixel units are disabled. In addition to disabling these pixel shaders, ATI also deactivates four texture units as well as four ROP's for the GTO. Fortunately, the vertex shaders carry over unchanged from the Radeon X1800 XT at eight. In terms of clock frequencies, the graphics core and memory on the GTO are both clocked at 500MHz, this is the same clock speed as the on the Radeon X1800 XL.
Looking for a card that delivers high-end performance at a more mainstream price point? If so, the Radeon X1800 GTO is one of the top choices on the market at this point. The Radeon X1800 GTO's got high-end features like a 256-bit memory interface, providing good performance even at the more demanding resolutions like 1600x1200, even with AA/AF. And with its R520 graphics core, the Radeon X1800 GTO is built for the current wave of DirectX 9.0 games. The R520 graphics core was built specifically to address the increased use of branching in Shader Model 3.0 games.
PowerColor's Radeon X1800 GTO board is basically a carbon copy of ATI's reference board design. The card shares all the same board-level components as the other GTO manufacturers, right down to the power circuitry and memory. PowerColor also sticks with ATI's reference clock speeds. Considering how confusing the Radeon X800 GTO market was, with board manufacturers picking and choosing which ATI GPU and memory they were going to use on their boards as well as a wide range of clock speeds, it's in some ways a little refreshing to see that the Radeon X1800 GTO market doesn't appear to be as volatile.
In the meantime, PowerColor's Radeon X1800 GTO board is a solid representation of the Radeon X1800 GTO. It delivers good overall performance, runs fairly quietly thanks to its redesigned ATI cooler, and is widely available on the market just below ATI's MSRP for the Radeon X1800 GTO. If you're in the market for one of these boards it's definitely worthy of consideration.
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