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Sapphire Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Friday, 26 May 2006 |
NeoSeeker reveals a review on the Sapphire Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB PCIe graphics card. As far as the mainstream goes, ATI has had only limited success in the past three years with recapturing the success they once had established. They have not had much issue keeping up with NVIDIA above the $300 price mark, but most consumers do not purchase add-in boards at that price point. Their past two attempts at products built from the ground up, as in not crippled versions of a more expensive card on identical PCB have been almost total failures. The Radeon X700 XT never even made it to market with its PRO brethren biting the dust hard at retail, and the Radeon X1600 PRO, their latest attempt, has not done any better.
 Sapphire Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB PCI-E Review
In the summer of 2005, ATI launched quietly its Radeon X800 GT card in an attempt to squash the commanding sales lead that the GeForce 6600 GT had over its Radeon X700 PRO. The Radeon X800 GT beat the GeForce 6600 GT in most benchmarks, but was based on architecture that was over a year old and had no support for Shader Model 3.0, and did not support dual graphics cards as the GeForce 6600 GT did in SLI. Just over six months ago, ATI released the Radeon X800 GTO which used surplus R480 cores that did not meet Radeon X850 XT specs. Unlike the Radeon X800 GT however, the GTO featured 12 pipelines.
The Radeon X1800 GTO, while launched in March, did not hit retail until early April of this year, and has seen fair success heretofore. The PCB used is identical to that used on the Radeon X1800 XL boards, although Sapphire have replaced the cooler with a larger, and what would appear to be more efficient design. The cooler uses copper fins similarily to the Radeon X1800 XL, but the fan is significantly larger. This will hopefully lead to less whine and more heat, as the Radeon X1800 XL was notorious for being an extremely hot, and relatively noisy graphics card.
The Radeon X1800 GTO uses the standard R520 core found in the higher end Radeon X1800 XT and XL, but has 4 of the sixteen pipes found on the Radeon X1800 XL disabled. Some Radeon X1800 cards are reported to be unlockable, Sapphire's cards however, are not. The Radeon X1800 GTO uses the same 256-bit external memory bus found on higher end Radeon X1800 cards and has all of the core features found on all X1800 cards. The Radeon X1800 GTO features a 500MHz core clock and a 1000MHz memory speed, putting it behind the GeForce 7600 GT in terms of raw speed.
ATI seem to have settled into a rather unusual pattern for their mainstream products. The past two product generations have seen them release a stop-gap card at launch, and then release a mainstream chip using the cores that don't make full top-end specs six months later. The Radeon X800 GT, GTO and now the Radeon X1800 GTO are all such chips, and while it may not seem to be a cost effective solution, it very well might be as ATI have purposefully repeated themselves now. The Radeon X1800 GTO cards launched with a MSRP of $249, $50 above that of the GeForce 7600 GT.
Since its launch, cards have fallen to around the $200 mark, with Sapphire selling theirs slightly below that point. Since the launch of the GeForce 7600 GT however, the price of the card has fallen to $150 from some retailers, making the competion a little warmer. Ultimately what will win people to the Radeon X1800 GTO is its stellar performance with AA and AF on, and its slightly more advanced feature set in comparison to what NVIDIA offers. While the Sapphire card does not have the unlockable pipes that some brands are reported to have, it offers great framerates regardless in most games.
It beats the GeForce 7600 GT in most games, although the GeForce 7600 GT wins in some games when there is no filtering. Once filtering is turned on however, the Radeon X1800 GTO trumps or matches the GeForce 7600 GT in almost any case. The cooler is also significantly better than the one found on the GeForce 7600 GT, and the bundle that Sapphire have included is decent as well. While the Radeon X1800 GTO comes with a small price premium over the GeForce 7600 GT, its performance coupled with the significantly nicer fan, should make up for the price differential for most people.
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