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ATI Radeon X800 Pro Review |
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Written by JRd1st
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Monday, 17 January 2005 |
Viper Lair strikes with a review of ATI's high-end card, the ATI Radeon X800 Pro. Graphics card performance has changed so much in the past couple of years that if you miss one day, you miss a product line. The top spot seems to bounce back and forth between ATI and NVIDIA, as each will release a card that just out does the other and the cycle starts all over again. ATI have recently released their new line of cards, the Radeon X Series. Starting with the low end Radeon X300 and then progressing to the X600 and X800. The X800 utilizes the R420 GPU, based on the 130nm manufacturing process and has a 256-bit memory interface to the new GDDR3 memory.
 ATI Radeon X800 Pro Review
ATI always seem to outdo
themselves when they release their video card lines. First the R2xx series came
out, then the R3xx series and now finally the R4xx series. The X800 Pro is
definitely no slouch. Smooth performance in most games with the image quality
turned up and the resolution maxed is something to be proud of. Based on our
results, we have no problems recommending this card to our readers. While some
benchmarks have shown the 6800 GT to be faster, the actual gaming experiences
with the X800 Pro were positive.
Performance on the whole went up as the
system performance went up, but it was definitely no slouch on my lowly Athlon
1700+. This just shows that you can get a large performance boost by just
upgrading your video card instead of a full system upgrade. With the card
running for around $380, it is a fair amount of money to spend for an upgrade,
but less expensive than buying a new CPU and motherboard. If your current CPU
and motherboard is only a clock bin or two behind, a video card upgrade is a
smarter move.
Overclocking the ATI
Radeon X800 Pro was great as well. ATI ships the card with underclocked memory, so you are almost
guaranteed at least 50MHz on the memory. As tested we were able to push the card
to 520MHz on the core and 565MHz on the memory. This puts the X800 Pro into the
range of the X800 XT, being only 4 pixel pipelines short of this goal. Image
quality was also excellent, as expected. Sharp, clear 2D and 3D images are what
we have come to expect from ATI,
and the X800 Pro keeps this up.
The X800 Pro does have some downfalls
though. One being the cooling setup, I would have preferred to see a more
integrated cooling solution. The CPU cooler seems to run excellently, but the
memory is left bare. Adding even passive ram sinks to the memory could allow for
a bit faster memory speeds and thus better performance. The fact that ATI ships the card with 4 pixel
pipelines disabled is also a downfall. If ATI had enabled all 16 piplines and just underclocked the
speed, performance would not only go up, but the value as well. As it stands the
chipset is a bit of a waste, almost a X800XT but cut short. Also the bundle from
ATI is a little light. I know
with the 9800 series cards they were including a Half-Life 2 voucher, but the
box was empty on the X800Pro. There was just the manual, driver and some cables,
but no games or demos. While a full game license would add to the cost of the
card, when spending this much on a product, some added bonuses would be
nice.
The X800 Pro is one great card, fast gaming performance and awesome
IQ. The lack of software bundle and memory cooling and disabled GPU is made up
by the price and performance. If you are in the market for a video card upgrade
don't rule out the ATI Radeon X800 Pro.
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