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Radeon X800 Pro Card Roundup
[Abstract]
ATI's Breadwinner Of The High-EndSlightly more than a half a year after its launch, the ATI RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition is still the highest performing product on the AGP front. Supporting ...
[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame
In Summary?/span>
Now that we've presented you with all details of each graphics card and thoroughly tested them in various aspects, it's time we did a little recap before we hand out the awards. Generally, most of the RADEON X800 PRO graphics cards performed quite similarly with the only exceptions being GeCube's GC-X800PRO256-VIVO and Gigabyte's GV-R80P256V where we were presently surprised to find their VPU unlocked with the maximum number of active pipelines possible for the R420 VPU. Through our performance-testing segment, we found both the cards ideally seated between the performance level of a standard RADEON X800 PRO with 12 rendering pipelines and that of a RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition. To give you another performance perspective of these cards, they were as fast or even faster than some of the standard RADEON X800 PRO cards that were overclocked to their maximum potential. That's quite a testimony of their processing power, but they will set you back more than the average RADEON X800 PRO graphics cards. The good news is that they are still more affordable than a full-blown RADEON X800 XT P.E. and can be easily found in retail as well. So for those who desire nothing but the best performing RADEON X800 PRO graphics cards, the GeCube GC-X800PRO256-VIVO and Gigabyte GV-R80P256V are your best choices.
For the overclocking aficionados not inclined to fork out more for the higher performing GeCube and Gigabyte products, we have three products that come in highly recommended for this task:- Connect3D RADEON X800 PRO, HIS Excalibur X800Pro IceQ II VIVO and Sapphire RADEON X800 PRO VIVO.
While all the cards in the shootout were endowed with quiet operation, only one of them was able to maintain its 'cool' factor through the thick of testing and that's none other than the HIS Excalibur X800Pro IceQ II VIVO. Not only is its Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer 4 able to keep the card's temperature in check, its heat exhaust system indirectly cools the system as well. Performance seekers with high priority on a cool and quiet graphics card should highly consider the HIS Excalibur X800Pro IceQ II VIVO. Sadly, it's not without flaws and one of it is its appetite for free expansion slots. Though 'only' two are required, we recommend three for better cooling effectiveness and the fact that the rear portion housing the fan is actually convex in design. The second downside was its less than perfect display output at resolutions of 1600x1200 where we found text sharpness lacking. However it's not a turnoff like the ABIT RX800 PRO, which had blurry output at the resolution of 1600x1200.
Lastly, those looking for options with video capturing capabilities should home into one of these products:- GeCube GC-X800PRO256-VIVO, Gigabyte GV-R80P256V, HIS Excalibur X800Pro IceQ II VIVO and Sapphire RADEON X800 PRO VIVO. There are more options in the market, but we are confining the list within the shootout participants.
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ATI's Development RADEON X850 Graphics Cards to Acquire 512MB of GDDR3 (2005-02-24)