|
|
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
GeCube GC-X800PRO256-VIVO
GeCube chose to send in their VIVO version of the RADEON X800 PRO for this shootout. For the benefit of those not familiar, VIVO is an acronym for Video Input, Video Output. The latter function is available on all graphics cards, but video input or otherwise commonly known as video capturing, is only available on cards with the right ASIC (Application Specification Integrated Circuit) chip. In the case of ATI graphics cards, ATI has their own Rage Theatre chip to handle this function and the GeCube GC-X800PRO256-VIVO has been outfitted with this at the rear of the PCB.
The GeCube GC-RX800PRO256-VIVO graphics card. |
An ATI Rage Theater chip enables VIVO functions on the GeCube RADEON X800 PRO graphics card. |
Speedier 1.6ns DDR3 memory chips were found, however the default memory speed is still 900MHz DDR. Better overclocking potential? We'll find that out later. |
A pleasant surprise we found was that the GeCube GC-X800PRO256-VIVO is no normal RADEON X800 PRO card, but one that had all the 16 rendering pipelines enabled of its R420 VPU core! This means that the GeCube GC-X800PRO256-VIVO has a lot in common with the ATI RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition, the ultimate AGP graphics card at the moment. Though the clock speeds of both products are not similar, it's nothing that any tweaker can't handle with third party utilities. Does the GeCube deliver the performance of a more expensive class of the graphics cards? We are keeping mum about that till we get to the overclocking segment. In any case, the GeCube GC-X800PRO256-VIVO will deliver performance much faster than a standard 12-pipeline RADEON X800 PRO graphics card:-
As shown in the result graph, expect the GeCube GC-X800PRO256-VIVO to perform up to 17% speedier than a stock RADEON X800 PRO card and that's not something to be taken lightly. The RADEON X800 XT P.E. obtains results that are 35% greater than a stock RADEON X800 PRO, hence the performance of GeCube's GC-X800PRO256-VIVO places it right in between them. Great Performance is not the only factor going for the GeCube GC-X800PRO256-VIVO, although that alone warrants it extra attention, the package comes with software and all necessary cable accessories as listed here:-
DVI-I to VGA adapter
Component-output cable dongle
VIVO dongle (S-Video & Composite connections)
Y-Power cable splitter
RADEON X800 PRO user manual
Driver CD
Software: CyberLink PowerDVD 5.0, CyberLink Power Director 2.5 ME, CyberLink MediaShow 2.0 SE.
Games: Counter Strike: Condition Zero (Available only in the Counter Strike edition package)
GeCube's software bundle. |
The cable package is as follows: VIVO cable dongle, Component-output cable dongle, Y-Power cable splitter and a DVI-I to DB15 VGA adapter. |
The GeCube GC-X800PRO256-VIVO we received was the special Counter Strike: Condition Zero package with the full game bundled. Normal versions will not feature this game in the package. |
|
|
|
ATI's Development RADEON X850 Graphics Cards to Acquire 512MB of GDDR3 (2005-02-24)