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ATI's Radeon X800 256MB and Radeon X850 PRO Preview
[Abstract]
ThoughtsPricing is the frustrating facet to factor in to a conclusion about these two new Radeons. MSRP is all well and good when using it to pair up hardware in a shootout, but if you can't f...
[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame
ATI Radeon X800 256MB 
Click for a larger version
Click for a larger version
The board doesn't need any extra power provision, drawing all it needs from the PCI Express slot it inhabits. The cooler is almost identical, if not actually so, to the X700 XT's revised cooler. Copper based with copper fins, the fan is noisy from past experience and that hasn't changed here. At the default fan speed, 54% of the maximum, it's tolerable, but at any of the intermediate stages between 54% and 100% it gets progressively more annoying. The pitch changes are confounding and the granularity of the changes make it even more annoying. Not a high point.
256MB of memory, clocked at 700MHz, is provided by eight GDDR3 DRAM devices. Samsung's ever-present K4J55323QF does the business, the slowest available GC20 variant supplied. That means 1000MHz memory clocked very conservatively. I'm sure you know what that means. More on which later.
The PCB space for a Rage Theater processor is unfilled. You'll have to look elsewhere for low-cost, high-performance VIVO thrills from a Radeon.
That leaves you with analogue VGA, DVI-I and S-Video outputs for connecting displays. Dual DVI is an AIB option on the $199 X800, if they so wish, but it's not present on the reference board that Sapphire is shipping.
At 274g, it's no heavyweight, and the form factor means that it will slot nicely into PCI Express capable small PCs.
ATI Tray Tools Information Clocks
Fan speeds
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ATI's Development RADEON X850 Graphics Cards to Acquire 512MB of GDDR3 (2005-02-24)