GeCube Radeon X800 XL VIVO Edition 512MB Review --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

GeCube RADEON X800 XL 512MB

Similar to its 256MB counterpart, the GeCube RADEON X800 XL 512MB features GeCube's unique hybrid cooler that merges conventional fan assisted air-cooling with the silent, coolant based heat pipe solution. And somehow, GeCube has also managed to incorporate all that into a single slot solution.

The Rage Theatre ASIC has been partially concealed by the large cooler faceplate.

The advantages of the hybrid cooler are immediately obvious once you plug the card in. We could not tell if the card was running with our ears alone. The heat pipes help to relieve the burden of the cooler fan, allowing GeCube to attach a slower fan that will naturally generate less noise. Meanwhile, having the cooler fan will mean that the heat pipes will not be overworked and the temperatures are lower than a pure heat pipe based cooler.

Here we can see one of the heat pipes running through the cooler.

In short, if the cooler is well designed, you will get the best of both worlds with a quiet and cool card, which is what GeCube seems to have pulled off with its RADEON X800 XL 512MB. Not only did the cooler fan live up to its quiet billing (GeCube has rated it at 20dB for noise output), it also helped to make the GeCube card one of the coolest 512MB RADEON X800 XL cards that we have tested.

Another typical GeCube strategy for its graphics cards is to overclock them by default at the factory, so that users will enjoy a slight performance edge without risking their cards. Most of the time though, the overclocked margin is more like an anthill-sized bump. Here, we find that the GeCube RADEON X800 XL 512MB comes clocked at 400MHz for its core and 1000MHz DDR for the memory. That is a mere 20MHz boost over the standard reference design for the RADEON X800 XL. Slight though it may seem, it is surprisingly enough to give the GeCube a distinct performance edge in our benchmarks.

The other usual features found in a RADEON X800 XL card are all accounted for in the GeCube card. Dual DVI-I connectors are increasingly common in high-end graphics cards and they are predictably found in this GeCube model too. ATI's Rage Theatre ASIC for video capturing is also standard fare for high-end ATI cards and GeCube faithfully adopted this too.

A rather standard set of connectors for the RADEON X800 XL: two DVI-I connectors sandwiching a mini-DIN connector

GeCube has rarely impressed us with its bundled software and accessories and that is again the case for its RADEON X800 XL 512MB. With only one rather old game, CounterStrike: Condition Zero and a couple of DVD and content creation software, it is one of the more sparse offerings we have seen for a card of this caliber. Cutting corners here is probably how GeCube manages to offer its products at such competitive prices. Despite that, we still think it's about time GeCube updated its bundle before it starts becoming a liability. After all, the mediocre Condition Zero is already more than a year old. The entire inventory of the bundle is as follows:

1 x DVI-to-VGA adaptor

Composite extension cable

9-pin mini-DIN to S-Video/Composite VIVO dongle

9-pin mini-DIN to Component output dongle

User Manual

Driver CD

CounterStrike: Condition Zero

CyberLink PowerDVD 5.0

CyberLink PowerDirector 2.5ME

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