[X800 GTO with a Gigabyte X600 XT]

Installation and Testing

Test System:
DFI LanParty nF4 Ultra-D, Athlon64 3200+, 2x512 Mushkin PC3700 RAM, 120 GB Maxtor hard drive, PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 SLI

As expected, the installation was quite easy. After removing the old drivers the system was powered down and the previous video card was removed. The HIS X800 GTO slid right into place after removing the cover on the expansion slot below the system's PCI Express slot. Catalyst version 5.9 drivers were used for the testing. For comparision testing the X800 GTO was tested against a Gigabyte X600 XT, an ATI X700 Pro, and a BFG 6600 GT OC.

The main benchmark testing was done to show the comparative performance of each video card. The X800 GTO being the newest card of the bunch, and probably the most expensive, was able to best the other cards in the group. Since this card is the Turbo model, the testing was done at the 500/1000 Turbo speeds, which is how HIS has designed the card to run. While the power of this video card is not staggering compared to the battle-proven 6600 GT its extra pixel pipelines and high clock speeds were able to handle our benchmarks with no problems. The other cards were able to deliver playable frame rates but the GTO is really in a class above the rest, despite its reasonable price.

The next stage was simply done by testing the video card at 1600x1200. This is a great level to play at if you have a solid video card and a nice display. Here the X800 GTO did pretty well, it can definitely handle 16x12 game play, but if there is going to be lots of action, users will probably not be able to play with AA or AF turned on and still get a good frame rate