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Sapphire X800 Series Roundup
[Abstract]
Sapphire's Radeon SistersIt is not too often that we get a whole posse of hot aliens of the female persuasion dropping in on our labs. Well, we don't actually remember any or at least we don't ...
[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame
The Quiet One
We now come to the first of the more unusual variations of the Radeon X800 GTO from Sapphire. The Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO 256MB Ultimate is extremely quiet; it is completely silent actually, thanks to its heat pipe based cooler. Instead of the usual cooling fan, we have a heavy aluminum heat pipe cooler from Thermaltake. Heat from the graphics core is redirected to the other side of the card by the three heat pipes, where a large radiator has been mounted to dissipate the accumulated heat. The design of the heat pipe cooler itself is quite conventional, and like a few other similar coolers, the radiator portion of the cooler may interfere with the onboard components of some motherboards if adequate allowance isn't available. You may want to check if your motherboard is suitable before proceeding.
The limited allowance in space for the radiator also spells heat issues, as the close proximity with other motherboard components will reduce the airflow for cooling. Predictably, the Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO 256MB Ultimate has the highest temperatures for the Sapphire cards we tested in this article. Sapphire has wisely decided to keep the default frequencies for the Ultimate, hence the core clock speed is still set at 400MHz, while the memory also remains at 980MHz DDR. Samsung 2.0ns memory chips are also used and like we said earlier, this card definitely runs much warmer than its peers. The temperatures for the memory reached in excess of 80 degrees Celsius during testing.
A heat pipe cooling solution from Thermaltake takes centre stage for the Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO 256MB Ultimate. |
The back of the card. |
Obviously, the high temperatures affected our overclocking and we only managed a modest amount of overclocking. However, this card is meant for those who are considering a quiet graphics card and any form of overclocking is just a bonus. As the Radeon X800 GTO belongs to the middle price segment of the graphics card business, the silent Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO 256MB Ultimate should find favor among those who value peace over incredible benchmark scores.
These heat pipes are responsible for channeling the heat from the core to the aluminum heatsink at the back of the card. |
The allowance for the radiator portion of the heatsink was adequate but not very generous. There may be isolated cases of this interfering with your motherboard. |
Just like the normal Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO, there is the Sapphire Select DVD, which allows buyers to choose one game out of four after a free hour of trial for each game. The other items that we found in the package include:
DVI-to-VGA adaptor
9-pin mini-DIN to Composite converter
9-pin mini-DIN to Component converter
Composite extension cable
S-Video extension cable
User Manual
Driver CD
Sapphire Select DVD (Choose one of the following games: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, Richard Burns Rally, Tony Hawk's Underground 2)
TriXX Overclocking Utility
CyberLink Power DVD 6.0
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