Thoughts

It's long been known that a sub 500MHz, full four-quad R4xx product, twinned with GDDR3, would offer performance close enough to ATI's high end vapourware so as to render those faster products moot in terms of what you'd realistically buy. Now that's been introduced, albeit on PCI Express, you can honestly forget about an XT or XT Platinum Edition, be it X800 or X850. It matters not that you can't find them to buy, since buy them isn't something you'd ever really do. Yes, there are forum goers around that'll wave such boards at you, but who cares, the X800 PRO on AGP has its spiritual PCI Express counterpart and its that performance class that'll see more action in gamer's systems.

Therefore, X800 XL sits pretty as the realistic PCI Express performance card of choice, especially given its $299 price tag. There's nothing to match it for the money, something which I'm hoping Andy will show you in due course when we get an X800 XL back for him to run against 6800 GT and others in a range of gaming tests. Look out for that, especially since I left NVIDIA boards out of this examination.

I slipped X850 XT into this article without having seen a reference board, since that reference board really need never exist. Clocking X850 XT PE down showed that there's absolutely no need for two SKUs pitched so close together in terms of clocks. ATI's PCI Express line-up needs some trimming, no doubt about it.

X800 XL is mightily impressive. Performance, cost, physical attributes and hopeful availability all make it worth a spot at the top of your high-performance PCI Express shopping list.

If ATI can bring it to general web retail in serious numbers, it'll be hard to resist. Questions surrounding availability, which I posed to ATI around the time of X850 XT PE's launch, remain unanswered. Web pressure on the graphics giant for those answers remains high though, and we're still certain they won't remain tight lipped for much longer.

All that aside, X800 XL is highly recommended.

HEXUS.right2reply

Under our right2reply initiative, we asked ATI's local UK PR to give us their thoughts on our article and their PR and Marketing Manager for Northern Europe and South Africa, Andrzej Bania, had this to say.

"Using a great combination of theoretical testing, together with the most advanced 3D game in the market, means that the results drawn by We are useful for all users. Given the number of systems shipping with 17-19" TFTs, it is good to see that 1280x1024 has been included with the eye candy turned on because the scores shown here will be representative of the gaming experience that most people will enjoy with X800 XL. Personally, I think that it would be nice if We used Crytek's next generation technology demo (The Project) in their benchmarks as well because it would give potential buyers an idea of how the advanced games of tomorrow will work on today's best accelerators. The conclusion accurately brings 'bang for your buck' into the equation which is vital for customers looking to make purchasing decisions after they have completed their research."

As luck would have it, we do have a separate The Project article in the works, ably assisted by ATI, so look out for that soon. ATI are rightly proud of X800 XL and Andrzej's reply shows that in spades.



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