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

All Quiet on the ATI Front

As we have noted previously in our PowerColor RADEON X800 XL 512MB review, NVIDIA has dominated the headlines with its next generation GeForce 7800 GTX and there is nothing substantial (yet) from ATI to counter the media blitz. One can expect this situation to remain until ATI launches its R520 based cards. So instead of adding to the rumor mill with speculations about the R520, we have prepared another 512MB version of ATI's RADEON X800 XL graphics card for review to whet the appetite of the fans.

GeCube's RADEON X800 XL 512MB.

Our candidate for today is the GeCube RADEON X800 XL 512MB. While its brand recognition in the graphics card industry still hasn't achieved the reach that some of its bigger rivals have managed, GeCube has eked out a niche for itself by offering competitively priced, functional cards that perform on a par with its peers, making it a good choice for those on a budget. For its RADEON X800 XL series, it has tried to improve on its competent products with a custom cooler design that integrates the silent heat pipe cooling approach with the traditional fan-based cooling. Before we continue, here are the technical details for the uninitiated.

GeCube RADEON X800 XL 512MB Technical Specifications

GraphicsEngine	ATIRADEON X800 XL VisualProcessing Unit (VPU) StockVPU clock = 400 MHz 16parallel rendering pipelines 6parallel geometry engines 256-bitmemory interface SMARTSHADER?HD Full support forMicrosoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable vertex and pixelshadersin hardware 2.0Vertex Shaders Supportsvertex programs up to 65,280 instructions with flow control Single cycletrigonometric operations (SIN & COS) 2.0Extended Pixel Shaders Supports up to1,536 instructions and 16 textures perrendering pass 2nd GenerationF-buffer technology acceleratesmulti-pass pixel shader programs with unlimited instructions 32temporary and constant registers Facing registerfor two-sided lighting 128-bit, 64-bit& 32-bit per pixel floating pointcolor formats Multiple RenderTarget (MRT) support Completefeature set also supported in OpenGL® via extensions SMOOTHVISION?HD 2x/4x/6xfull scene anti-aliasing modes Sparsemulti-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable samplepatterns, and centroid sampling LosslessColor Compression (up to6: 1) at all resolutions, including widescreenHDTV resolutions TemporalAnti-Aliasing 2x/4x/8x/16xanisotropic filtering modes Up to 128-taptexture filtering (Adaptivealgorithm with bi-linear (performance) andtri-linear (quality) options) 3Dc? High quality 4:1Normal Map Compression Works with anytwo-channel data format HYPER Z? HD 3-level HierarchicalZ-Buffer with early Z test Lossless Z-Buffercompression (up to 48:1) Fast Z-Buffer Clear Z cache optimizedfor real-time shadow rendering Optimized forperformance at high display resolutions,including widescreen HDTV resolutions VIDEOSHADER?HD Seamless integrationof pixel shaders with video in realtime FULLSTREAM?video de-blocking technology for Real,DivX, and WMV9 formats VIDEOSOAP?noise removal filtering for capturedvideo All-format DTV/HDTVdecoding Adaptive Per-PixelDe-Interlacing and Frame RateConversion (temporal filtering) Dualintegrated display controllers Single and dual linkexternal TMDS transmitter support forhigh resolution and/or multi-monitor DVI configurations
GraphicsMemory	512MBDDR3 SDRAM DefaultMemory clock = 1000 MHz (500 MHz DDR)
RAMDAC	Dualintegrated 10-bit perchannel 400 MHz DACs Integrated165 MHz TMDStransmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant and HDCP ready)
I/OFaceplate Connectors	2x DVI-Iconnector 1 x mini-DINconnector
Drivers& Software	Driversupport for Windows 98SE/ Me / NT / 2000 / XP Counterstrike:Condition Zero CyberLinkPowerDVD 5.0 CyberLinkPowerDirector 2.5ME
OtherInformation	ATX power cablerequired PCIe x16slotrequired



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