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ATI Radeon X800 Series Roundup

We have gathered seven retail X800 series based video cards. Inside we will see what each one has to offer and see what kind of a gaming experience we can have with each.

Introduction:

We did a roundup of retail GeForce 6 series video cards a couple of months ago. We covered retail products of the GeForce 6800 and GeForce 6800 Ultra, so if you want to see those offerings look here.

Today we have an even larger roundup of retail ATI Radeon X800 series-based video cards, seven in all, covering the PCI-Express and AGP platforms. We have three PCI-Express video cards: a Sapphire X800 XT, an MSI X800 XT, and topping it off, an Asus X800 XT Platinum Edition. On the AGP side, we have an X800 XT and an X800 XT PE from VisionTek, an X800 Pro from MSI, and Sapphire’s Toxic series X800 Pro double slot video card.

To refresh your memory on what technologies are built into the new Radeon X800 series, you can read our X800 Series VPU technology article. The hardware features of the ATI Radeon X800 Series include being fabricated on TSMC’s .13 nanometer Low-K dielectric process and using GDDR3 memory modules on a 256-bit memory bus. The main pipeline architecture of the X800 series is scalable. The high end parts, the X800 XT and X800 XT PE, have 16 pixel pipelines, while the X800 PRO has 12 pixel pipelines. All Radeon X800 series cards support SMARTSHADER HD, which allows Pixel Shader 2.0b support, giving the X800 series the ability to execute a shader program that is 1,536 instructions long. All X800 series VPUs come equipped with 6 Vertex Shader 2.0 units. The X800 series also support ATI’s 3Dc technology for normal map compression, which must be programmed on a per game basis.

The three levels of cards we are looking at today are the X800 XT PE, X800 XT, and X800 PRO. The X800 XT is basically a slower clocked version of the X800 XT-Platinum Edition. Here is how the three models stack up with reference specifications from ATI:

ATI Radeon X800 XT PE – 16 pixel-pipelines, 6 vertex units, 256MB GDDR3, 520MHz VPU clock, 1.12GHz memory clock, MSRP $499.

ATI Radeon X800 XT – 16 pixel-pipelines, 6 vertex units, 256MB GDDR3, 500MHz VPU clock, 1GHz memory clock, MSRP $479.

ATI Radeon X800 PRO – 12 pixel-pipelines, 6 vertex units, 256MB GDDR3, 475MHz VPU clock, 900MHz memory clock, MSRP $399.

For this review, each retail product has its own page. You can use the navigation menu at the bottom of each page to jump to any page you wish in this review.