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- Date:
- Wednesday, January 26, 2005
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Sapphire Radeon X700 PRO
We take our first look at a retail ATI Radeon X700 PRO video card and compare it directly to what the competition has to offer. Will one trounce the other, or do both offer an equal gameplay experience?
Introduction:
Last September, ATI introduced their new mainstream video card lineup known as the X700 Series. We took a look at what this new lineup was bringing to the table and previewed a Radeon X700 XT PCI-Express. It seems, however, that the X700 XT has disappeared since its announcement. There is no mention of the X700 XT anywhere on ATI’s website. On their website, the only card listed under the X700 series is the X700 PRO.
. Nowhere online can retail X700 XT products be purchased. Therefore, as of right now, the X700 Pro is the only readily available X700 series card.RADEON X700 series is currently available in the RADEON X700 PRO.
Let us quickly go over what the Radeon X700 PRO is all about. The Radeon X700 PRO is a native PCI-Express VPU that is built on the 110nm process, but it is not using Low-K technologies (similar to the GeForce 6600 GT). The X700 PRO is a single-slot video card that does not require external power as it completely draws its power from the PCI-Express slot. The X700 PRO is an 8 pixel pipeline VPU with 6 vertex units. For comparison, the GeForce 6600 GT is an 8 pixel pipeline GPU with 3 vertex units. The X700 PRO supports every feature of the X800 series, which means Pixel Shader 2.0b support for longer pixel shaders, 3Dc, SMARTSHADER HD, SMOOTHVISION HD, VIDEOSHADER HD, and HyperZ HD. The X700 PRO is built to support GDDR3 memory using a 128-bit wide memory bus supporting either a 128 or 256MB framebuffer.
Today we are going to look at a full retail boxed version of the Sapphire Hybrid Radeon X700 PRO. Under Sapphire’s product lineup page, you will see that they have adopted the “Hybrid” brand name for the Radeon X700 series. You will also notice they do have a Hybrid X700 XT listed there; however, you cannot find this card for sale anywhere right now. Again, the card we are looking at today is the Hybrid X700 PRO.
Erupting from the depths of a hardware stew of performance and affordability, the X700 Series presents itself as the definitive Hybrid graphic solution! Combining technologies such as 8 Pixel Shader pipes, and 6 Vertex pipelines, the X700 Hybrid series raises the threshold of believability in today's detail rich game environments.
The Sapphire Hybrid Radeon X700 PRO is a PCI-Express card sporting the Radeon X700 PRO VPU with 256MB of GDDR3.
The Sapphire Hybrid Radeon X700 PRO:
Here is the full retail box package. On the front of the box, Sapphire lays out the top features of the card and the bundle included. On the back of the box, there is a see-through window to let you actually see what the card looks like. Inside there are two layers, the card is on the bottom, and the software is on the top.
As you can see, Sapphire is going all blue for this design. The card has a blue PCB, a blue heatsink and fan, and blue RAM heatsinks on the front and back. The fan does not have any blue, or any other colored, lights, however. Sapphire did choose to put RAM heatsinks on this video card, so it will be interesting to see how high we can overclock the memory. When you have a video card with a 128-bit memory bus, it always helps to be able to overclock the memory as high as possible to increase performance. The card is light, and the fan is quiet. As mentioned previously, no external power is required.
This video card supports video out in Composite and S-Video with support up to 1024x768. It does not have video in capture capabilities, however. It has dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400MHz DACs with a 165MHz TMDS transmitter for DVI.
Inside the box is an S-Video to Composite adapter with an S-Video and Composite cable. There is also a DVI to VGA adapter. The software bundle includes two full version games, Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow and Prince of Persia the Sands of Time. PowerDVD 5.0 is included, as well as a driver CD and Redline graphics tweaking software.