A X850 XT PE in disguise, terrific deal if you know how to overclock.
Written: Oct 15 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Almost twice the card for the same amount of money, great peformance, great value.
Cons: You need to have some tech knowledge, not for the beginner or low intermediate.
The Bottom Line: If you are confident you can handle overclocking, get this card, you know the ratings the x850 gets, you can get the same from this but for $100 less.
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| zlmajors's Full Review: Sapphire RADEON X800 XL, (256 MB) AGP Video Card |
*Warning*
This review is really about overclocking the X800 XL to an X850 XT PE. This review will only really interest serious gamers who want that performance from a cheaper card. Unless you have a good understanding of your computer system, don't try this. This is sort of the thing about only try this if you are an expert.
So I'm looking at the different video cards and comparing prices vs. performance. My choices really were the Nvidia 7800, 6800, or ATI X850 XT PE.
If you look at the performance of those cards they rank as this: 7800, X850, 6800. With the X850 just above the 6800. This won't mean much to most of you but gamers know what I'm talking about. The goal when you get a "gaming" video card is getting the most bang for your buck. You want the fastest darn card you can possibly afford, because the higher resolutions and crisper game play is afforded by your video card.
Now anyone who is into gaming knows vaguely what overclocking is, so did I, vaguely. Basically this means that you tell a component to run faster than it is manufacturered to run at. Of course this produces more heat and stress on it, but the benefit is that you get a faster system, if your system can handle it.
One day as I'm looking around I see a post about the Radeon x800 XL card 256mb. Evidently ATI decided that in order to cut costs they would pack the same processor chip in the X800 XL as they do the X850XT. They would just package it with a weaker fan and cardset.
Here's the important part The thing with ATI and Nvidia is that they don't make their own cards, just the processor chip. Well the guys who own sapphire Technology had the intention of making their cards with the heavy gamers in mind. This meant they wanted to design cards that had the ability to safely handle overclocking.
Well when they learned about the same processor being put into the x800 as the X850. They decided that they would use the same video card, but with a weaker fan, and they would limit the data pipes (usually 16, but limited to 12 on the 800).
What the heck does this mean to me?
Well what this means is that for about the cost of $200, you can get the Sapphire Technology X800 XL 256mb, use a easy to use overclocking program and open up the additional pipelines to make this a X850XT PE Which normally costs somewhere in the range of $300-400. A big jump in performance for a huge savings.
Now the main review
This card uses a core chip R480. This is the same chip as is in the X850. Please don't think that every X800 comes with this because they don't. Sapphire indicates their "special" status with the GTO˛ in the name.The GTO˛ is a special product from Sapphire only. Neither the regular GTO, nor the GTO Ultimate use the unlockable chips. If it does not have ˛ in the name, it can't be unlocked.
The GTO˛ comes with 12 pipelines enabled by default, but the only lock which limits it to this number of pipelines is located in the Bios. This means it's only the software that limits this card from being used as a X850 XT PE.
No cards with defective pipelines have been found yet, which means (so far) the success rate is 100%.
There is NO AGP or regular PCI version of this card. It was designed at the time of manufacturer for the latest technology in motherboard design at the time. There are "some" sitest that are saying they do have an AGP version, THEY LIE!!!! You can call sapphire, if you buy a agp version you will not be able to unlock the additional pipelines and thus you will be stuck with just a x800.
This card is a PCI Express 16, which means it uses the latest motherboard technology, well not the latest, the latest is SLI but hey it's pretty darn good. It's 10 times faster than standard PCI, and 50 times faster than AGP. That's not an estimate it's a tested and verified score.
The core clock on this card is 400mhz, which is respectable, but with the overclock you can get 600mhz, a big jump in performance.
The memory it uses is Samsung 256mb GDDR3, which is the same memory the X850 XT uses, another thing sapphire did to insure stable overclocking.
The ports on it are DVI, D-SUB, and HDTV/S-Video/Composite Out. This means it can take whatever monitor you use.
The max resolution this card can put out is 2048x1536@85Hz which is more than most monitors can use. But all the same, it gives you a special warm feeling that your card "can" do it.
The numbers
Using 3Dmark 2003 benchmarking testing program you will see:
Base X800: 9735
With all 16 pipes open: 10695
Overclocked to 600mhz: 12869
Doing the same but with the 2005 version of 3dmark
Base X800: 4356
With all 16 pipes open: 4914
Overclocked to 600mhz: 6041
Now the last is the Frame per second test using UT 204 Citadel flyby.
Base X800: 116.9 Frames per second
With all 16 pipes open: 130.9 FPS
Overclocked to 600mhz: 155.8 fps
Conclusion
So you can see you get a large jump up in performance for a little work and a little money down. I can't state how happy I am that I got this card when I did for the amount I did. Already a lot of sites are selling them for $250, halfway between normal X800's and X850's.
You can still find them for the 200 cost at:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102595
http://www.chiefvalue.com/app/productdetails.asp?item=14-102-595
And a detailed "How-to guide" on how to overclock this card and release the FULL POTENTIAL AND RULE THE WORLD! Can be found at:
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles//overclocking/vidcard/127/1
Buy the card if you can find it for $200 and you won't be dissapointed.
Additional
One last thing, remember when I said it was built with a fan on it designed for the x800 but overclocking produces more heat? Well you WILL need to buy a new fan, they are easy to install, zalman makes a good one you can get and they come with heatsinks for the ram modules.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 200
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Epinions.com ID:
zlmajors
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Member: Zach Majors
Location: Portland, OR
Reviews written: 62
Trusted by: 16 members
About Me:
Husband and father, picky when it comes to products for my family or myself.
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