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.
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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
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Graphics
Engine
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- ATI
RADEON X800 XL Visual
Processing Unit (VPU)
- Stock
VPU clock = 400 MHz
- 16
parallel rendering pipelines
- 6
parallel geometry engines
- 256-bit
memory interface
- SMARTSHADER™
HD
- Full support for
Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable vertex and pixel
shaders
in hardware
- 2.0
Vertex Shaders
- Supports
vertex programs up to 65,280 instructions with flow control
- Single cycle
trigonometric operations (SIN & COS)
- 2.0
Extended Pixel Shaders
- Supports up to
1,536 instructions and 16 textures per
rendering pass
- 2nd Generation
F-buffer technology accelerates
multi-pass pixel shader programs with unlimited instructions
- 32
temporary and constant registers
- Facing register
for two-sided lighting
- 128-bit, 64-bit
& 32-bit per pixel floating point
color formats
- Multiple Render
Target (MRT) support
- Complete
feature set also supported in OpenGL® via extensions
- 2x/4x/6x
full scene anti-aliasing modes
- Sparse
multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable sample
patterns, and centroid sampling
- Lossless
Color Compression (up to6: 1) at all resolutions, including widescreen
HDTV resolutions
- Temporal
Anti-Aliasing
- 2x/4x/8x/16x
anisotropic filtering modes
- Up to 128-tap
texture filtering
- (Adaptive
algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and
tri-linear (quality) options)
- 3Dc™
- High quality 4:1
Normal Map Compression
- Works with any
two-channel data format
- HYPER Z™ HD
- 3-level Hierarchical
Z-Buffer with early Z test
- Lossless Z-Buffer
compression (up to 48:1)
- Fast Z-Buffer Clear
- Z cache optimized
for real-time shadow rendering
- Optimized for
performance at high display resolutions,
including widescreen HDTV resolutions
- VIDEOSHADER™
HD
- Seamless integration
of pixel shaders with video in real
time
- FULLSTREAM™
video de-blocking technology for Real,
DivX, and WMV9 formats
- VIDEOSOAP™
noise removal filtering for captured
video
- All-format DTV/HDTV
decoding
- Adaptive Per-Pixel
De-Interlacing and Frame Rate
Conversion (temporal filtering)
- Dual
integrated display controllers
- Single and dual link
external TMDS transmitter support for
high resolution and/or multi-monitor DVI configurations
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Graphics
Memory
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- Default
Memory clock = 1000 MHz (500 MHz DDR)
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RAMDAC
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- Dual
integrated 10-bit per
channel 400 MHz DACs
- Integrated
165 MHz TMDS
transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant and HDCP ready)
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I/O
Faceplate Connectors
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- 2
x DVI-I
connector
- 1 x mini-DIN
connector
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Drivers
& Software
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- Driver
support for Windows 98SE
/ Me / NT / 2000 / XP
- Counterstrike:
Condition Zero
- CyberLink
PowerDVD 5.0
- CyberLink
PowerDirector 2.5ME
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Other
Information
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- ATX power cable
required
- PCIe x16
slot
required
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