ATI X800 XL

Posted 07/01/2005 at 11:35am | by

0

Comments

Print

Spend the extra hundred

We know how hard it can be when you’ve got $200 burning a hole in your pocket and a videocard that was new in 2002. If you can manage to pull together another 100 bucks, ATI’s Radeon X800 XL will reward you with performance that’s far superior to Leadtek’s GeForce 6600 GT implementation.

Unlike the GeForce 6600, ATI’s X800 XL isn’t crippled by a reduction in pixel pipelines, video memory, or bandwidth: The board boasts 256MB of GDDR3 RAM with a 256-bit interface, and the GPU has a full 16-pipe complement. You will find compromises in terms of clock speed: GPU and memory are clocked at 398-and 493MHz, respectively, but the benchmarks speak for themselves.

Unlike ATI’s flagship Radeon X850 XT, the X800 XL is a single-slot card. The lower clock speeds eliminate the need for a honkin’ fan to keep things cool. There’s one DVI and one VGA connector, plus a connector for analog video-out (the card comes with six-foot S-Video and composite cables, and a stub cable for component video).

ATI hasn’t come up with a dual-card solution to compete with SLI—yet—but its X800 XL clearly outshines a single GeForce 6600.
--Michael Brown

+ FULL METAL JACKET: Excellent performance for a midrange videocard; consumes only one slot.

- NEHRU JACKET: Only one DVI connector.

Month Reviewed: July 2005
Verdict: 8
URL: www.ati.com