Sapphire 100103-RD Radeon X850 XT

Posted 09/22/2005 at 3:39pm | by

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If Sapphire had sent its X850 XT board that’s outfitted with one VGA and one DVI port, it would have fit our under-$300 price point. This dual-DVI version increases the card’s cost to $440!

But considering that it was 1.9fps slower than XFX’s much cheaper GeForce 6800GT playing Doom 3, and only 9.6fps faster with Far Cry, we don’t consider it a good value at either price point.

The faster-clocked Sapphire board (we clocked its core at 533MHz and its GDDR3 memory at 554MHz) requires an unappealing two-slot cooler. We were also disappointed with ATI’s MPEG-2 decoding. This GPU performed better than ATI’s lower-end chips, but it remains inferior to all the nVidia solutions we tested. If you’re craving VIVO for video-editing exploits, on the other hand, the X850XT will punch your ticket. The XFX board offers only TV-out.
—Michael Brown

Month Reviewed: November 2005

Verdict: 5

URL: www.sapphiretech.com

HEAD-TO-HEAD VIDEOCARD BENCHMARKS

Best scores in each category (shaded) are bolded.

HOW WE TESTED:

TEST SYSTEM: Athlon FX-55, nForce4, SLI motherboard, 2GB DDR RAM

DOOM 3: Timedemo 1 tested at 1600x1200, High Quality, 4x AA

FAR CRY: Boat level tested at 1600x1200, all settings on High (water at Ultra High), 4x AA, 8x aniso

HALO: Timedemo script tested at 1600x1200

3DMARK03 GAME 2 AND GAME 4: Tested at 1600x1200, 4x AA, 8x aniso

3DMARK03 AND 3DMARK05: Tested using default settings

HQV SCORE: HQV Benchmark DVD