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
| DOOM 3 (fps) | FAR CRY (fps) | HALO (fps) |
3DMARK05 |
3DMARK03 |
3DMARK03 GAME 2 (fps) | 3DMARK03 GAME 4 (fps) | HQV SCORE |
|
| LEADTEK WINFAST PX6600 TDH | 18.1 | 35.1 | 44.0 | 3,626 | 8,562 | 12.9 | 15.4 | 73 |
| SAPPHIRE RADEON X800 GT | 18.3 | 49.4 | 42.7 | 4,213 | 9,566 | 12.2 | 23.0 | 55 |
| MSI NX6800 RIDDICK | 24.6 | 46.4 | 42.6 | 3,887 | 9,218 | 15.8 | 22.3 | 73 |
| CONNECT3D 3028 X800XL | 31.0 | 60.2 | 58.6 | 5,092 | 10,921 | 22.3 | 32.2 | 55 |
| XFX GEFORCE 6800GT | 39.8 | 71.2 | 63.3 | 5,145 | 11,945 | 24.6 | 28.1 | 78 |
| SAPPHIRE RADEON X850 XT | 37.9 | 80.8 | 78.0 | 6,189 | 12,648 | 26.5 | 38.3 | 65 |
| BFG GEFORCE 7800 GT OC | 49.7 | 84.2 | 87.4 | 6,911 | 14,894 | 32.2 | 46.2 | 83 |
| ATI RADEON X850 XT PE | 40.2 | 87.1 | 80.2 | 6,468 | 13,170 | 28.4 | 41.1 | 65 |
| PNY VERTO GEFORCE 7800 GTX | 53.6 | 81.5 | 102.6 | 7,648 | 16,074 | 33.8 | 47.9 | 83 |
| ASUS EXTREME N7800 GTX TOP | 60.5 | 91.3 | 111.2 | 8,560 | 17,698 | 39.8 | 58.7 | 83 |
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
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