Return to the frontpage Read all the latest news-items on one page Download drivers, demo's, patches, tools in our huge file-section Our game reviews Our articles and guides Our latest hardware reviews and tests Return to homepage Be one of the 150.000 users discussing in our forums Search specific things in our news and articles
 
 You are here: Home » Hardware reviews » Videocards


 HiS Radeon x800 XL - x850 XT - x850 XT PE

 By: Hilbert Hagedoorn Edited by  | Published: April 4, 2005  


Guru's let's have a technological view at the current 'x' series product from ATI, and there are many. Buying a graphics card for the average PC user is growingly complicated. Luckily there are sites like yours truly eh?

Oh hey, I refuse to put the Radeon x600 in there, if you buy that one I'll slap you with the new 6-pin power cable for graphics cards. Oh another card is missing... ATI announced a *cough* 512 MB model of their x850 XT. Same specs as the x850 XT otherwise!

Type Radeon X700 Pro Radeon X700 XT Radeon X800 Pro Radeon X800 XL Radeon X800 XT Radeon X800 XT Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition Radeon X850 XT Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition
codename RV410 RV410 R420 R430 R420 R423 R423 R480 R480
Interface PCI-Express x16 PCI-Express x16 AGP PCI-Express x16 AGP PCI-Express x16 AGP/PCI-Express x16 PCI-Express x16 PCI-Express x16
Frame Buffer 256 MB 256 MB 256 MB 256 MB 256 MB 256 MB 256 MB 256 MB 256 MB
Core Freq 425 MHz 475 MHz 475 MHz 400 MHz 500 MHz 500 MHz 520 MHz 520 MHz 540 MHz
Memory Freq 433 MHz 525 MHz 450 MHz 500 MHz 500 MHz 500 MHz 560 MHz 540 MHz 590 MHz
Memory Controller 128 bit 128 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit
Memory typeGDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3
DirectX 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0
Vertex Shaders 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0
Pixel Shaders 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b
Vertex Shader Pipes 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
Pixel Shader Pipes 8 8 12 16 16 16 16 16 16
Extra Power-connector - - Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Chip - Transistors 120 mln 120 mln 160 mln 160 mln 160 mln 160 mln 160 mln 160 mln 160 mln
Chip - Fab Process 110 nm 110 nm 130 nm 110 nm 130 nm 130 nm 130 nm 130 nm 130 nm

Right then, the data above is showing standard reference clock-speeds as suggested by ATI. As you probably have noticed the standard x850 XT model (if you can call it standard) is allowed to run at PE speeds with a 540 MHz core and 1.18 GHz clocked memory thanks to the included iTurbo software. So why would you chip in another 50 bucks for the PE edition? Well the PE edition is clocked standard at 540 MHz and our findings show that it can in fact can be clocked a little higher than the standard XT version. Will you ever notice the difference in games? I doubt it. Therefore I definitely recommend the standard XT version over the more expensive platinum edition. But the high-end enthusiast will probably go for the PE version anyway as it was tested to clock a little higher then rest. Furthermore, 100% same product.

Copyright 2005 - Guru3D.com

So why is this x850 series 16 pixel pipelined puppy performance wise faster then the XL version for example? The answer can be found in two factors. First off a faster running 0.13 micron core for the 850 XT (PE), which manages 540 MHz. Secondly, somewhat faster and thus more expensive memory was used. Example, the XL is using (2x)493 MHz and that XT PE uses (2x) 590 MHz. Spot the differtenced between the x850 XT and XT PE versions below with the help of Rivatuner.

 HiS Radeon x850 XT HiS Radeon x850 XT Platinum Edition
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : RADEON X850 Series
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 1002 (ATI)
$0000000002 Device ID : 5d52
$0000000003 Location : bus 5, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : PCI
$0000000009 Base address 0 : d0000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : none
$000000000b Base address 2 : e1000000 (memory range)
$000000000c Base address 3 : none
$000000000d Base address 4 : 0000c000 (I/O range)
$000000000e Base address 5 : none
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff ATI specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0900000000 Graphics core : R480 (16x1)
$0900000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0900000001 Memory type : unknown
$0900000003 Memory amount : 256MB
$0900000004 Core clock : 519.750MHz
$0900000005 Memory clock : 540.000MHz (1080.000MHz effecti...
$0900000006 Reference clock : 27.000MHz
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : RADEON X850 Series
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 1002 (ATI)
$0000000002 Device ID : 5d4d
$0000000003 Location : bus 5, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : PCI
$0000000009 Base address 0 : d0000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : none
$000000000b Base address 2 : e1000000 (memory range)
$000000000c Base address 3 : none
$000000000d Base address 4 : 0000c000 (I/O range)
$000000000e Base address 5 : none
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff ATI specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0900000000 Graphics core : R480 (16x1)
$0900000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0900000001 Memory type : unknown
$0900000003 Memory amount : 256MB
$0900000004 Core clock : 540.000MHz
$0900000005 Memory clock : 587.250MHz (1174.500MHz effecti...
$0900000006 Reference clock : 27.000MHz

As you can see there really is not much differentiation feature-wise between the entire Radeon lineup. The x800 XL compared to the x850's can be described as a somewhat caged VPU (graphics core) that would like to do more then it is allowed to. Keep this in mind as overclocking that product rocks. 3D Feature wise this R480 part does not differ from the x800 series, except from what we heard some Power Management features and Thermal Throttling capabilities. Nothing really notable besides performance though.

The Board - The Bundle


What's in the box? Well, the bundle is as always fantastic,
HiS is paying attention to the total package and we see a lot of software bundled as this is a seriously impressive package. That does translate a tad on the pricing though. We received the Platinum Edition, which includes a very nice software bundle. Let's have a look:

  • FlatOut (the full game)
  • Dungeon Siege Full
  • PowerDirector 3 SE Plus
  • Power2Go 4
  • PowerDVD 5
  • 3D Album PicturePro
  • S-Video Cable
  • RCA Cable
  • Conversion connecter Mini-Din to RCA
  • HDTV Output cable
  • DVI to VGA Adaptor (2x)
  • 6-pin power connector

You will also receive some trial software, which can be found on a bonus CD. Think PowerDVD, MediaShow there and I think I even saw some of ATI demo's on there.

Copyright 2005 - Guru3D.com

Next to the card itself we see a plethora of cables in the form of S-Video in/out cable, DVI to CRT/VGA adapters so that you are able to hook up 2 CRT VGA monitors to your card. Also quite important, a HDTV cable. Connect the card to a nice LCD or Plasma screen and you can play HDTV games or playback movies on that big screen. Quite lovely. The cards themselves then. It's quite hard to determine real changes at PCB level over the reference model as the cooler is blocking my view! I can tell you though that HiS is following reference design precisely. The trick however is faster memory and the cooling technology, which is called IceQ-II, which we'll get into in a minute.

Make note of the fact that these x850's have dual-DVI (yay finally!), if you like to connect them to analog VGA screens then DVI to VGA adaptors (two of them) are included. Also lovely to see is the 6-pin power cable to juice up voltage of the graphics card. Some manufacturers leave them out to save some money. Not HiS though.

If we look at the card we also notice the traditional video output connector, both our cards are equipped with the Rage Theater chip and thus have an optional video input through that same connector and supplied cables.

Two thumbs up, this is a really fantastic bundle.

Copyright 2005 - Guru3D.com
Included is the PC game Flat Out, quite a funny game and with some nice graphics.



 


 

Pages (19): « previous 1 [2] 3 4 next » ... Last »


 

previous page

homepage

 

Check lowest prices on these products in Guru3D.com price guide, among the available categories: Retail & OEM Processors - Video Cards - Motherboards - Memory - Soundcards - Hard Drives - Monitors - Printers - DVDs - CD-RWs - PDAs and more !

Copyright (c) 1997-2011 Hilbert Hagedoorn, All Rights Reserved. - Legal disclaimer/notice
The Guru of 3D, Guru3D, the Hardware guru, HardwareGuru and 3D Guru are the trademark ownership of Hilbert Hagedoorn.



  Site Navigation
   Home
   Latest News
   Submit News
   Hardware Reviews
   Articles & Guides
   VGA Charts 
   Game Reviews
   Forums
   Download Section
   Guru3D Price Grabber
   Guru Price Grabber UK
   Guru PC Buyers Guide
   Guru3D Stereo Section
   Guru3D Clan
   Guru3D Folding@Home
   Contact us
   Join our news-letter
   Follow us on Twitter new
   Set as Homepage
 

  Affiliates

RivaTuner
nVHardPage
3DMark Vantage
SiSoft SANDRA
AfterBurner OC tool
nVTempLogger
ATI Tray Tools

Guru3D Rig of the Month
  Links
Your company ?
Registry Booster 2011
Your company ?
  Downloads
NVIDIA GeForce drivers
ATI Catalyst drivers
Benchmarks & Demo's
Game Demo's
NVIDIA Chipset drivers
Intel Chipset drivers