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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 MBCore Freq 425 MHz 475 MHz 475 MHz 400 MHz 500 MHz 500 MHz 520 MHz 520 MHz 540 MHzMemory Freq 433 MHz 525 MHz 450 MHz 500 MHz 500 MHz 500 MHz 560 MHz 540 MHz 590 MHzMemory Controller 128 bit 128 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bitMemory type GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3DirectX 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0Vertex Shaders 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0Pixel Shaders 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b 2.0b 2.0bVertex Shader Pipes 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6Pixel Shader Pipes 8 8 12 16 16 16 16 16 16Extra Power-connector - - Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes YesChip - Transistors 120 mln 120 mln 160 mln 160 mln 160 mln 160 mln 160 mln 160 mln 160 mlnChip - 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.

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.

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.

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.

Included is the PC game Flat Out, quite a funny game and with some nice graphics.