Powercolor and Sapphire

Powercolor

Powercolor has revised its product packaging for the latest generation of RADEON graphics cards. The new look goes along with their parent companies new name, TUL (Technology Unlimited) and is designed to reflect the company’s emphasis on becoming the world’s leading graphics provider.

To start things off, Powercolor has updated their game bundle. Powercolor’s cards are now bundled with Eidos’ brand new shooter, Hitman: Contracts. In addition to Hitman, Powercolor’s cards also come bundled with Counter Strike: Condition Zero.

The limited edition Assassin bundle from Powercolor

This is the regular Powercolor X800 XT Pro Pack

Powercolor X800 PRO

The real gem in Powercolor’s bundle however is only offered in their “Limited Assassin Edition” series of graphics cards: Valve Software’s Half-Life 2. We know what you’re probably thinking, 9800 XT and early 9600 XT users are still holding their Half-Life 2 vouchers, all to no avail, but with ATI and its board partners not incorporating Half-Life 2 in their X800 products, Powercolor stands out in comparison to other board manufacturers. The limited edition cards also ship with a large backpack, which has compartments for a notebook PC and CD player, multiple pockets, and even an exit port for your headphones. In addition, all X800 boards will ship with an HDTV cable out of the box.

The X800 cards themselves are reference designs, Powercolor hasn’t deviated from ATI’s specs one iota. Again, as we’ve said before, this is to be expected, as ATI is keeping tight control over the X800 PRO and X800 XT lines, selling the complete cards directly to their board partners, who then package the card and sell it to the consumer.

Powercolors X600 XT was proudly on display

The Powercolor X300

Powercolor X300 SE card

For X600 PRO and X600 XT, Powercolor, like other board manufacturers, is given more leeway. Both of Powercolor’s X600 boards feature a large aluminum heatsink, which cools the graphics core and its memory. Placed on top of the heatsink is a decorative cover, with flames shooting from the top and sides. Enthusiasts should like

Sapphire

The big news at Sapphire’s booth is their new Toxic line. The Toxic boards are intended to serve the hardcore enthusiast market, going one level beyond their regular X800 PRO and X800 XT cards, this is the same market ATI targeted with its Zalman-based ULTIMATE line of silent RADEON 9x00 cards, which were popular among enthusiasts.

The ULTIMATE Edition cards were popular for their silent operation, but once the external Zalman fan was necessary for optimal thermals, enthusiasm for the Zalman heat pipe waned. In our 9800 XT ULTIMATE review, we found the fan ran quietly and performed well, we actually agreed with Sapphire’s decision to include it, as board temperatures without the fan in place were a bit excessive. The only downside to the fan was its size.

Zalman is working on a new heat pipe solution but it wasn’t ready in time for X800 so Sapphire chose to partner with Arctic Cooling, whose VGA Silencer cooler has been gaining in popularity with enthusiasts.

In addition to the VGA Silencer cooling, Sapphire also plans to integrate faster memory modules on their Toxic line of graphics cards. Sapphire hasn’t selected a final manufacturer yet, but Samsung, Hynix, and Micron would be the most likely candidates.

Sapphire boxes

Features of the Toxic line

Sapphire X600 XT car

Sapphire tops the package off with their APE (Automated Performance Enhancer) software. Since ATI won’t allow its board partners to overclock their boards from the factory, Sapphire provides APE as an option for its users to overclock their Toxic board. APE will automatically overclock your board’s graphics core and memory to clock speeds Sapphire has pre-qualified for use on their Toxic line. Sapphire hasn’t decided on the final clock speeds, but the ranges we were given were quite surprising, especially on the memory side. We’d rather not repeat them as quite frankly, we’d be surprised if Sapphire is able to provide the frequencies they’re targeting and still get good yields on Toxic cards.

Besides the new cooler and blue PCB, Sapphire’s Toxic boards will also ship with an external LED display. This display will provide hardware monitoring information and can be mounted on the front of your case. In order to provide this capability, Sapphire had to add an external Thermistor to the Toxic board, i.e. the temperature setting displayed by the LED doesn’t come from the X800’s onboard thermal diode.

Despite all these changes, Sapphire says that their Toxic boards will still be compatible with ATI’s OVERDRIVE dynamic overclocking software, as well as their own Redline overclocking utility. The card will be bundled with full retail versions of Splinter Cell: Pandorra Tomorrow and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.