The graphics card

Graphics Card

RADEON X800 256MB - $189 Newegg: Picking out a graphics card was incredibly difficult for this article, simply because there’s a lot going on in the $100-$200 price range right now.

NVIDIA’s GeForce 6600 GT and GeForce 6800 continue to hold their spots in the mainstream graphics segment, only now they’re hitting lower price points thanks to the introduction of the GeForce 7800 GTX and 7800 GT earlier this summer. ATI’s been quite busy as of late, announcing multiple VPUs all earmarked to tackle the GeForce 6600 GT and GeForce 6800.

First, ATI’s board partners finally began shipping the $200 RADEON X800 vanilla 128MB SKU that was announced at the beginning of this year but ultimately never materialized, with board partners opting instead to ship their X800 boards with 256MB of memory in order not to cripple X700 PRO sales. Their reasoning was simple – supply and demand. With so many 256MB X700 PRO boards already on the market selling at $200, ATI’s board partners opted instead to focus on the approximately $250 RADEON X800 256MB, rather than the $200 X800 128MB, as supplies of the X800 VPU were tighter anyway. Now that those $200 X700 PROs have been sold off, ATI and their board partners have been busy pushing a new wave of cards for the mainstream segment, starting with the X800 GT.



Launched at the beginning of August, the X800 GT features 8-pixel pipelines running at 475MHz, with a 256-bit 256MB memory interface clocked at 490MHz. This gives the X800 GT similar pixel fill rate as the GeForce 6600 GT, only with significantly more memory bandwidth thanks to its wider 256-bit memory interface. As a result, the X800 GT excels against the GeForce 6600 GT at high screen resolutions, especially once additional eye candy like anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are turned on. The chip is built off of ATI’s 0.13-micron R480 core, this is the same VPU powering ATI’s flagship X850 XT Platinum Edition. If this particular card interests you, keep in mind that there are two X800 GT SKUs out there, one with 128MB of memory, and one with 256MB. We mentioned the 256MB SKU above, but 128MB boards ship with slower 350MHz memory.

Following the successful launch of the X800 GT, just last week ATI and their board partners announced the X800 GTO. Like the X800 GT, the GTO is based off of R480, only it supports 12 pixel pipes and ships with a 400MHz graphics core and a 256-bit memory interface operating at 490MHz. Just like the X800 GT, there’s also a 128MB X800 GTO SKU that ships with 350MHz memory, so be on the lookout for the total memory size if you want one of the faster cards. This card is intended to compete with the GeForce 6800 vanilla in the mainstream market.

For this build I chose ATI’s RADEON X800 256MB due to its solid combination of performance and price. The X800 GTO sports the same number of pipelines and the same core clock, only with faster memory, but I wasn’t able to obtain a board in time for this article. If I had I probably would have gone with it instead of the X800 256MB, so I’d rank it as a solid alternative if you’re looking for a little more performance. The GeForce 6800 was a tempting alternative as well, but the RADEON X800 256MB has demonstrated better performance in shader-heavy titles such as Far Cry and Half-Life 2 so far, so I decided to stick with the X800.