Board analysis

The PowerColor X800 Bravo Edition card

Bottom of the card

Up to this point, ATI’s board partners have played it pretty straight with ATI for the entire family of R4xx chips. While many of NVIDIA’s board partners have released overclocked boards based on the GeForce 6600 GT and 6800 lines, ATI’s board partners have strictly stuck to ATI’s reference clock speeds.

Sure, Sapphire’s TOXIC line of graphics cards shipped with their APE overclocking tool, but the board was clocked to ATI’s reference clock speeds out of the box. PowerColor’s X800 Bravo Edition however, is the first R4xx card we’re aware of that defies this. Like their RADEON 9600 XT Bravo, which was the company’s first “Bravo” board, the PowerColor X800 Bravo ships from the factory overclocked out of the box. In particular, it’s the board’s memory that is “overclocked”, running at 500MHz (1.0GHz effective) by default.

We put the word overclocked in quotes because while the memory’s 500MHz clock speed is officially 150MHz above ATI’s reference clock speeds for the RADEON X800, PowerColor equips their Bravo Edition board with 1.6ns GDDR3 memory modules from Samsung. These 1.6ns modules are officially rated for clock speeds up to 600MHz and are the same modules used on more expensive graphics cards. Since the Bravo’s memory is clocked at 500MHz, this is well within the capabilities of the Samsung memory modules. Other 256MB RADEON X800 boards we’ve received have shipped with 2.0ns modules from Samsung, which is the slowest GDDR3 module Samsung currently makes and is currently used on the X800 PRO, and X800 XL (among many others).

PowerColor clocks the graphics core at ATI’s default clock speed of 400MHz.

1.6ns GDDR3 modules

Silicon Image DVI transmitter

Dual DVI connections

But a superior memory subsystem isn’t the only feature the PowerColor X800 Bravo boasts, as PowerColor has also equipped the board with two DVI connectors. Silicon Image’s Sil1162 DVI transmitter powers the second DVI output. This feature was notably absent on ATI’s cards last year, including the $500 RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition, so its impressive to see PowerColor integrating the second DVI output on their RADEON X800 board. By providing two DVI connections the PowerColor X800 Bravo can power two DVI displays, or thanks to its twin DVI adapters (which are included in the card’s packaging) two VGA displays. This provides the end user with a wider array of display options than if the more traditional DVI/VGA configuration would have been used.

ATI Rage Theater chip

A closer look at the cooling

The third additional feature PowerColor adds to their Bravo Edition board is video input support. On the underside of the card rests ATI’s Rage Theater chip.

No external power connection required

Be on the lookout for the Bravo edition logo on the box

ATI reference X800 card

The rest of the PowerColor X800 Bravo is more in line with ATI’s reference design. PowerColor makes no major deviations from reference, although if you recall the original RADEON X800 cooler, you’ll see that PowerColor’s heatsink/fan unit is much more robust than the reference design used by ATI and some of their board partners. PowerColor uses a large aluminum heatsink to draw heat off the R430 core. Coupled alongside the heatsink is a sizeable fan. Like the RADEON 9800 XT cooler design, the fan is located offset of the VPU’s core in order to increase its effectiveness as the system draws air from within the system case and blows it across the heatsink’s fins, before the hot air escapes out the side of the ducted enclosure. By locating the fan offset of the graphics core, the fan’s motor is theoretically lengthened, as the area directly above the VPU is the hottest spot on the card’s PCB. This heat could potentially kill the fan’s motor prematurely. This is why the fans on most of the high-end cards you see today no longer rest directly above the graphics card.