Board analysis

Package Contents:

• S-Video/RCA Output Cables
  
• DVI-I to VGA Adapters
  
• S-Video to RCA Adapter
  
• Manual
  
• Full Version of Pacific Fighters
  
• Cyberlink PowerDVD 5.0
  
• Cyberlink Power2Go
  
• Cyberlink PowerProducer Gold 2
  
• Cyberlink PowerDirector 3

The PowerColor Radeon X800GT is a standard affair, with all of the necessities we’ve come to expect from a graphics card: video cables and output adapters, and an extra full version game, this time the game being Pacific Fighters.

PowerColor has had some great bundles in the past, such as when they bundled Hitman III with their cards. However, they typically reserve their feature rich bundles for their flagship products, so there is reason they don’t throw the kitchen sink at you in the price sensitive mainstream market, and that reason of course is the final price of the product.

A Closer Look:

The PowerColor Radeon X800GT looks just like ATI’s Radeon X800XL reference design, featuring a red colored PCB and a silver shaped heatsink fan. The card’s fan is comparable to that of the GeForce 6600GT and Radeon X700 Pro, running modestly in most situations.


However, one of the most interesting features of this card is it’s core. ATI partners were given two choices when making their Radeon X800GT products, the R480 and the R423 cores. The R423 core is essentially the PCI Express version of the R420 core, and has been in production for over a year now, making it the cheaper of the two. The R480 is the latest one of the two, essentially being a rehash of the R423 but with architectural improvements that allow for higher frequencies.

With the PowerColor Radeon X800GT using this new R480 core, we can expect to see some interesting overclocking results over ATI’s reference speeds.

Going back to the card, it’s important to note that the PowerColor Radeon X800GT, like most cards in this price point, does not feature VIVO capability. When we turn the card around we can see four of the eight Samsung 256MBit 2ns-rated GDDR3 memory chips, none of which are covered with any type of memory sink. With memory in mind, the Radeon X800GT’s 256-bit memory interface is able to pump out a whopping 32GB/s of potential bandwidth, almost double that of the GeForce 6600GT.