R430 core

As we mentioned earlier, the X800 XL’s R430 core incorporates all the goodies found in the RADEON X800 family but brings it down to TSMC’s smaller 0.11-micron manufacturing process. Assuming good yields, the move from 0.13-micron to the 0.11-micron process reduces manufacturing costs for ATI, as the smaller process allows ATI to yield more chips per silicon wafer. However, 0.11-micron is TSMC’s “value” process, this means that costlier features that are found at 0.13-micron such as low-k dielectric (which adds a layer of low-k black diamond dielectric material to encapsulate the copper wires within the R430 graphics core and thus prevent electrical crosstalk) are omitted.

The X800 XL’s graphics core runs at 400MHz, adding up to a peak texel fill rate of 6,400 Megatexels/second (16 pixel pipelines x 400MHz graphics core equals 6,400). This figure is 12% higher than NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 GT, whose peak fill rate is 5,600 Megatexels/sec on paper. ATI pairs the R430 core up with 256MB of GDDR3 memory operating at 500MHz, which is the same clock speed NVIDIA clocks their GeForce 6800 GT’s memory at.

6800 GT is slightly longer than the X800 XL

One last shot of R430 vs R480

This effectively gives ATI the edge over NVIDIA on paper in more traditional theoretical performance metrics. When you couple this with the card’s $299 price tag, you’ve got a card with a pretty remarkable price/performance ratio. In our RADEON X800 XL Performance Preview article we found the X800 XL competed very closely with the GeForce 6800 GT, with each card winning their fair share of benchmarks.

Feature Comparison
GPU	Core Clock (MHz)	Memory Clock (MHz)	Pixel Pipelines	Peak fill rate (Mtexels/sec)	Peak Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)	MSRP
GeForce 6800 GT	350	500	16	5600	32	$399
GeForce 6800	325	350	12	3900	22.4	$299
GeForce 6600 GT	500	500	8	4000	16	$199
RADEON X800 XL	400	500	16	6400	32	$299
RADEON X800	400	350	12	4800	22.4	$199

PowerColor

When ATI decided to open up board production to third-party companies, PowerColor was one of their first board partners to sign on. PowerColor is also one of the world’s largest graphics card manufacturers, with extensive worldwide distribution channels. This has granted them Tier One board partner status with ATI, allowing them to get the first supplies of chips, which in turn helps them get their cards to market quickly: PowerColor is typically one of the first manufacturers with cards available at retail based on a given chip.

PowerColor’s parent company TUL (which stands for Technology Unlimited) produces a variety of system components including motherboards, cases, and power supplies. The PowerColor brand is used exclusively for video cards.

Dual DVI on the PowerColor, one DVI on ATI

I think the girl on fan looks similar to Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider movie

More recently PowerColor has tailored some of their high-end cards specifically for enthusiasts, adding extra accessories with some of their cards, and incorporating a modern game bundle. Their X850 cards for example ship with Maddox Games latest flight sim: Pacific Fighters, which was just released at the end of 2004.