Board analysis

X800 XL 512MB board

Back of the card

Rather than sticking with ATI’s reference board design for the RADEON X800 XL 512MB, Sapphire has incorporated a few changes that are unique to their board.

For instance, like previous Sapphire RADEON board’s, Sapphire outfits their RADEON X800 XL 512MB with their company’s color, using an aqua-blue shade for the board’s PCB.

The most notable difference between Sapphire’s X800 XL 512MB and ATI’s reference board however is the board’s cooling. Rather than rely on the stock X800 XL 256MB heatsink/fan unit, which is a long, single-slot cooling design, Sapphire has decided to integrate the X850 XT’s cooler onto their X800 XL 512MB card.

As you can imagine, this has huge ramifications on the board’s cooling. Whereas the stock X800 XL heatsink/fan unit is composed entirely of aluminum, the Sapphire X800 XL 512MB relies on copper. Due to its superior thermal conductivity, copper is more effective than aluminum at transferring heat, making it the natural choice for a high-end VPU like the X850 XT, which runs at high clock speeds. By placing a copper heatsink on a cooler chip like the X800 XL’s R430 VPU, Sapphire ensures optimal thermals for the X800 XL, providing better cooling than stock X800 XL cards.

PCI-E power connector on the back of the board

Copper cooling

Rage Theater chip and extra memory modules on back of card

The only downside? As a dual-slot card, the X800 XL 512MB won’t fit in many small form factor systems, like those from Shuttle, Biostar, and AOpen. Overall we think Sapphire did the right thing though by incorporating the larger cooler, as the RADEON X800 XL officially carries a $450 MSRP – that’s a price premium of $150 over the stock X800 XL 256MB (although fortunately street prices for the Sapphire X800 XL 512MB board are hovering just under $400). Naturally with the higher price tag you expect the best cooling possible.

Sapphire X800 XL SKUs

Sapphire’s introduction of the RADEON X800 XL 512MB marks the third Sapphire X800 XL SKU we’ve tested. With so many X800 XL SKUs out there, we figured we should provide a quick refresher on Sapphire’s X800 XL lineup, so when you’re shopping for a Sapphire X800 XL card you can be assured that the Sapphire card you’re interested in is actually the card you’ll get. Looking over Newegg’s listings for the Sapphire X800 XL, it appears Sapphire has produced three 256MB X800 XL boards. The most notable of the three is the Sapphire X800 XL ULTIMATE Edition. This is the X800 XL board we reviewed last month, praising it for its excellent Zalman VF700 cooling. This is the quietest X800 XL card Sapphire currently offers.

The other two 256MB SKUs are pretty similar, with the differences being the interface used, cooling, and VIVO support – Sapphire’s original X800 XL 256MB shipped with a copper-based cooler (this is the same card we evaluated in our RADEON X800 XL Roundup). While the addition of copper is good, the heatsink itself was too small to really be effective, especially at higher clock speeds when overclocking, as a result the card’s fan would sometimes crank up to higher RPMs to keep the X800 XL core cool, thus generating more noise than other X800 XL cards we tested during our roundup.

To address this, it appears Sapphire has integrated ATI’s reference cooler for their X800 XL AGP, this is the third X800 XL 256MB SKU (although keep in mind that this card uses the AGP interface, while the other cards are all PCI-E based). Sapphire finishes the X800 XL AGP off with the addition of VIVO support.