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Sapphire RADEON X800 XT AGP Review September 27, 2004 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: With X800 XT Platinum Edition cards still practically impossible to find, ATI has turned to a new VPU to kill NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 GT: RADEON X800 XT AGP! Up for review today is Sapphire's RADEON X800 XT, this AGP card ships with a 500MHz core and high-speed 1GHz GDDR3 memory, but costs less and will be easier to find at retail. See how this card performs in comparison to the RADEON X800 XT PE and X800 PRO, as well as the GeForce 6800 GT and Ultra in this review!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 25 ) |
If you’ve been shopping for a RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition the past few months, you know how difficult finding one of these cards either at retail or online can be – many would call it mission impossible! In the rare case where you are able to find a retailer with X800 XT Platinum Edition cards in stock, chances are the card sells for more than MSRP; even some of the popular e-tailers with competitive pricing have been guilty of doing this.
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If you recall our ATI RADEON X800 XT & X600 XT PCI-E Performance Preview article, the X800 XT is largely derived from the X800 XT Platinum Edition. The X800 XT features the same 16 pixel pipeline configuration as the X800 XT Platinum Edition with a 256-bit memory interface, only it ships at slower clock speeds: 500MHz on the graphics core and 500MHz for the memory (1.0GHz effective). This compares quite similarly to the Platinum Edition, which features a 520MHz core and 560MHz memory, and also bests NVIDIA’s popular $400 GeForce 6800 GT, which boasts specs of 350MHz core/500MHz memory.
Originally there was a catch though: ATI was going to limit the X800 XT to the PCI Express interface only. The boards retailed for $450, and have been quickly adopted by ATI and its board partners.
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Market demand for high-end AGP cards have changed ATI’s plans however; as ATI and its board partners are now busy cranking out AGP-based X800 XT cards. These AGP X800 XTs ship with the same feature set as their PCI Express brethren, namely a 500MHz core clock speed and 256MB of GDDR3 memory also running at 500MHz. Sapphire was the first manufacturer to get one of these cards in our hands and we were eager to see how it compared to the X800 XT Platinum Edition, as well as the GeForce 6800 GT. But before we get into that, there’s one other interesting aspect of this board’s origins that we should discuss…
| Origins of the card | Page:: ( 2 / 25 ) |
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Shortly after X800 PROs appeared on store shelves, an interesting second X800 PRO SKU began to appear from some board manufacturers: X800 PRO VIVO. These cards were based on the same 12 pipe configuration as other X800 PROs, with the sole addition being VIVO support.
On the surface, this looks like a minor difference, but slowly but surely an increasing number of users began to report that they were successfully able to turn on all 16 pipelines in their X800 PRO VIVO card: it was like getting an X800 XT for only about $400! All that was necessary to do this was a simple BIOS upgrade, and BAM, your X800 PRO card was running with all 16 pipes up and running, just like the RADEON 9500 vanilla-to-RADEON 9700 mod from a few years ago.
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If you recall the design of the X800’s R420 graphics core, all X800s are based on the same core, whether it’s a 12-pipe X800 PRO or 16-pipe X800 XT Platinum Edition. The pixel pipelines in X800 are arranged in a quad pipeline configuration, with each quad consisting of four pixel pipelines. ATI merely disables one of the quads for X800 PRO (3 quads x 4 pipelines per quad), while X800 XT and X800 XT Platinum Edition have all four quads turned on (4 quads x 4 pipelines per quad).
Making matters even more enticing was the fact that many of these X800 PRO VIVO cards were shipping with high-speed 1.6ns Samsung GDDR3 memory modules. These are the same modules ATI uses on X800 XT Platinum Edition. Sapphire’s X800 PRO VIVO was one of the most popular examples end users had success with finding 1.6ns memory.
As word spread about these cards, ATI and their board partners did little to stop things. After all, these cards sold for a little more than X800 PROs without VIVO and ATI didn’t have X800 XT Platinum Edition shipping in bulk to offer as an alternative; X800 PRO VIVO was essentially the high-end offering.
More importantly, the presence of X800 PRO VIVO also kept users from purchasing GeForce 6800 GT cards and, for whatever reason, they weren’t quite up to snuff to be sold as X800 XT Platinum Edition cards anyway.
It now appears that ATI has decided to take these cards and sell them as X800 XTs. After all, thanks to its higher clocks and 16 pipes, the X800 XT commands a premium over X800 PRO. This allows ATI and their board partners to improve their margins at the high-end, as these same cards that were once selling for a little over $400, can now be sold as $450+ X800 XT AGPs. That’s our theory on the whole matter at least; we haven’t received confirmation on any of this from ATI or any of their board partners, nor do we expect them to (especially when it comes to overclocking). But we get more confirmation of our theory when taking a closer look at the Sapphire X800 XT board.
| Board analysis | Page:: ( 3 / 25 ) |
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As expected, Sapphire’s board design for the RADEON X800 XT mirrors ATI’s reference design. As we’ve mentioned numerous times in the past, on high-end $400+ graphics cards, both ATI and NVIDIA handle all board production. Card manufacturers like Sapphire then purchase the cards directly from them, affix their sticker and other materials in the card’s packaging, and sell it to the consumer. This is a bit ironic in the case of Sapphire, as ATI has previously outsourced all graphics card production to Sapphire’s parent company, PC Partner (Sapphire is the brand name for PC Partner’s retail business), meaning Sapphire was essentially handling all high-end board production.
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Because of this, the Sapphire X800 XT looks remarkably similar to the reference X800 XT Platinum Edition board we received a few months ago. You’ll notice the same fire engine red PCB that’s become ATI’s trademark, as well as the Rage Theater chip on the underside of the card. This chip is responsible for providing video input functionality. The yellow connector you see located underneath the Molex power connector is included for analog video capture. This feature provides convenient front panel access and is popular in Europe.
The aspect that will probably catch your eye though is the board’s memory: our Sapphire X800 XT card shipped with 1.6ns Samsung GDDR3 modules. Once again these are the same modules that ATI specifies for use with X800 XT Platinum Edition, and are rated for 600MHz by Samsung, so the board is over spec in this regard. In comparison, our PCI Express “Built By ATI” RADEON X800 XT shipped with 2.0ns modules, which are rated for 500MHz.
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Theoretically the faster modules should gives us a little more room for overclocking.
Sapphire makes no changes to the rest of the board’s design. You’ll notice that Sapphire uses the same smaller copper heatsink that ATI has implemented on their X800 boards. We noticed that Taiwanese manufacturers ASUS and Gigabyte both use a slightly larger heatsink that also covers the board’s memory. The fan used is large, but fortunately it’s very quiet, and does a good job of keeping the R420 core cool.
Packaging
Sapphire includes a nice selection of goodies inside the board’s packaging. In addition to the card itself, Sapphire also bundles a component video cable for hooking the X800 XT to your HDTV, S-Video cable, a Molex power adapter/splitter, DVI-to-VGA adapter, and Video-In/Video-Out (VIVO) cable. Software accessories include Sapphire’s Redline overclocking utility, a basic driver CD, CyberLink PowerDVD 5 and PowerDirector 2.55VE, and the full versions of two games: Price of Persia: The Sands of Time, and the DVD-ROM version of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow.
| Test systems | Page:: ( 4 / 25 ) |
System Setup
AMD Athlon 64 3800+
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
1GB OCZ EL DDR400 Platinum Edition Rev 2
ATI RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition
Sapphire RADEON X800 XT
ATI RADEON X800 PRO
Driver version CATALYST 4.9
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra reference card
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT reference card
Driver version 65.76
250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0c
Benchmarks
Lock On: Modern Air Combat (Mig-29 custom demo)
Unreal Tournament 2004 (T3 custom demo)
IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles (The Black Death track)
Splinter Cell (FS custom demo)
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (Beyond3D custom demo)
Halo: Combat Evolved (stock benchmark)
Far Cry 1.2 (custom demo for mp_jungle, SM2.0b and SM3.0 paths used)
DOOM 3 (gameplay custom demo)
| IL-2 4xAA | Page:: ( 5 / 25 ) |
IL-2 Sturmovik: FB - OpenGL
| IL-2 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 6 / 25 ) |
IL-2 Sturmovik: FB - OpenGL
| LOMAC 4xAA | Page:: ( 7 / 25 ) |
Lock On: Modern Air Combat – Direct3D
| LOMAC 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 8 / 25 ) |
Lock On: Modern Air Combat – Direct3D
| UT 2004 | Page:: ( 9 / 25 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2004
| Splinter Cell | Page:: ( 10 / 25 ) |
Splinter Cell – Direct3D
| Tomb Raider | Page:: ( 11 / 25 ) |
Tomb Raider – Direct3D
| TR 4xAA | Page:: ( 12 / 25 ) |
Tomb Raider – Direct3D
| Halo | Page:: ( 13 / 25 ) |
Halo – Direct3D
| Far Cry mp_jungle 4xAA | Page:: ( 14 / 25 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Far Cry 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 15 / 25 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| FC 4xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 16 / 25 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| DOOM 3 High Quality 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 17 / 25 ) |
DOOM 3 – OpenGL
| D3 Ultra 8xAF | Page:: ( 18 / 25 ) |
DOOM 3 – OpenGL
| DOOM 3 Ultra Quality 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 19 / 25 ) |
DOOM 3 – OpenGL
| Half-Life 2 VST 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 20 / 25 ) |
Source Engine – Direct3D
| Half-Life 2 VST 4xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 21 / 25 ) |
Source Engine – Direct3D
| Counter-Strike Source 4xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 22 / 25 ) |
Source Engine – Direct3D
| Overclocking | Page:: ( 23 / 25 ) |
Counter-Strike:Source Beta – Direct3D
Half-Life 2 Video Stress Test – Direct3D
DOOM 3 – OpenGL
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 24 / 25 ) |
Pros
X800 XT core: At the heart of the Sapphire RADEON X800 XT lies ATI’s RADEON X800 XT graphics core. This chip sports the same 16 pixel pipeline architecture as the more expensive X800 XT Platinum Edition, and is fed with a high-speed 256-bit memory interface. ATI clocks the core at 500MHz, which is a reduction of only four percent in comparison to the X800 XT Platinum Edition, while the core’s memory operates at 500MHz, this figure is 11% lower than the PE.
As a result, the X800 XT is able to largely keep up with the X800 XT Platinum Edition, Half-Life 2 performance only trails by seven percent in the video stress test at 1280x1024 with 4xAA/16xAF, while DOOM 3 trails by 10% at 1280x1024 in ultra quality mode with 4xAA and 8xAF. The X800 XT also compares well to the GeForce 6800 GT, although we wouldn’t really call it a paradigm shift in performance as the 6800 GT wins the battles it’s expected to win (OpenGL titles), while the X800 XT performs well in Half-Life 2 VST and in Far Cry 1.2.
Price: At $450 MSRP, the X800 XT is officially priced right in the middle of ATI’s high-end lineup: $50 between the X800 PRO, and $50 between the X800 XT Platinum Edition. Based on the performance we saw today, we feel this price is fair, although NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 GT officially retails for $50 less.
Availability: Unlike the X800 XT Platinum Edition, ATI and their board partners expect X800 XT AGP parts to have good availability. Since the clocks are a little lower than X800 XT PE, yielding sufficient quantities of boards should be easier. Sapphire also has the option of using cheaper 2.0ns GDDR3 memory on their X800 XT board, which is also more plentiful. We expect a lot of board partners to hop on the X800 XT in the coming weeks.
Sapphire’s RADEON X800 XT is already in full production and has been shipping to retailers for the past few weeks.
Solid game bundle: With Price of Persia: The Sands of Time and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Sapphire ships their card with a very good game bundle that will showcase the capabilities of the X800 XT. Gone are the days when card manufacturers shipped their cards with games that were outdated or unpopular. Sapphire was among the leading edge of board manufacturers to adopt a quality game bundle.
VIVO and HDTV: The addition of VIVO to the Sapphire RADEON X800 XT’s repertoire should appeal to the video enthusiasts out there who’d like to edit home movies or capture Xbox/PS2 vid caps. Sapphire also includes a component video cable for hooking the card up to your HDTV, making it perfect for those of you with high-end home theater setups: you can game on the big screen!
Cons
So long X800 PRO VIVO: If our theory is correct, and the Sapphire RADEON X800 XT is essentially based on Sapphire’s RADEON X800 PRO VIVO, that means you can probably say goodbye to these cards. It just doesn’t make much sense for Sapphire to sell these cards as ~$400 X800 PRO VIVOs, when they can be sold as $450 X800 XT AGPs.
Reference design: For enthusiasts, reference designs are never good enough. These consumers want extra cooling and better performance than stock reference cards. Sapphire currently provides this for the X800 PRO VPU with their TOXIC X800 PRO VIVO. This card ships with a powerful, yet nearly silent dual-slot cooling fan, and faster performance. Hopefully Sapphire will do something similar for X800 XT.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 25 / 25 ) |