When both ATI and NVIDIA released their latest VPU/GPU
chipsets last Summer, it marked a drastic improvement over their
previous chipsets in terms of image quality and performance. The
X800 Platinum Edition was ATI's flagship card upon release, but
it was plagued by shortage problems for the end user (as was,
and still is the case for NVIDIA's 6800 Ultra). Most high-end
chipsets went directly to OEMs and system manufacturers, and compounded
with the fact that there wasn't a whole lot of memory that met
the X800 Platinum's specifications, all this left very little
in the hands of those looking to pick one up off the store shelves.
With the X850XT-Platinum
Edition (X850XT-PE here on out in the review), ATI hopes to
correct the problem of scarcity and hope to make the card (as
well as 3rd party cards) more readily available than before. The
X850XT-PE is what we would classify as a "refresh",
rather than a new product as the VPU itself shares an identical
featureset as the X800 series.
The ATI X850XT-Platinum Edition
The ATI Radeon X850XT-PE is a "standard"
sized card (for the most part... more on that later), and should
have no problems fitting into full height systems. The ATI Radeon
X850 VPU is a native PCIE processor; therefore the card is currently
only available in PCI Express form, so AGP board owners will need
to look elsewhere.
The VPU is clocked at 540MHz and the memory is clocked at 590MHz.
The X850XT-PE features 16 pixel pipelines with hardware support
for DirectX 9B and Shader Model 2.0.
Along with the card, ATI bundles a power dongle which draws power
from one Molex source and adapts it for the 6-pin PCI Express
connection on the card. The other end of the dongle can be used
for any other item such as a fan, hard drive or optical drive.
If you have a meager PSU, we do suggest leaving this spare connection
unused. There are also some video cables (S-Vid, composite, and
video-in), as well as a manual, driver CD and two DVI-to-VGA adapters.
The big (literally) change from the X800XT-PE to the X850XT-PE
visually is the new two slot cooler. The size of the cooler will
pretty much rule out the use of the card in most Small Form Factor
PCs with the x16 PCIe slot near the edge of the motherboard. As
a two slot solution, if you have cards normally placed next to
the graphics card, they will likely have to move to make room
for the X850XT-PE.
While we can moan about the cooler, the design is in fact quite
intelligent. Rather than drawing air from outside the case in
the rear and sucking it into the case (thus causing turbulence
and disrupting the wind tunnel design of ATX), the X850XT-PE's
cooler draws air from within the case and blows it out the back.
It can be argued that air outside the case is cooler, but that
typically isn't true as your case and PSU fans blow warm air out
there to begin with.
Noise is not really an issue, depending how you look at it. A
silent solution it is not, and when powering on the PC with the
X850XT-PE installed, the bundled cooler is easily the loudest
fan in the computer (assuming you have "normal" fans
and not a bunch of Vantec Tornados) during POST. About 5 seconds
later though, the fan slows down and is actually one of the quieter
solutions we've used. The ASUS AX800XT, which has a smaller cooler,
is actually louder than the X850XT-PE's cooling setup. The fan
did not really spin up that much either when it was under load,
but we do use a well designed case that has adequate airflow.
Assuming your cooling design is sound, the X850XT-PE's noise should
not be an issue (unless you're looking for a completely silent
solution).
We should point out that the memory on the side of the VPU is
kept cool by this setup, but the rear of the card simply uses
a heatplate which got very warm during testing.
For your input and output options, moving from left
to right is the first DVI connection, followed by the video-in,
and the second DVI connection. CRT users need not worry as mentioned
earlier, two DVI adapters are included. Just above these connections
is the grill plate used by the cooler to exhaust the warm air.
Test Setup
Soltek
SL-K8T890Pro-939: Athlon 64 3500+, 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS3200 ProSeries
DDR2 (2-2-2-5), ATI Radeon X850XT-PE, 160GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA,
Windows XP w/SP1, Catalyst 5.2.
We'll be using FRAPS to record framerates in all
our tests, playing the game as anybody would (trying to stay alive),
firing weapons, dodging attacks and so on. Unlike our past video
game tests, all benchmarks will be done with the audio "on",
as we're trying to illustrate real gaming experiences, and I doubt
any of our readers mute the audio during gameplay. We will also
provide some numbers from "traditional"
Test Software will be:
Doom 3 v1.1 - Making good use of the BFG,
rocket launcher and plasma gun (the most graphically intense weapons),
we'll be killing demons on the Enpro.
Far Cry v1.3 - Another graphically intense
shooter, we'll be fighting baddies in the Rebellion level.
Unreal Tournament 2004 v3355- We'll be playing
some bot deathmatch (31 bots in all) on the Compressed map.
Half-Life 2 - This game needs no introduction,
as anyone who picked up a $500 video card in the last 6 months
probably did so for this. We'll be playing the D3_C17_12 map (Follow
Freeman).
The driver settings were manually configured for
AntiAliasing and Anisotropic Filtering (on or off), and set to
"Quality". All games were set to their highest allowable
game settings. Unless otherwise stated, all games will be played
at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. The comparison hardware will be the
ASUS
Extreme AX800XT.
Doom 3
| Cards
- Resolution - AA/AF |
Min
|
Max
|
Ave.
|
| X850XT-PE
1280x1024 No AA/AF |
48
|
63
|
60.22
|
| X850XT-PE
1280x1024 4AA/8AF |
28
|
63
|
55.86
|
| X850XT-PE
1600x1200 No AA/AF |
32
|
63
|
57.33
|
| AX800XT
1600x1200 No AA/AF |
27
|
63
|
56.93
|
Doom 3 was very playable with both the ATI X850XT-PE and the
ASUS AX800XT. At 1280x1024 and AA/AF disabled, the X850XT-PE provided
the smoothest gaming experience. The X850XT-PE rarely dropped
below 50fps at this resolution, and only did so on a few occasions
once we increased the resolution and AA/AF.
 |
|
|
1280 No AA/AF
|
1280 4AA/8AF
|
AntiAliasing has little effect in Doom 3. We found that the game
is too dark as it is to appreciate any improvements with this
option enabled. There are improvements in the railing and the
floor panels, but considering that most of the game is spent surviving,
it isn't a requirement for gameplay.
NEXT
