By now the new range of ATI desktop products will have been launched, but just before this a couple of new cards showed up. The first was the X800GT, a graphics card based on GPU’s that didn’t quite make the grade. Using these GPU’s provides for a rather cheap (if limited) way of getting new midrange cards out to market. The X800GT features a GPU with 8 Pixel Pipelines Enabled and a clock frequency of 480MHz. However, there is also a similar card available, again based off GPU’s that don’t make the grade and again from the X800 series. Unlike the X800GT, the X800GTO has a 400MHz core clock but has 12 Pixel Pipelines.
We have seen many cards come through the ‘Lair and all have been of a very high quality. No doubt this will be apparent in this review item as well but as you’ll see, this particular model from has more than one trick up its sleeve to separate it from the rest of the pack. Introducing the .
Specifications
• Powered by ATI Radeon X800 GTO VPU - 500MHz (iTurbo)
• 256MB-256bit quad-channel GDDR3 memory - 1GHz (iTurbo)
• 12 parallel pixel pipelines
• 6 vertex shader process engines
• PCI Express® x16 lane native support
• SMARTSHADER™ HD
• SMOOTHVISION™ HD
• TRUFORM™2.0
• 3Dc™
• HYPER Z™ HD
• VIDEOSHADER™HD
• FULLSTREAM™
Like the previously reviewed HIS X800GT, this card is also of the Turbo variety, which coupled with HIS’ iTurbo software, will give you an overclock above that of standard. For the this means that the default 400MHz core goes 500MHz and the 980MHz memory increases to 1000MHz.
The packaging from HIS is great, certainly one of the best. You get all the information you need right there on the box. You probably get more information than you need but at the same time it isn’t thrust into your face in a ‘you must read this to understand’ kind of way. You even get to see the card; well the cooling solution anyway.
Supplied with the HIS X800GTO IceQ II Turbo 256MB is the HIS Platinum software pack which gives you two full games (Flatout and Dungeon Siege) as well as a trial of Dungeon Siege II. Also supplied on the numerous CD’s and DVD’s are 3d Album PicturePro, Power2Go4, Power Director 3SE Plus and trials of PowerDVD Copy, Power Backup, Medi@show3 as well as some nifty game movie trailers on the included CD’s and DVD. The manual is great, and extra not found with the HIS X800GT is 10 free hours of Guild Wars (of course you will need the game first). Hardware extras include a DVI/VGA Adapter, HDTV Output cable, S-VID cable, RCA cable and a converter for Mini-DIN to RCA.
The card itself sports the UV reactive IceQ II cooler which sucks air in from the case, and exhausts the warm out of the case via a second PCI slot. Yes, this is a dual slot solution so do keep this in mind before buying. The interior end of the cooler has this large blue bladed fan to push the air through the heatsink and out of the case. Notice also the Crossfire ready badge.
HIS have sleeved the fan cable, as they have done with previous cards, and while it has no value from a performance view, you might argue it is safer; either way, it certainly increases the visual appeal of the card which is no doubt the thinking behind it.
On the rear of the card we find a heat spreader or plate to keep the 128MB of memory on this side of the card cool. Like the cooler on the front, this is also UV reactive, although you will need your own UV lighting to make it glow.
The IO panel is standard fare although coupled with the supplied second PCI slot plate you get a grill to go above the VGA, TV out and DVI connectors.
Test System - Albatron PX925X Pro, Intel Pentium 4 520 (3.2GHz), 2 x 512MB Kingston HyperX PC2-5400 (4-4-4-12), 2x 80GB Maxtor 7200 SATA's, Windows XP w/SP2
Test Software will be:
Doom 3 - Making good use of the BFG, rocket launcher and plasma gun (the most graphically intense weapons), we'll be kicking ass on the Enpro level and trying not to let the robot score all the points
Half Life 2 - can be very forgiving on hardware, or at least more forgiving than other modern games with the right settings. However when the action gets going and there is a lot on screen, it does help to have a bit of horsepower pushing the graphics. We ran through part of 'Follow Freeman', specifically the part as you exit the Combine building to take on the 3 striders.
Battlefield 2 - We tested the gameplay on the Songhua Stalemate map with 15 bots. This map features a lot of greenery and water areas, as well as lots of hills and buildings which makes both the fighting tight and the views expansive, all of which gives your graphics card a challenge.
Far Cry - featuring lots of outdoor areas with spectacular nature effects such as realistic water and beautiful vista's that all add up to a virtual landscape that stretches off into the distance. We ran through the Rebellion level, and headed outside into the night time chaos.
Need For Speed: Underground 2 – NFS:U2 features a lot of particle effects, fogging and reflective surfaces. We tricked an RX-8 and went for a blast around town in the rain.
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, outrunning the traffic 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.
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 playable game settings via the in-game menus unless otherwise stated.
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