Aquamark Synthetic Test: Direct X 9.0

Aquamark is a synthetic test that tests a very wide range of things, which is why I think it is at least slightly more credible than other synthetic tests.

I think these results speak for themselves.

There is a pretty significant gain in the amount of triangles when overclocked. Overall when watching the run-through, overclocked it ran much faster.

Here's a screen grab of the action.

Conclusion:
This card is most certainly capable of playing all of the latest games, and playing them well. And assuming that you can afford this card, you could also probably afford a processor that is much faster than mine truly unleashing the performance of the X800 Pro. In doing so I'm sure that all of the games that I tested here would most likely never even touch the 30fps mark in virtually any settings.

The IceQ II cooling system is most certainly a welcomed addition. Not only is it quiet, but it cools very well and is far superior than the stock cooling system. This system does take up two slots however, but when using a system like mine in which I am not really using the expansion slots anyway, it isn't that big a deal.

With hardware like this it's hard to benchmark this game solidly. So many of the regular tests that I usually would have used were thrown out the window because the hardware is so fast it produces ridiculous numbers. In Quake 3 for instance I was able to play at 1600x1200 6x AntiAliasing and 16x Anisotropic filtering and maintain a comfortable 90fps. Games like Call of Duty, Max Payne 2, and Need for Speed: Underground all produce frame rates that even the most discriminating users can appreciate.

There is still the question about ATI and their OpenGL drivers and if that is going to happen any time soon and if it will really be able to at least equalize them with NVIDIA based hardware. Whether or not that happens is yet to be seen, but typically the choice comes down to whether you play more OpenGL games or more Direct X games. That said this card still performs quite well with Doom 3, and I would expect that it would perform well with Half-life 2 which hopefully will be on shelves this fall.

Pros
IceQ II cooling system (and all that entails: quiet and good overclock)
Aesthetically pleasing (the physical card)
Crisp clean rendering
Nice bundle including a molex extender and video cables.
ViVo/Hydravision!

Cons
Only 12 pipelines instead of 16
Free games do not show the cards full potential
Takes up two expansion slots
Only one DVI and one analog instead of Dual DVI

The Bottom Line: This card is fast, very fast. With only four high end cards to choose from (X800 Pro, XT, 6800GT, Ultra) this card should be on your very short list. With stock overclocking that for sure can't be beat, this is surely a winner.

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