Reference Board Examination - X700 XT
As well as the X700 XT reference board, we were able to spend some time with an X700 PRO engineering sample. The comparison is interesting for a couple of reasons. The coolers are different and the PRO uses a larger memory density. Let's look at the XT first.
Click for a bigger version
Click for a bigger version
The X700 XT has a number of obvious board features, from the photographs above. The first is the board space for a Rage Theater video processor, for possible VIVO versions. The second is the copper L-shaped cooler, which only cools the GPU. The rear of the board shows you the retention mechanism for the cooler. It doesn't allow the cooler to apply much pressure to the GPU, so we theorise that's the reason ATI went with copper on the higher-clocked XT version, compared to the aluminium cooler on the PRO. You'll see that one soon.
The board sports VGA, DVI-I and S-Video/composite outputs and it doesn't need an external power connector, instead drawing all the juice it needs from the PCI Express slot. Any AGP variant will most definitely need a connector.
The DRAMs used on the XT reference board are Samsung's K4J55323QF GDDR3 devices, four of the GC20 1000MHz variants on the board giving it the 128MB density it sports.
Rated to 1000MHz, ATI so very slightly overclock them on the reference XT design.
Click for a bigger version
The copper cooler is evident in the above photograph. What about the PRO?
