Introduction
GeCube RADEON X800XLA-VIVO 256MB AGP Video CardA few months' back, when I was sunning myself on the beaches of Goa, Ryszard had the ineffable pleasure of casting his analytic eye over ATI's RADEON X800 XL VPU. He surmised that the native PCI-Express design had a lot going for it. A healthy 400MHz core speed was allied to a regular 16-pipe rendering setup. Memory speed, too, was decent, with the reference card clocked in at 980MHz, offering up almost 32GB/s of bandwidth. The best part of it, however, was the price. ATI, at that time, reckoned for a U.K. price of around £200. Fast forward to today and that promise has become reality. It's possible to purchase a retail X800 XL 256MB PCIe card for <£200.
X800 XL was great for users who opted for PCI-Express chipsets, yet it left a vast proportion of gamers and enthusiasts, who decided to stay with AGP-based mainboards, high and dry. ATI quickly realised the potential of this capable VPU and its partners have now started releasing AGP models, courtesy of ATI's Rialto bridging chip. GeCube has been one of the first to release a retail model, so let's take a closer look at its X800XLA-VIVO AGP model.
