Thoughts, awards and HEXUS.right2reply
The benchmark results on the previous few pages suggest that buying a 512MB-equipped graphics card wouldn't be a prudent move right now. That, certainly, does appear to be the case, with the PowerColor X800 XL 512MB card showing literally no performance benefits over a 256MB-equipped card. PowerColor's card is priced at around £290 inc. VAT, making it almost £100 dearer than vanilla 256MB RADEON X800 XLs. What you're paying extra for, we believe, are two things.A 512MB framebuffer doesn't confer the kind of performance benefits that we would like just now, but in the not-too-distant future games will use texture data that regularly exceeds 256MB. Looking back on recent history, the rise of onboard framebuffers has gone hand-in-hand with games using greater assets. There's compelling reasons now why cards equipped with 128MB of onboard memory just don't perform well when resolution and/or image enhancement are ratcheted up. That will be the case for 256MB-equipped cards in a year from now, so whilst a 512MB framebuffer doesn't make the most economic sense just now, you're actually buying into a form of performance futureproofing. Just don't expect 30% framerate increases in games. The odd, isolated game, such as Half-Life 2 when run with maximum image quality, can be thought of as portentous.
The second reason why PowerColor's card is worthy of consideration lies with the care and attention paid to cooling and quietness. ATI's had the X800 XL GPU fabbed on a 110nm low-k manufacturing process. The XL's 400MHz core speed is slow enough (read cool enough) for a card partner to introduce a quieter cooling solution. The large heatsink/heatpipe approach, as in evidence here, works well, and it's just a slight shame that PowerColor hasn't been able to run with a totally silent card (as the name suggests), unlike GeCube's 512MB XL.
What do you want from a £290 video card today? Is it performance, performance, and yet more performance in present games, or is it a deal of futureproofing at the expense of, you've guessed it, performance. PowerColor's X800 XL 512MB pricing treads dangerously on X850-class water, which is a great deal faster in almost every conceivable gaming scenario.
The way it ultimately pans out is like this. Board partners need to produce 512MB graphics cards because ATI and NVIDIA say so. The cards don't make a whole heap of sense if viewed strictly from a performance viewpoint (which is what gaming cards are ultimately evaluated by). You simply pay for extram DRAM that, due to games' designs, isn't being used too well. £290 will buy you better present performance elsewhere in ATI's GPU range, although the likes of the PowerColor X800 XL 512MB may, in a couple of years from now, prove its worth. Who waits that long in this cut-throat industry, though?
HEXUS Right2Reply
Powercolor has provided HEXUS with the following .right2reply response to this review:
The 2 outstanding factors in this review are the 512MB frame buffer and the cooling design offered by PowerColor. Whilst there is evidence to show that the frame buffer of 512MB doesn’t offer any major performance gain in some games, it offers a solution that as stated will soon be used more by forth coming games. This is giving you future technology today. There is already proof regarding games like HL2 where having a 512MB card does offer superior performance and this will become more apparent as more games are released.
We have combined this solution with a passive cooled solution. We are incorporating this design into more of our products now. We are already running this successfully on the popular X700 range and will also introduce it on the X550 product line. We are also shipping in the box an additional fan for those enthusiasts who want to get even more out of the products.
Thank you to Hexus for doing this review.
Regards, Neil
PowerColor - Northern Europe
