Specs, fillrate and shading
Let's take a look at the cards' basic vital statistics.| Card | ABIT Fatal1ty X800 XL | ATI RADEON X850 XT | GeForce 6800 Ultra | GeForce 7800 GTX |
| Interface/speed | PCI-Express | PCI-Express | PCI-Express | PCI-Express | Onboard memory | 512MB | 256MB | 256MB | 256MB | Core speed | 400/420MHz | 520MHz | 425MHz | 430MHz | Rendering pipelines | 16 | 16 | 16 | 24 | Fillrate (multi-texturing) | 6.4/6.72GTexels/s | 8.32GTexels/s | 6.8GTexels/s | 10.32GTexels/s | Memory interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | Memory speed | 980/1080MHz | 1080MHz | 1100MHz | 1200MHz | Memory bandwidth (max) | 31.36/35.2GB/s | 34.56GB/s | >35.2GB/s | 38.4GB/s | Cheapest online price | £275 | £280 | £299 | £370 |
The extra DRAM used by ABIT's Fatal1ty X800 XL card, over and above the regular 256MB, pushes its price up to ATI's very own Radeon X850 XT and NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 Ultra range. NVIDIA's pricing reshuffle has pushed a GeForce 6800 GT 256MB price down to sub-£200, making it nearly £100 cheaper than ABIT's card. A GeForce 7800 GTX has been thrown in for kicks.
Run in XTurbo mode the multi-texturing performance is just a whisker behind that of a GeForce 6800 Ultra's.
A comparative lack of pixel shading power will show up in our gaming results.
Vertex shading has always been an ATI forte, however.
