Thoughts
ATI's made a smart move by quietly launching a new midrange SKU before the introduction of its long-awaited R520 part, and it has needed to. NVIDIA's GeForce 6600 GT has proved to be an excellent GPU for some time now, matching decent performance to a reasonable price, as well as all the fun that comes with SLI running.The X800 GT SKU takes the best bits from the established R423/480-series of GPUs, and we're thinking of the 256-bit memory interface in particular, and marries to an 8-pipe rendering setup. SAPPHIRE complements the architecture by adding 256MB of GDDR3 RAM that's run at a lofty, effective 980MHz. The end result is a £110 package that's faster than the Radeon X700 Pro in every way, shape and form. It needs to be, to compete with the GeForce 6600 GT, and our set of benchmarks show it to be at least as good as, if not better than, NVIDIA's current midrange star performer, although we still don't see Shader Model 3.0 compatibility from ATI in this muted release. We've felt for some time that ATI needs to re-align its midrange SKUs, taking away product confusion that, to be fair, the company has created for itself. The X800 GT achieves that aim, giving hither-to unseen performance in the crucial ~£100 category, albeit without multi-GPU compatibility.
SAPPHIRE's added extra value to the package via its TriXX overclocking/monitoring software, which allows the user control over both frequencies and fan speed. Further, the package's 2-year warranty is an added bonus. ATI's X800 GT SKU offers, finally, real-world performance that, on balance, overcomes NVIDIA's GeForce 6600 GT. Users looking to upgrade to a £100-£110 PCI-Express GPU would do well to seriously consider SAPPHIRE's X800 GT Hybrid 256MB card. AGP users will need to wait, though, and the very nature of the how the X800 GT came into being indicates that it won't be around forever, so snap it up while you still can. Recommended at around £110 mark.
