Reference Board Examination - X700 PRO
Click for a bigger version
Click for a bigger version
The PRO engineering sample has another 128MB of the same GC20 DRAMs that the XT has, on the rear of the PCB. Unless ATI source the GDDR3 DRAMs for the PRO from someone other than Samsung, the GC20 variant, Samsung's slowest, will make its way onto the PRO. That's significant due to the fact ATI will clock it much slower than its rated 1000MHz, at 846MHz.
The GPU on the reference sample comes clocked at 425MHz, 5MHz higher than ATI's final clock speed (and the reason we're unable to preview the PRO's performance using the engineering sample in this article, the clock speeds were changed at the very last minute) and uses an aluminium cooler.
The fan on both versions is the same, altering its speed based on the heat produced by the GPU. At the highest speed setting the noise generated is quite significant, returning to much quieter levels at lower speed. It's not obtrusive and should be fine when mixed in with the aural profile of the average PC.
Finally, like the XT, the PRO sample has PCB space for a Theater 200 video processor and space for an external power connector when used as an AGP variant.
