Overclocking and thoughts
OverclockingThe usual caveats apply to overclocking. Results obtained from a sample of one aren't usually indicative of just how well you card will 'clock. Overclocking tests were carried out by running an entire loop of 3DMark03 without any form of corruption. No extra cooling was directed at the card, and ambient temperature hovered around 21c. The card was run in a full PC, housed inside a Lian Li PC60 case.
Not spectacular, but air-cooled overclocking on the very high-end cards rarely produces results of note. It's surprising just how quickly 1.6ns RAM lost stability. Default clocks are only 20MHz (40MHz DDR) less than what's specified above. Of course, your sample may hit 600/1250; it's the luck of the draw.
DOOM 3 was re-run at 1280x1024 with 4x AA/8x AF with the overclocked card.
Nothing that you would notice in-game, I'd wager.
Final thoughts
In the end, ASUS has sprinkled its own brand of magic on a RADEON X800 XT PE PCIe card (God, these names are getting ridiculous!). ASUS understands the nuances of graphics card marketing better than most. That's precisely why its R423 part is dressed up with an excellent bundle that's lead with the versatile SmartDoctor software. Everything about the package, from the excellent GPU cooler and on to the supplied webcam, smacks of quality. So it should, really. This particular card retails for around £430, assuming you can find one in stock.
There's very little that's intrinsically wrong with the AX 800 XT PE card. However, a number of extraneous factors take away from the package's attractiveness. Firstly, finding an ASUS X800 XT-based card is hard enough, and that's one we reviewed a couple of months back. Locating this Platinum Edition is that much harder. Vendors seem to only have a few cards at a time, which, as you can imagine, sell out quickly. £430 is an incredible price to pay for a single graphics card. The price would just about be palatable If all ATI partners' PE efforts weighed in at around the same figure. That's not the case, though, as PowerColor, to mention just one AIB, has a reference-like X800 XT PE PCI card that's priced at £350; getting on towards £100 less. Sure, it may not arrive with the bells and whistles tacked on to ASUS' bundle, but a price differential of over 20% is hard to ignore.
A second problem facing all current R423 parts is ATI's decision to rename its premier VPU line with different nomenclature. An X850 XT sounds faster than this X800 XT PE, doesn't it?. That's not the case, as they're both clocked at identical speeds. A change of bundle packaging will no doubt alleviate this problem, but that doesn't help cards that have already shipped to vendors.
It's hard to recommend any graphics card that costs more than a reasonable PC. £430 is an awful lot of money to be spending on a present card when a refresh is just around the corner. In that case, as comprehensive as it is, ASUS' AX800 XP PE/2DHTV package is simply too expensive to be considered by all but the very well-off enthusiast. Performance freaks should look towards SLI'ing a couple of 6800 GT cards, and for the rest, I'd recommend obtaining and overclocking the cheapest X800 XT you could lay your hands. The money you save will be better spent elsewhere.
