Thoughts
Pricing is the frustrating facet to factor in to a conclusion about these two new Radeons. MSRP is all well and good when using it to pair up hardware in a shootout, but if you can't find the hardware anywhere near that price in reality, the fruits of your endeavours are lost.I picked 6600 GT as a nemesis for X800 based on MSRP price ($249 for X800 with 256MB) and general availability of PCI Express 6800, and in that respect Sapphire's pricing for the tested X800 256MB does wonders for its comparative performance. The 256MB of GC20 on the board should really have it costing a bit more, the AIB partner securing a nice deal from Samsung it seems. It's still generally more expensive than 6600 GT across the board, but it would have seen off a plain 6800 too, given an extrapolation between 6800 GT and 6600 GT, at standard clocks.
Overclocking the X800 sample revealed easy running around 480MHz on the core and 1050MHz on the memory (some 1.5x as fast as stock), further encroaching on performance of hardware costing a fair bit more. Providing 256MB X800s make their way to retail from vendors other than Sapphire, with GDDR3 memory, it's a good prospect. That's not to take anything away from Sapphire's endeavours if it's unique to them however, and they should expect to sell out. It's also worth noting that X800's vertex processing power is hard to beat for the money, the full six units alive and well on chopped R430.
However, The Tech Report reviewed the same 256MB board, which I presume has the same GC20 DRAMs as our sample (Scott mentions it being GDDR3 and the slowest Samsung option is GC20), which barely overclocked on the memory at all and didn't go much higher than 425MHz. Something to keep in mind.
X850 PRO has no trouble taking on 6800 GT in the same respect, going on manufacturer pricing. It lacks a fragment quad but running at 500MHz with 1040MHz memory is enough to keep pace and that vertex power is also present. In some cases it would easily outrun 6800 Ultra.
Throwing pricing out the window, which seems to be happening anyway, in isolation and without comparison to NVIDIA peers, ATI have two new SKUs that deserve some attention. Yes, I could have done with sourcing a plain 6800 on PCI Express just to make sure, or manufactured one with Rivatuner just for this article, but it wouldn't have changed much.
X850 PRO's VIVO ability is not to be overlooked, bringing the feature to the same market that X800 PRO did on AGP.
Both make a compelling case for themselves in terms of performance, features and manufacturer pricing. It's whether that pricing rings true and availability holds for long enough to grab one. X700 XT anyone?
For a peek at the Sapphire presentation, click here.
HEXUS Right2Reply
Commenting under the HEXUS Right2Reply initiative, ATI Technologies says this about the article:The results from this test are nothing short of stunning ! If you want the best Doom 3 scores available in a card that costs less than £150 (ex vat) - then the clear choice is ATI. When Rys set the resolution to 1600x1200 and cranked up the image quality, the 6600GT could not reach 20 frames a second - whereas the X800 is heading toward 30 ! The HEXUS comment that "X800 hands 6600GT its ass in FarCry" with the 1.3 Shader Model 3 patch is also telling. When it gets really funny is when the X800 punches out over 43 frames a second in Half-Life 2 and the 6600GT can only muster 15. These results show that while the X800 may have a 'mid-range price tag' - it actually blasts the competition away in settings previously reserved for 'ultimate cards'. The only tough chioce here is whether the customer should invest an extra £40 and buy a complete 16-pipe X800XL where performance REALLY rockets !
Kind regards,
Andrzej Bania
PR and Marketing Manager
Northern Europe & South Africa
ATI Technologies (EUROPE) GmbH
