Powercolor Radeon X800 GT Review - PAGE 1

Introduction

ATI has had a very rough time with its midrange offerings. While Nvidia has been selling copious amounts of 6600 GT's at a very reasonable price, ATI has been pushing its extremely underpowered X700 Pro cards as a poor alternative. ATI would have been significantly more effective had they been able to release the X700 at the planned XT clock speeds a year ago, but poor yields made it impossible for ATI to deliver the card in quantity which resulted in a cancellation of the high spec card.

ATI has come back a year later and has had large quantities of the X800 GT available for nearly two months already. The new card comes in 128 MB and 256 MB variations unlike the 6600 GT which comes with only 128 MB of memory. What has caused most of the buzz surrounding this card is the fact that manufacturers producing the GT can opt for either a surplus R480 core or go for the 'new' R423 for slightly less money. What this means in simple terms is that (as in Powercolor's case) some GT cards come ready to be clocked to the moon. Definitely a nice value add in that.

These cores are the ones that get tossed in the throw away bin initially because they are unable of reaching XT or PE speeds. Not every core from a wafer is a capable of running at full spec, which results in extras that in this case, end up on high potential, inexpensive, mainstream boards.

With the X800 GT, value seems to be the goal. The MSRP for the cards is set at $200, but as with Nvidia's 6600 GT, the actual street price for these cards hovers significantly lower. The Powercolor card can be had for roughly $165 which seems to be the average street price for other cards as well. Considering it comes clocked 75 MHz over spec already, this card definitely presents a strong dollar/performance ratio.