Introduction

One of the most pleasant surprises on the video front in the past few months was the announcement of the updated RADEONX line up and in particular, the X800 XL which featured a R420 class VPU with a full 16 pipelines, a full 256-bit memory interface and 256MB of memory all at low MSRP of 299$. While availability seemed a bit sketchy for a while, X800 XLs can now easily be found for under the MSRP at many retailers online.

Today ATI is ready to launch another product; unlike the usual parts refreshes however, there is no ratcheting in clockspeed but instead there is a significant bump in the amount of onboard memory from 256MB to 512MB. Another twist to this story is that the part that will receive this bump is none other than the X800 XL and not the high end X850 line up.

Specifications

Besides the additional memory, there are a couple things that seperate the X800 XL 512MB from the regular X800 XL - all board configurations will come with dual DVI as well as a VIVO module instead of just strictly TV Out. (while video can be captured, VIVO does not imply tuner functionality). These extras do come at a bit of a price premium of an additional $150 dollars over the regular X800 XL 256MB board.

ATI does make a good point that the pricing puts the X800 XL 512MB just $50 over the MSRP of a 6800GT and way under the price of some of the other announced high end 512MB cards. Another side note is the fact that ATI will not be releasing an ATI branded card; only ATI partners will be producing boards.