Gigabyte Radeon X800 Review - PAGE 2

The Card

Comparing Gigabyte's X800 to an Sapphire X800 XL and ATI's ATI X850 XT PE we have in possession, I can plainly see that Gigabyte has opted to go with the ATI reference design. The PCB boards themselves are even identical in size. With the exception of Gigabyte using slightly different-sized capacitors and transformers, the components of the Gigabyte X800 are the same and located in the same positions. Of course, the board itself is in Gigabyte's trademark blue, and lacking the active cooling solution present on the ATI board, but this a good thing.

Like most of the other ATI PCIe offerings short of the X850 series, the Gigabyte board does not require an external power connector because the PCI-Express slot provides more power than the AGP equivalents. The standard analog VGA, DVI, and video out are present.

Gigabyte's 6800 AGP on top, the X800 on the bottom

The passive X800 is tall but the height is spread onto two sides instead of one. Other expansion cards should not be affected

The cooling system on the Gigabyte X800 is a curious contraption. It is identical in design to the system we found on the also passively-cooled Gigabyte GeForce 6800 we reviewed. The principle remains the same: Maximize the surface area for dissipating heat from the GPU by utilizing a combination of two large heat sinks as well as a set of heat pipes. The rear of the video card is home to a suspended heat sink, held in place by the heat pipes coming out of the heat sink on the front of the card. The card is very heavy, significantly more so than any fan cooled card.

The heatsink on the front side of the card does not make direct contact with the GPU - instead it makes contact with a copper heatsink that runs across the board which in turn makes contact with the heatpipes and the heasink. While at first glance it may appear that the memory chips are making contact with either of the heat sinks, upon closer inspection it is revealed that this is not the case. In fact, it would probably be detrimental to the memory chips if there was any contact between the two objects, as the heat sink probably gets hotter than the memory chips during operation. Anyone who listened in ninth-grade science will know that heat is always transferred from the hotter object to the colder object, and never the other way around.

As mentioned, the heatsink on the back of the card is merely suspended by the heatpipes and is not physically attached to the card. Gigabyte has attached two foam insulators and one rubber one on the bottom of the heatsink so that the metal of the heatsink can never come in contact with the PCB or any of the components. There is about 2mm of clearance between the insulation and the heatsink and again there is no contact between it and the card. It does look a little bit precarious however and hopefully the heatpipes will not flex under the weight over time.

The RAM chips themselves are identical to what's in use on the X800 Pro: Samsung K4J55323QF-GC20. In other words, Samsung BGA 2.0 ns, which should run at up to 500 MHz (1000 MHz DDR) at default timings guaranteed. Since the memory of the Gigabyte X800 runs at a stock 980 MHz, this might not leave us much headroom for overclocking -- but you never know.

The Bundle

As is typical with Gigabyte products, the X800 came to us in a very colorful and busy box, advertising everything from the bundled games to the type of memory in use on the card. The bundled hardware was also very typical of Gigabyte video card bundles: a DVI-to-VGA adapter, and an Component/S-Video-out dongle. We're thankful for the dongle, as the GeForce 6800 only came with an S-Video-to-RCA adapter.

Gigabyte's software bundle is fairly impressive. Along with the obligatory driver CD are two games and a useful application: Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising, Thief 3: Deadly Shadows, and PowerDVD 5. It's pleasant full versions of fairly recent games, as well as a full-version application that can be put to good use.

Lastly, we have the manual. I'll be honest with you and say that I personally have next-to-never read one of these, but they are very useful for the newbie who is still green when it comes to dealing with the installation of hardware. I was pleased to see that the manual wasn't merely a re-print of previous manuals, as it has actual screenshots and explanations of ATI's Catalyst Control Center.