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Overclocking

Please note that the overclocking rates acheived on our card is an instance of ONLY our particular card and should not be taken as an endorsement that every single card will perform equally. That said, we got a very good overclock out of our PowerColor X700 Pro. On the core we got a hefty 74 Mhz boost from the default 425 to 499 catapulting it past the stock speed of the X700 XT (475). The memory side was even more impressive with the stock memory speed coming in at 864 Mhz. We noted that the memory was rated at 2.0nz (1000 Mhz) so hitting 1000 should not have been a problem and it was not. In fact we were able to push the memory clock all the way up to 1100 Mhz. Both the memory and core exceeded the X700 XT stock speeds so if our sample is an indication of the overclocking levels of the retail boards, the PowerColor X700 Pro may just be the card to get in the X700 family.

Noise

I was a bit disappointed with ATI's approach to cooling the X700 Pro/XT and this remains true of the PowerColor X700 Pro as they use a stock ATI fan. The fan unit is pretty loud - in an open bench environment it was quite distracting when there was no background noise. This will be better inside a closed case although the noise even in 2D mode was a bit high for my tastes. For the gamer this should not matter as much; the volume of the fan is drowned out easily by sound at a low to moderate volume. For those looking to do a HTPC that can also game will want to replace the heatsink/fan unit or find a manufacturer that has gone with their own cooling solution.

Conclusions

The MSRP of the PowerColor X700 Pro at 215$ is a tad higher than ATI's suggested price of 199$. The X700 Pro is a good overall performer but it does not have the same breakneck speed as the 6600GT. However, I am not sure that a 128MB card is the way to go any more if DOOM 3 and CS: Source are indicative of what to expect from next generation games. In 128MB cards I have noticed a significant amount of texture thrashing in these two games whereas this should not be an issue with 256MB cards. This is true even without AA/AF. One of the pitfalls of a framerate average is that this does not always show up in the results which is why it is important to note this here.

While the PowerColor X700 Pro at stock speeds is not as fast as the 6600GT in the majority of cases, the X700 Pro (and all other 256MB cards) should provide a better gaming experience in high texture memory situations comapred to their 128MB counterparts. The choice of including 6 vertex pipelines in the X700 series is an interesting one by ATI. There are instances where this seems to help but in the majority of our benchmarks at resolutions that would be typical of what the end user would choose, it did not seem to make a lot of difference even with a slower CPU.

The PowerColor X700 sample that we have overclocked very well with a core ceiling of about 500 megahertz whereas the memory was more forgiving with a jump of about 240 Mhz to 1100 Mhz. Users would likely see greater benefits from overclocking the memory more so than the core if ATI's assertions about the X700 XT are true and how it could benefit from more memory bandwidth. In future revisions we would also like to see bigger fans on the heatsink units as the X700 Pro is fairly loud which is atypical of ATI products.

The PowerColor X700 Pro is definitely worth a look at. The pricing scheme from ATI is interesting as gamers will have to trade off between raw speed that is offered by the X700 XT and the 6600GT versus the larger memory size of the X700 Pro. I do not think the choice is that clear cut. If visual quality is not a concern, the 6600GT is probably the better bet. For those who want to play future games at maximum texture settings, then the X700 Pro may be the way to go if DOOM 3 and CS: Source / HL2 are any indication of what is ahead because 128MB may just not cut it anymore.