Introduction
The mainstream graphics market has been receiving a hefty amount of coverage within the past month with the release of multiple new cards by both ATI and Nvidia. The two companies are one upping eachother in a bid to be the mainstream holiday champion of 2005.
ATI have had on the market for some time their X800 GTO card which was designed to eliminate the 6600 GT and create a new price point in between their low-end X800 GT and X800 XL cards. The X800 GTO fit in quite nicely performance wise and price wise, and has been selling fairly well. Like their Ultimate X800 XL, this card is just a basic X800 GTO affixed with a large, silent heatsink. While the X800 XL Ultimate was not completely silent, it used a Zalman heatsink not typically found already attached on third party cards, in the tradition of past offerings in their 'Ultimate' series.
The X800 GTO is the latest card from Sapphire to carry Ultimate status, despite the fact that an X800 GTO does not come close to representing the high-end/high-mid-end that Ultimate cards in the past usually have. Despite this, Sapphire decided that there would be a sufficiently sized market for this card, and created an all new, absolutely massive, heatsink/heatpipe design for the mid range chip. This card should suit anyone looking to make a decent performing silent system, while leaving those more inclined to tweak and overclock to the amazing X800 GTO2 card.
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