Conclusion

Since ATI RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition is not something completely new, but a revamped version of the RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition product with slightly increased clock-speeds and perhaps higher overclocking potential, it is hardly possible that we can talk about the novelty as about something completely extraordinary.

ATI RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition, just like any other R480-based product, inherited all the pros and cons of ATI’s latest RADEON X800 graphics architecture. Having implausibly efficient pixel processors, RADEON X850 XT PE will clearly outperform competing GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics card in DirectX 9.0 games like FarCry and Half-Life 2, thus, are also likely to lead in upcoming titles with  heavy usage of Shader Model 2 effects. Unfortunately, lack of technologies like NVIDIA UltraShadow and truly efficient texturing modules don’t let ATI’s X800 XT PE to lead in the Doom III game.

There are no clear drawbacks with the RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition, in case you do not consider dual-clot cooling system as a disadvantage. However, the RADEON X850 XT PE also has very few benefits over the predecessor RADEON X800 XT PE: slightly higher speeds and dynamic overclocking capability OVERDRIVE 3 are hardly enough to be considered as significant leap forward.

The most interesting thing about the new R480 and R430 VPUs and RADEON X850 XT, RADEON X800 graphics cards is higher availability level of the parts. ATI recently told analysts that they had addressed possible yield issues with the new R430, R480 chips, thus, we may see such products available more widely. However, given that the retail market is pretty lukewarm today for PCI Express, quite some time will pass before such boards will be in demand. The time will tell then whether we are correct with our assumptions on better availability of the RADEON X850 parts compared to X800 parts or not.