RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition: PCB Design

The graphics card doesn’t practically differ from the ordinary RADEON X800 XT for the PCI Express bus, but why should they replace a well-designed PCB with anything new? The GPU die carries the R480 label and the PCI Express logo:

Our sample was manufactured in the 39-th week of 2004, i.e. at the end of September. Thus, it is about two months old and this means ATI has no evident problems with manufacturing the R480. The PCB carries eight GDDR3 memory chips from Samsung with an access time of 1.6 nanoseconds. Such a fast memory is required to reach 1180MHz frequency, which is only 20MHz below the maximum clock rate these chips are rated for. The amount of the memory is 256 megabytes, although the GPU can address up to 512MB. Right now, however, such amounts are not called for; adding 256MB more memory to the RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition would make it even more expensive without giving much in terms of functionality or performance.

As for the outputs, we’ve got the most up-to-date configuration with two DVI-I connectors for two LCD monitors. The second output is realized through a Silicon Image SiI1162 transmitter. This configuration isn’t new for ATI, though, as the PCI Express version of the RADEON X800 XT uses it, too.

A traditional 6-pin connector supplies additional power to the device. So far, PSUs are not equipped with such a connector, so you have to use a special adapter, but as the PCI Express platform becomes widespread, PSUs will surely add a separate power rail specifically for high-power graphics cards.

Before proceeding to the tests, let’s first check the efficiency of the new cooling system, and its noise level, too.