Conclusion

So, my extreme overclocking of the RADEON X800 Pro was quite rewarding: the frequency grew by 32.6% over the regular clock rate. This means that ATI’s chips have a wide “safety margin”, at least the RADEON X800 Pro finds it no problem to work at the frequencies of the RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition.

However, to get the performance of the RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition, it is necessary to either enable the missing pipelines (and that seems unattainable so far), or boost the GPU clock rate to 693MHz, and this is hardly doable at home.

In comparison to the GeForce 6800 GT, which differs from the top-end GeForce 6800 Ultra in the frequencies only, the cut-down version of the X800 core, the X800 Pro GPU, looks disadvantageous: roughly, in two games out of ten it is a little faster than the competitor; in three games more they were equal; and in five games the RADEON was more or less slower than the GeForce 6800 GT.

The GeForce 6800 GT easily overclocks to the frequencies of the GeForce 6800 Ultra and more; that is, it provides the same performance as the top-end model – I can’t say that about the RADEON X800 Pro…

However, the appeal of the reviewed graphics cards will largely depend on their retail prices. A highly overclockable product but which costs much more than its competitor is unlikely to win a user’s heart. So I advise you to check the prices first and only then make up your mind about your future graphics card!