X-bit labs

PowerColor X800 GTO 16 Graphics Card Review: Image is the Top Priority?

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 02/20/2006 | 09:06 AM ]

The long-lived Radeon X800 architecture dates its origin back to 2002 when ATI Technologies introduced its DirectX 9-supporting GPU codenamed R300. Despite the arrival of the new Radeon X1000 family, Radeon X800 series graphics cards are still popular due to their good technical characteristics and acceptable performance. Here’s another member of this large family – PowerColor X800 GTO 16.

Table of contents:

• Package and Accessories
  
• PCB Design and Cooling System
  
• Noise, Overclocking, 2D Quality
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Performance in First-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Battlefield 2
  
• The Chronicles of Riddick
  
• Call of Duty 2
  
• Doom 3
  
• Far Cry
  
• F.E.A.R.
  
• Half-Life 2
  
• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
  
• Project: Snowblind
  
• Quake 4
  
• Serious Sam 2
  
• Unreal Tournament 2004
  
• Performance in Third-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Price of Persia: Warrior Within
  
• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
  
• Performance in Simulators
  
• Colin McRae Rally 2005
  
• Pacific Fighters
  
• Performance in Strategy Games
  
• Age of Empires 3
  
• Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War
  
• Performance in Semi-Synthetic Benchmarks
  
• Aquamark3
  
• Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 3
  
• Performance in Synthetic Benchmarks
  
• Futuremark 3DMark03 build 360
  
• Futuremark 3DMark05 build 120
  
• Futuremark 3DMark06
  
• Conclusion
  

The reasons why ATI’s graphics cards of the Radeon X800 series still remain in the market have been given in our earlier reviews. The main of them is that the company has got large amounts of R423, 430 and 480 chips and has to utilize them somehow to avoid loss. However paradoxical it may seem, graphics cards on these chips, limited as they are in functionality, do look better sometimes than same-class models on newer GPUs. They are surely not engaged in the top-end sector struggle where Radeon X1800/X1900 and GeForce 7800 cards contend, but can actually rival such mainstream solutions as GeForce 6800 GS, GeForce 6800 and Radeon X1600 XT, especially as Shader Model 3.0 and HDR aren’t relevant features for this category of graphics hardware due to the relatively low performance they provide in advanced 3D games.

Reviewing one of the available versions of ATI Radeon X800 GTO , we noted that working at higher clock rates that graphics card left no chance nearly to the Nvidia GeForce 6800. It also easily beats the Radeon X1600 XT that has only four TMUs, but cannot cope with the overclocker-friendly and technologically advanced GeForce 6800 GS. The 16-pipelined Radeon X800 XL might make a worthy opponent to the latter in terms of performance, but not in terms of price (the official price of the out-dated and technically obsolete Radeon X800 XL is over $200).

PowerColor has made an attempt to change the situation with a release of a new graphics card that would be capable to rival the GeForce 6800 GS in performance as well as in price. The new graphics card, called PowerColor X800 GTO 16, features more active pixel pipelines than the PowerColor X800 GTO has: 16 against 12. The clock rates of these graphics cards are identical, so we seem to deal with nothing else but another implementation of Radeon X800 XL. So, why “GTO 16”, and not “XL”? It’s not probably because ATI Technologies may be upset, but because the name of Radeon X800 GTO is widely recognized among overclockers. Some such cards – those that carry an R480 graphics processor on board – boast excellent overclockability, and the Radeon X800 GTO2 is actually hunted for because it only takes a simple BIOS update to re-enable its deactivated pixel pipelines. So, it’s quite logical for PowerColor to use the GTO suffix in the product name to attract potential customers.

Based on the 0.11-micron R430 GPU, the PowerColor X800 GTO 16 may be considered as a compromise between Radeon X800 GTO and Radeon X800 GTO2. It has more pipelines than the former, but also a somewhat lower overclocking potential than the latter. Let’s have a closer look at it right now.