Recently, ATi launched the Radeon X800 XL graphic card comprising a mammoth, 512 MB of memory. The card is based on the X800 XL (R430) chip which is manufactured using 0.11 micron technology unlike the 0.13 micron being used to produce the X800 XT and the X850 XT from ATi. This PCI-Express card features dual DVI ports as well as VIVO via a composite port. It features the ATi Rage Theatre chip doing all the work. The fan speed is controlled by the drivers and even at maximum load, it was silentl. It is a DirectX 9.0b card and has 16 pipelines. The chip is clocked at 400 MHz whereas the memory is clocked at 1 GHz. The card was tested
on a setup using a 3.6 MHz Pentium IV Prescott processor on an original Intel 925XCV motherboard equipped with Micron 1 GB 533MHz DDR2 RAM running Windows XP SP1. The drivers were Catalyst 5.5. We wanted to see if the 512 MB framebuffer benefited any games. Not much at lower resolutions. Coming to 3DMark05— often used as an yardstick in graphic
performance—the X800 XL scored 5028 on default settings and an impressive 3994 on 1024 x 768 with all the effects cranked up. The extra memory does not offer a performance benefit to justify premium pricing. You are better off holding on to your present cards!
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