Gigabyte Radeon X800 Pro Review
Introduction
The start of 2004 was marked by anticipation of new products by the two video giants: nVidia's NV40 and ATI's R420. nVidia was the first to present its chip and horrified all the reviewers. The performance of that chip was almost twice as much of all the previous chips made by both nVidia and ATI. After all calmed down, the attention was focused on ATI. The main intrigue was about whether R420 would be able to become equal at speed with GeForce 6800 or even surpass it?
So, on 5 May ATI releases the X800 series of video cards on R420 chip. As the first tests with ATI Radeon X800 XT top models showed, it is not inferior at speed to its competitor, and even surpasses it at benchmarks making intense use of shaders. R420 also demonstrated superb results with the FSAA and AA enabled.
However, a lot of reviews of new video cards caused a negative effect on the sales of previous-generation high-end products (primarily, Radeon 9800XT). Practically all users who planned an upgrade of their video systems decided to wait for the release of X800 XT. But there passed a few weeks before such cards hit the retail.
On the whole, the situation with new chips looks very interesting. It is already customary for users to expect another 5-10%, maximum 15%, performance boost with the release of every new chip. A typical example is the evolution "ATI Radeon: 9700=>9700Pro=>9800=>9800 Pro=>9800 XT." But in fact all the listed video cards are based on the R300 architecture. At every stage, engineers of that Canadian company modified the structure a bit, introduced local amendments, fixed bugs. In parallel, the process technology was being debugged, which allowed gradually raising the core speed. As a result, the performance rise was going in small increments.
In the case with the R420 chip, the situation is absolutely different - its architecture is completely new, and ATI intends to realize its potentials for quite a long time. As before, once every six months a new chip with small amendments made to the structure and a bit increased clock speeds will be released. This is highly probable, of course unless nVidia raises the tempo of releasing new products.
As I already said, Radeon X800 XT is the fastest video card made on the R420 chip. However, because of its too high price most users are interested in it only as a virtual joy. That is the fate of every top-end product, and manufacturers are not trying to change the situation somehow, simply because their task is not to sell these boards in mass quantities. They serve primarily a means for the marketing struggle against competitors. Certainly, if such a card sells, manufacturers gain their profits, but the major portion of profits come from sales of the middle-end sector (within 200$ to 350$) that sell in millions of pieces.
It's just for this sector ATI releases a cut-down modification of the R420 chip late in May. Video cards made on this chip are dubbed X800 Pro. To illustrate the differences between X800 Pro and X800 XT, we summed up their specifications into the below table:
|
Radeon X800 Pro |
Radeon X800 XT |
| Q-ty of transistors |
160 mln |
160 mln |
| Core speed |
475 MHz |
520 MHz |
| Memory frequency (DDR3) |
900 MHz |
1120 MHz |
| Q-ty of pixel pipelines |
12 |
16 |
| Memory capacity |
256 MB |
256 MB |
| Bus width |
256 bit |
256 bit |
As is easy to notice, the differences between the Pro and XT versions are about the cut down number of pixel pipelines and different core speed. The chips are fully identical among themselves and are cut up of the same wafers. At the stage of sorting, chips with broken (i.e. inoperative) pipelines are marked for the production of X800 Pro. With the well-established process technology, the number of these chips may be quite small, and in order to maintain the production plan fully operative R420 chips will be used for the manufacture of chips for X800 Pro. As a result, overclockers are facing a wide area of activities for turning X800 Pro into X800 XT. This sort of re-make should bring quite sizeable profits: from a video card costing ~450$ (with the recommended 400$) we get a video card of much higher performance and price about 600-650$ (these models have not yet gained widespread occurrence in the retail).
 In practice, turning X800 Pro into X800 XT is about linking one bridge that was cut up with a laser. For that purpose, conductive adhesive or a lacquer would suit.
Of course, there arises the question "if the new chip is so fast, why overclock it?" The user would say "The speed is more than enough..". Indeed, of all the existing games, only FarCry which makes active use of version 2.0 shaders demonstrates a decent level of graphics. All the other games offer quite primitive graphics in order to expand the circle of potential buyers. Many buyers may have quite old video cards (like nVidia Ti4200 :) which are an "obstacle to progress" (a joke, of course :). By the way, FarCry also suffers from simplifications - take for instance the immovable sky, coarse and scanty machinery models etc.
It seems like the only reason for purchasing a video card of X800 Pro level is the expectation of future demands - in order to be ready for Doom3, HalfLife2 and Stalker, or maybe two-three more games. But game developers keep on deferring the release dates, so we have to wait more and more. All developers except ID Software defer the dates - their standard reply is: "the game will be released once it is ready :)". Doom3 is already finished and will hit the retail in a week or two. The first tests showed that previous-generation Radeon 9800XT video cards do not provide acceptable gaming level at the High-Quality level. That is, purchasing a X800 ProXT is recommended solely to Doom3 gamers.
But hardcore overclocking is the fate of a narrow part of users. Today, we'll be looking at the nominal performance of X800 Pro video card. To this end, we'll be testing the GV-R80P256D model made by Gigabyte.
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