Radeon X800XL 512Mb Roundup
Sapphire RX800XL 512Mb
Package bundle:
- Sapphire RX800XL 512Mb video card;
- DVI/ D-Sub 15-pin adapter;
- RCA and S-Video cables;
- VIVO splitters;
- User's manual;
- Drivers and utilities CD;
- ÑD with RedLine, a proprietary utility for overclocking;
- PowerDVD 5;
- PowerDirector 3DE;
- Game - Splinter Cell:Pandora Tomorrow on DVD;
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time on 2 CDs.
The board is made of dark blue textolyte which is these days normally used by Sapphire. In terms of the PCB design, there is nothing that makes the board much different from the reference RX800XL 256Mb, but for the twofold number of memory chips.
The cooling system is familiar still from the times of RX850XT.
The graphic processor is cooled by a copper radiator. The fan takes air from the CPU housing, runs it through beneath the cover and blows it outside through holes in the cap. All that is fastened with two screws and a plate on the board's reverse side. The manufacturer used the "jewel steel" for GPU as the thermal interface and thermal spacers for the video memory chips.
On the reverse side, there is a separate aluminum plate. Actually, it plays the decorative part because it does not cover the memory chips completely (in fact, that can be also said about the radiator on the front side of the board, unlike the reference cooling on RX850XT). The plate is fastened with three screws.
The decision to use the cooling system from RX850XT is anyway quite disputable. First, it takes up two slots, which may be of convenience issue to the users. Secondly, the cooling system of such type noticed still during the review of RX850XT is the rather high noise during operation. Note that the reference board ATI RX800XL 512Mb used a single-slot cooling system, so this move by Sapphire does not look clear from this viewpoint.
The card is equipped with 512Mb of GDDR3 memory with a 256-bit data transmission bus assembled of eight Samsung BGA memory chips of 2 ns access time, which is equivalent to 500 MHz (1000 MHz DDR) operating frequency. The standard operating frequency on RX800XL fully meets that as it should be as per the specifications. The effective memory frequency is 988MHz DDR. The memory chips are positioned in eight along each side of the PCB.
Let's look at the R430 graphic processor. As we can see, it is marked as X800 PRO. The GPU operating frequency is 400MHz. The chips uses 16 pixel pipelines, and 6 vertex units.
The board also supports VIVO features implemented on the ATI Rage Theater chip.
It is equipped with a connector for additional power supply, unlike its 256MB analog.
It is also equipped with two digital outputs and a S-Video output
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VGA Card:
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CPU & Memory:
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