Sapphire's New Generation: Sapphire Hybrid RX800XL /RX800, Sapphire Toxic RX700PRO/RX800PRO AGP
Introduction
On 1 December 2004, an official announcement of some new ATI's products based on R480 and R430 chips aimed at the PCI-E market was held. These solutions are meant to expand the PCI-E sector, thus not only are a competitive alternative to the ever competitor from California but according to ATI even to be a real "killer" for NVIDIA cards of the same price sector of PCI-E solutions.
Today, we'll finally face it and find out of ATI succeeded in that "massive assault". For that, we'll be using video cards by Sapphire, a known company, one of ATI's partners, a very popular brand on the Russian market.
ATI X850XT, a top-end flagship model was already covered in detail in ATI Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition, and today we are in for cards more attractive to the user, built on the base of Õ800XL and Õ800 chips, whose prices are not so biting are which promise a really outstanding performance for the money.
So, what do these solutions look like? To start with, both are made on the 0.11 mk process technology, offer 256 MB video memory with a 256-bit data transmission bus onboard.
X800XL uses nominal frequencies 400/1000MHz DDR, 16 pixel pipelines, and 6 vertex units. Quite good specifications for a ">300$" video card. Õ800XL is positioned versus GeForce 6800GT (which in fact is easy to overclock to frequencies offered by the Ultra version), so we'll be also doing their benchmarking.
As regards Õ800, the frequencies announced for it are 400/700 MHz DDR, and the number of pixel pipelines/vertex units is 12/6, respectively.
On the New Year eve, ATI offered a gift through pushing down the recommended prices for these solutions substantially (250$ for Õ800XL, and 200$ (!) for Õ800), but we are realists and know it very well that the final retail price will strongly differ from the above attractive figures, especially for the first time when there is a sheer shortage for such cards in the retail.
As a contender to the card in question, we'll be using the already known PX6800 on the base of NV41 covered in the previous material, whose price is very close to that for Õ800 - near 300$. The driver versions - latest ATI's WHQL Catalyst 5.1 and the latest NVIDIA's 71.50 - hasn't changed since the previous material, so the results produced early this week have been brought over to this review and complemented with data on benchmarking at a number of other applications, as well as X800 overclocking test results.
Devoting this material to cards of Sapphire;s product like, we can't help passing by the Toxic product series whose distinctive feature is the cooling system made by Arctic Cooling and made in an unusual colorful design, ever quiet and efficient.
Of the Toxic series, we'll be reviewing cards on the base of ATI RX700 PRO and RX800 PRO with the AGP interface. As a contender to the former, of course the GeForce 6600GT will be used, and on the AGP front Sapphire's solution will be opposed by GeForce 6800GT (AGP).
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