Radeon X800 GT Roundup

Overclocking:

Overclocking is a lottery and we cannot guarantee that board partners are not sending us cherry picked video cards that overclock exceedingly well. However, we have overclocked the video cards to give you an idea of what can be achieved with each particular brand - it may help you decide on which of these Radeon X800 GT's is for you.

The All-In-Wonder X800 GT, which is based on the poor clocking R430 GPU only managed 428MHz core before VPU recover kicked in and the memory overclocked to a reasonably good 1062MHz. This is still going to be a lot slower than the standard Radeon X800 GT 256MB, but it does give a reasonable boost in performance.

In our opinion, Sapphire's Radeon X800 GT 256MB is let down by its rather poor cooling solution - it's one of the worst ATI coolers that we've seen for a long time and just isn't anywhere near efficient enough for anyone wanting to get even more out of their Radeon X800 GT. The cooler started to spin up as we went past 485MHz core and by the time we settled at 535MHz core, we were loading at a little over an outrageous 80 degrees. We managed to overclock the memory to 1010MHz.

HIS' Radeon X800 GT 256MB with the IceQ II cooling solution overclocked very well, although we were slightly disappointed with the core overclock - we were expecting a little more than 570MHz, considering that it was at full load at a mere 55 degrees. The memory overclocked to a rather insane 1210MHz - that's an amazing 210MHz over the guaranteed clock speeds and 230MHz over the stock clock speeds for the card. Fantastic.

Finally, PowerColor's GameFX Radeon X800 GT 256MB overclocked to 590/1006MHz without any problems. There were some applications that we were able to run at an astonishing 625MHz core, but we were not 100% happy with the stability at those clock speeds so we had to throttle back a fair bit.

After testing the cards over several games, we found that the HIS Radeon X800 GT IceQ II iTurbo was the fastest of the bunch at its overclocked settings - the additional 200MHz+ memory clock on the HIS gave it the edge over the 20MHz core speed advantage that the PowerColor GameFX X800 GT had.

Final Thoughts...

We have been praising NVIDIA's GeForce 6600 GT for a long time now, and we're sure you can see just how good the GeForce 6600 GT has been for NVIDIA - it's a very strong product that ATI have genuinely struggled to compete with. Until now.

You could say that it's time for the GeForce 6600 GT to step aside and make room for the Radeon X800 GT 256MB, because this is probably the best mid-range video card to come out of ATI's factory since the Radeon 9500 Pro. It's in limited supply and we don't know how long that the supply of somewhat faulty R423 and R480 cores will last but that doesn't stop us from praising something that is a breath of very fresh air.

First off, PowerColor's GameFX X800 GT 256MB is based on the R480 core, and as such it overclocks pretty well - we found that it was 20MHz faster than the fastest we could get either R423-based card to. However, the 2.0ns memory overclocked poorly in comparison to the other cards. The card is a solid Radeon X800 GT implementation with a nice cooling solution that should allow you to attain some reasonably good clock speed increases. You get a free game along with most of the required adapters - we'd hope that PowerColor will consider adding a second DVI to VGA adapter in to the bundle, as it's a missing link in an otherwise solid product.

Sapphire's Hybrid Radeon X800 GT 256MB is let down by a poor cooling solution - it overclocked reasonably well considering the poor cooler, but at anything above 485MHz core, you will be greeted with the fan spinning at full speed. Admittedly, it is not all that loud, but it is louder than any of the other cards on test here. If we disregard the cooler, Sapphire have implemented a very solid card that performs as expected at its default clock speeds - the bundle is good, there's a free game and the PCB is a funky blue/green colour.

HIS' Radeon X800 GT IceQ II iTurbo 256MB is another great Radeon-series implementation by the company from Hong Kong. There are questions as to whether the cooling solution will appeal to everyone and you can't help but think it is slightly excessive on this card. Having said that, it's quiet and if you've got the room for a two slot cooler you shouldn't look much further than this card.

Looking at prices, the HIS video card is not available in the UK at the moment it seems. However, it carries an SRP of US$149, so it should be reasonably competitive with both the PowerColor and Sapphire cards if Newegg's prices are anything to go by. PowerColor's GameFX X800 GT 256MB is priced at £110 and can be bought from MicroDirect while Sapphire's Hybrid X800 GT 256MB is available from Scan for £112. If HIS' card is priced anywhere near £110-115 then it'll be a worthy of your hard earned cash. In contrast, BFGTech's 6600 GT OC is rather overpriced at £145 on Overclockers and the XFX Extreme Gamer Edition is priced at £117.

We've neglected to really mention the All-In-Wonder X800 GT 128MB because we will be looking at the remaining features that it has over the next few days before making any final decision on that part. However, it is worth noting that all Radeon X800 GT 128MB video cards currently only have a 128-bit memory interface, so performance is not quite in the same league as either the GeForce 6600 GT or the Radeon X800 GT 256MB for that matter.

Final, Final thoughts

The Radeon X800 GT 256MB has excellent speed for its price, the image quality is fantastic and, with the exception of F.E.A.R., it is a faster part than NVIDIA's GeForce 6600 GT. If you are require a card that has a single slot cooling solution, don't look much further than the PowerColor GameFX X800 GT 256MB. However, if you aren't concerned about running a dual-slot cooler, give the HIS X800 GT IceQ II iTurbo 256MB a serious thought, providing that you can buy it in your region. It's another great card to come out of the HIS factory with an overclock to 500/1000MHz guaranteed by the manufacturer.