Radeon X800 GT Roundup

PowerColor GameFX X800 GT 256MB

Default Core Speed: 473MHz
Default Memory Speed: 986MHz

PowerColor's Radeon X800 GT shares a lot of similarities with the company's Radeon X800 XL PCB and cooling solution. There are a couple of slight differences along the top of the PCB, close to the upper most DVI port. The capacitors are arranged in a slightly different manner, but the rest of the PCB is about the same.

As we mentioned in our introduction, there are two different GPU's being used in board partner's Radeon X800 GT designs. In this case, PowerColor have opted to buy a large bulk of ATI's cast-off R480 cores and they have said that they will only use the R480 cores on their X800 GT solutions. There are no amazing advantages to using either GPU, but it is possible that the R480 cores may result in much better overclocking.

The cooler is made from aluminium and utilises a 60mm fan which operates at a low speed, blowing air into the chassis much like both ATI and NVIDIA's recent cooling solutions. The fan is adjustable speed, but we did not experience any instances where the card needed to operate with the fan running at its full speed - it remained silent throughout our testing period.

There's no requirement for a 6-pin supplementary power connector as the card is able to draw all of its required power through the PCI-Express interconnect.

The back plate features Dual DVI ports and a TV-Out connector meaning that TFT owners will benefit from being able to use the digital connectors on their panels. Unfortunately though, the bundle only has a single DVI to VGA converter, meaning that CRT owners will not be able to use more than one monitor with this card if they don't already have a DVI to VGA converter from an older video card purchase.

There's a single game included in the bundle, Pacific Fighters, which is a reasonably recent title. Along with that there's a driver CD, quick install guide, and Cyberlink DVD Selection that includes PowerDirector SE, MediaShow SE, PowerDVD, PowerProducer DVD and Power2Go. Finally, there's composite and S-Video cables available for additional connectivity to television sets.