Gigabyte X800 Pro Review :: The Card

Box Shot

Gigabyte has always made beautiful boxes for their video cards in my opinion. The box for the X800 Pro is no exception. On the front is a devilish looking character with an attitude. Eye-catching box art is usually the first thing someone notices at a retail store when buying a video card. Also on the front of the box is a Graphics By ATI sticker and a RADEON X800 Graphics Technology sticker. The back of the box has a list of the main features of the board, and a list of the software included with the board.

The card itself is a bit of a departure from the standard ATI reference X800 Pro. The heatsink/fan combination is neon blue and when it's dark in the room you can see the light from the card. Cool effect that is awesome for those with a windowed case. The cooling system covers most of the card including the memory on the front of the PCB.

The memory modules on the card are 8 32 MB Tiny BGA 2.0ns DDR3 modules 4 on the front of the PCB, 4 on the back of the PCB giving a total of 256MB of memory. The maximum memory bandwidth of the X800 Pro is 28.8 GB/second as the card is clocked at 450 MHz (450 MHzx2x256/8=28.8 GB/second). This compares favorably with the last generation of video cards which had a memory bandwidth of 340x2x256/8= 22 GB/second.) Of course it's not as high as the X800XT PE but the card should be quite a bit faster in memory bandwidth limited situations.

One thing that I wish ATI and NVIDIA didn't require was extra power connections for their cards. The X800 Pro has an external Molex connector which is rather common for high-end video cards. One note should be made about the new PCI-Express video cards and power. There's a new 6 prong connector for the PCI-Express cards which most power supplies around do not support. To connect the 6 prong connector you need a splitter which most manufacturers will supply.

IO Connectors

The input output block of the card is the same as found on virtually every NVIDIA/ATI card of the last several years. It consists of a DVI-I port, a VGA port and a TV-Out port. You can put together a dual monitor system with a DVI-I to VGA adapter which Gigabyte included with the packaging. With Hydravision, providing the necessary software for dual monitors it's easy to set up and done.