ATI X800XT Video Card Review :: The Card

ATI RADEON X800XT
Brand	ATI
Model	RADEON X800XT
Graphics Chip	R423
Graphics Memory Type	DDR3
Memory (MB)	256
Graphics Core Clock (MHz)	500
Memory Clock (MHz)	500
Memory Speed (ns)	2.0
RAMDAC Frequency (MHz)	Dual 400
Active Cooling on Graphics Chip	Yes
Heatsink on Memory	No
Video Capture	Yes
System Health Monitoring	Yes
Ports
Dual Monitor Support	Yes
VGA Out	DVI-D-Sub
Video In and Out	TV-Out
Package and Support
Printed Manual	Yes
Driver CD	Yes
Performance Tool Software	Yes
Major Games	No
Major Software	No
VR Glasses	No
DVD Player Software	ATI MMC
Video Recording Software	ATI MMC

The X800XT PCI Express card is typical of ATI reference boards of the last few years. In fact, the ATI board is almost exactly the same configuration as the 9800XT board that ATI released last year. The fan on the card is a radial 13-fin design that cools the VPU (Visual Processing Unit). The heat sink on the PCB covers about 50% of the board.

The X800XT PCI Express card is based upon ATI's R423 chip. The X800XT is a 16 pipeline design with a core clock speed of 500 MHz. This gives a maximum theoretical fill rate of 8 Gigapixels per second. In many of today's games, this card will likely not be the bottleneck.

Memory is arranged in 8 32MB chips, 4 on the front of the PCB and 4 on the rear of the PCB. The memory chips on the video card are K4J55323QF-GC20. The memory is listed on Samsung's website as 2.0ns memory, giving a maximum theoretical memory speed of 500 MHz. The memory bus on the X800XT is 256-bit memory, giving a maximum memory bandwidth of 32 GB/second. (256/8x500 MHzx2).

All of the current high end ATI and NVIDIA video cards require an external power connector. The AGP cards use a Molex or a floppy power connector, but with the new PCI Express standard, the video cards are using a new 6 pin power connector. There are a few power supply manufacturers that use the new connector, but most people will need a adapter. Connect two Molex connectors to the adapter and the adapter to the video card and you're good to go.

Input/output on this card is typical of the ATI breed of cards since the RADEON days. From left to right on the side bracket is a D-Sub connector, a TV-Out connector and a DVI-I connector. To connect two CRT monitors, simply attach the included DVI to D-Sub adapter and attach the monitor cable. Unfortunately, the X800XT PCI Express card doesn't have two DVI-I connectors, so dual DVI monitors is not a possibility.