ATI AIW Radeon X800XT AGP Video Card Review :: The Board

ATI AIW RADEON X800XT
Brand	ATI
Model	AIW 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	Yes
Video Capture	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	Pinnacle Studio 9.0 ATI version, Matchware Mediator 7.0
VR Glasses	No
DVD Player Software	ATI MMC 9.06
Video Recording Software	ATI MMC 9.06

The first thing I noticed upon opening the box for the X800XT is the new tuner for the television. Previous cards like the A-I-W 9600XT or 9800 Pro had a bulky tuner that took up about 25% of the PCB. The new A-I-W card Tuner is based upon the Microtune MT2050 tuner that is also found on the NVIDIA Personal Cinema products and ATI's TV Wonder Elite product. I am glad ATI went with the smaller tuner box as otherwise; the cooling might have been an issue.

Microtune MT2050 Can

The length of the card is typical of other ATI X800XT AGP cards, slightly longer than the standard AGP slot. One nice thing about ATI cards is that they tend to fit easily into XPC or other Small Form Factor PCs. NVIDIA's high-end cards tend to be tight fits, or not fit at all, since the 6800 Ultra takes up two slots (the AGP and an adjacent PCI slot).

Cooling on the A-I-W X800XT is similar to the standard one as found on other X800XT cards. A 14-fin fan cools the VPU (Visual Processing Unit) and the surrounding heat sink covers the majority of the PCB, including the memory chips. The back memory chips are not covered by heat sinks of any sort. ATI's trademark Minotaur adorns the heat sink with All In Wonder X800 giving the name of the card.

ATI provides the A-I-W X800XT with 8 32MB memory chips totaling 256MB. The memory chips on this board are Samsung K4J55323QF-GC20. Listed as 500MHz DDR on their site, which is the memory clock speed of the A-I-W X800XT. The X800XT has a 256-bit memory bus giving a total of approximately 32GB of memory bandwidth (256-bit x 500MHz x 2/8).

Rear

I/O ports

Input Output on the card deviates from previous A-I-W cards. In a tradition started by the A-I-W X600 Pro on the PCI Express side, ATI included a DVI-I connector and a D-Sub connector on a A-I-W card. This is due to the decreased size of the tuner giving room for both to be on the PCB. In previous cards like the A-I-W 9600XT, the dual connectors would be on a dongle, or only a single connection would be present. Dual CRT monitors can be done with a DVI-I to D-Sub adapter included with the packaging. The other connection is an input/output port to connect the I/O cables. One interesting change to the board is the reversion to the floppy drive connector. This is used for extra power on the system as opposed to the Molex connector found on other X800 cards.

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