ATI All In Wonder X1800XL Video Card Review :: The Board

ATI decided to design their A-I-W X1800XL with a similar design to their regular X1800XL.The girl on the heatsink is Ruby, star of ATI's various demos starting with the X800 series of cards. The length of the card is similar to NVIDIA's 7800GTX series, with the card nearly reaching the hard drive I had installed on a Samurai case. It did fit, but if you have a cramped case, this card may not be for you. Cooling on the card consists of the standard 13-fin fan found on the X1800XL. The heatsink covers the memory, with the majority of the PCB covered by the heatsink.

Card Shot

Cooling fan

Rear of card

Serial Number

The A-I-W X1800XL is a native PCI Express X16 card. ATI includes a 6-pin power connector on the rear of the card, providing extra power above and beyond the 75W provided by the PCI Express x16 slot. One thing you'll notice right away if you have purchased A-I-W cards in the past is the small unobtrusive can for the Microtune 2121 tuner. Previous A-I-W generations like the A-I-W 9700 Pro have had big bulky tuner cans, requiring a redesign of the PCB or lowering of the 3D performance in order to make the card work.

PCI Express connector

Microtune TV Tuner can

ATI decided to outfit their A-I-W X1800XL card with 256MB of 2.0ns GDDR-3 memory. Clocked at 500MHz, or 1GHz effective, this memory provides the card with 32GB of memory bandwidth. It wasn't that long ago that the highest end card would have 32GB bandwidth. The card has an internal 512-bit ring bus, improving efficiency in applications, though the external bus is still 256-bit.

Right side of card

PCI Express power connector

Left side

Input/Output bracket

Input and output ports on the board are typical of A-I-W cards of the past. On the board is a DVI-I port, a CATV connector to attach the cable or amplified antenna, a FM Radio connection to attach the radio antenna, and an AV I/O port to connect the various inputs and output adapters. ATI usually provides a comprehensive manual to show where each and every connector goes on to the card. Unfortunately, the board I'm reviewing is a press sample, without a manual.

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