The GIGABYTE X1800XL is typical of X1800XL video cards on the market today, clocked at 500MHz for the core and 1GHz for the memory, the same as the default clocks for ATI X1800XL cards. With a MSRP of $399, the X1800XL is set to compete with NVIDIA's GEFORCE 7800GT video card. From a features point of view, the ATI X1800XL fully supports Microsoft's DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0. Once ATI releases their X1800 Crossfire cards, we'll see increased performance with two X1800XL or XT cards as well. The X1K series features better dynamic branching in the Pixel Shader, and the ring bus memory architecture.
GIGABYTE's 7800GT outperforms their X1800XL card in the majority of benchmarks. One thing that should be noted is that NVIDIA cards had a bit of shimmering in games when anisotropic filtering is applied. Another point about ATI cards is the fact that I prefer the 2D of the X1800XL to the 2D on the 7800GTX or any 6800 series card. The text is noticeably clearer at 2048x1536 32-bit 60Hz on the X1800XL and a Samsung 19" CRT monitor. At the end of the day, GIGABYTE has done a good job with their X1800XL video card. The performance is on-par with ATI's A-I-W X1800XL video card in nearly every case (both are clocked equally). The X1800XL does dynamic branching better than NVIDIA's video cards and has higher quality Anisotropic Filtering and AntiAliasing options. Personally, I prefer NVIDIA's 7800GT for its speed and performance for the price, but for image quality the ATI solution is better.
