Is doubling onboard video RAM a quick performance boost or the next natural step for graphics cards?
For serious gamers and performance junkies, there are few upgrade paths more beneficial 1 than more RAM or an updated graphics card.
Sapphire has come to the party with a bit of ■L both, offering its first 512MB product. K This card takes ATI’s current generation X800 architecture and adds 256MB of video K, memory, allowing for greater storage of Ml textures on the card. Memory-intensive tasks such as calculating shadows, geometry, normal mapping compression and high dynamic range lighting will all benefit from a larger memory footprint.
The X800 XL was strapped to a testbed consisting of a Pentium 4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition and 1GB of DDR2 memory. The card churned out an impressive 5,059 under 3DMark05 in the default 1,024 x 768 resolution tests, only 600 points shy of the more expensive Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra card used for comparison.
The gap narrowed further during 1,600 x 1,200 tests with four samples of anti-aliasing enabled, showing the X800’s prowess in memory-intensive apps. The card’s lowest average frame rate was 86.02 in the 1,600 x 1,200 4x anti-aliasing Half-Life 2 tests, and 56.7fps in Splinter Cell with default 1,024 resolution and 4x anti-aliasing. Framerates like this provide more than enough oomph to enjoy the latest games, even with all the eye candy enabled.
Sapphire has included a swag of cables, overclocking software, and CyberLink’s PowerDVD 5 and PowerDirector 3DE. The review unit also came with Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, but by the time you read this, Sapphire cards should be bundled with a disc containing several different games. Buying the card lets you play each of the games for an hour before using the supplied activation code to choose the game you want and register the full version.
While the card features two DVI ports for monitor connection, it only has one DVI to D-sub adaptor, meaning users with two CRTs will need to find a second one for dual-screen setups.
Sapphire has also thrown away the ATI reference cooler design in favour of an almost silent Zalman fan. The fan’s size means it’s a two-slot card, eating an extra one of your backplane ports and possibly covering a PCI Express 1x or PCI slot in the process.
The X800 has the performance to make it an impressive upgrade for many gamers, but the high pricetag may be enough for you to consider buying top-of-the-range at a slightly higher cost.

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