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04 May 2006 |
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PowerColor X1800 GTO
Graphics Card |
With today's latest games having bigger and better graphics, it
reminds us of how important the graphics card is as a component in our
systems. If you wish to play the latest and greatest graphic
intensive games with quality, then it might be necessary for you to
consider upgrading your graphics card. Today, we will be reviewing
the PowerColor X1800 GTO graphics card. The X1800 is part of
Canadian company ATI's latest graphics cards series. The GTO label
means that this graphics card has been designed for value in mind so
that it is affordable, while still providing performance of the X1800
series.
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The packaging conveys the same 'carbon fiber' look as their website and
overall theme. The box does a good job in listing all the features
of the product as well as the ability to use two graphics cards at once,
known as their 'Crossfire' technology.
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The product comes with the usual driver CD, a Quick Installation guide,
as well as a CD containing a bunch of CyberLink software. This
includes PowerDVD, PowerProducer, Power2Go, PowerDVD Copy, MusicMatch,
MediaShow, PowerDirector, and PowerBackup. I would recommend
checking out CyberLink's product website for more information about
these specific products. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed
that the product did not come with any additional games.
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With graphics cards becoming more powerful, it is to no surprise that
graphics cards are getting larger. Compared with older graphics
cards, this one is a bit heavier and longer. There is the typical
aluminum heatsink covering the majority of the board with small fan
behind it. There is the recognizable 'Ruby' character holding a
sword on the heatsink.
My specific card had 256MB of GDDR3 memory and is equipped with 12 pixel
shaders. |
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Looking at the side of the card are two DVI ports as well as an SVideo
port. The two DVI ports potentially allow you to hook up two
monitors to the card to allow a dual display. Do not worry if you
don't have a monitor with a DVI port or not. There is an included
DVI to VGA converter to allow you connect any monitor to the card. |
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Looking at the side, we see the inner microfin copper heatsink.
The fan in the heatsink isn't really anything special but just gets the
job done. It would have been nice for PowerColor to use a larger
fan to help dissipate the heat better in the long heatsink. |
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There's not much to see at the back of the card except the brace helping
to hold the heatsink near the core. |
-AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor
-1GB of DDR 3200 Memory
-Hitachi 250GB hard drive
-AsRock 939 Motherboard Dual
-Windows XP Professional with SP2
Fraps was used in certain portions of a game to obtain the following
numbers.
Please keep in mind that these numbers are all relative and are
intended to provide the reader with an idea of the numbers and
performance they may see in the performance of the card. |
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I began with the latest offering from Futuremark. |
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With a CPU intensive game such as Need For Speed Most Wanted, it wasn't
surprising to see the results similar whether AntiAliasing or
Anisotropic filtering was enabled or not. At 1024 x 768
resolution, the gameplay was very fluid and looked quite good with
filtering enabled. As I started increasing the resolution to
1600x1200, the gameplay slowed down noticeably, but was still very
playable. |
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Again, Call of Duty 2 pushed the CPU hard in large firefights.
Although the numbers shown seem to be low if referring to them just as
framerates, the gameplay was very playable. The numbers represent
the intensive areas of the game where there is a lot of smoke, gunfire,
and enemies all on the screen at once. |
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What was once a game where many upgraded their systems in anticipation
of getting the best possible performance, the X1800 GTO makes this game
a thing of the past. I was able to reach well over 80 frames per
second. When increasing the resolution to 1600 x 1200, the card
had no problem maintaining over 60 frames per second. |
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With a retail price of $250, the X1800 GTO is a reasonable price.
On the other hand, the X1800 XT is $50 at a retail price of $300 which
offers significant performance because of 16 pixel shaders as opposed to
the 12 pixel shaders on the GTO. On the other hand, you get a
graphics card in the X1800 series which has support for pixel shader 3.0
and HDR.
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Review by:
richard@digitalreviews.net |
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