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Sapphire Technology is the first manufacturer we've seen to release a graphics card based on ATI's latest R420 core. This card uses the 12 pixel pipeline version, the X800 Pro, although Sapphire will be releasing the 16 pipeline X800 XT Platinum Edition.
The company has deviated little from ATI's reference design, down to the red printed circuit board (PCB), reference heatsink and fan. At first glance you could be forgiven for thinking you were looking at a previous generation Radeon 9800 XT.
The reference design is a compact card that, even with the DDR3 memory, has a low power requirement, needing just one 4pin Molex power connector.
The cooler is smaller on the X800 Pro than on the 9800 XT, as the core runs cooler and doesn't have to double as a cooler for the memory. The X800 doesn't have the cooling plate on the rear, as the 9800 XT does.
With a core speed of 475MHz, a 256bit memory interface and 256MB of DDR3 memory running at 450MHz DDR (900MHz), the Sapphire X800 Pro offers great performance, especially at this price. Its 3Dmark03 score of 8,701 is slower than the reference card, as was Far Cry's 25.43fps (frames per second) at 1,600 x 1,200 with 4x FSAA (full scene anti-aliasing), but it's still impressive.
Sapphire supplies all the cables you need including power, and copies of Tomb Raider, Cyberlink PowerDVD, Tweak (overclocking utility) and a driver CD.
The X800 Pro is excellent value at its full price, but if you shop around you can find it up to £40 cheaper.
Contact: Sapphire
www.sapphiretech.com
Specifications:
- 256MB DDR3 Ram
- 475MHz core
- 450MHz DDR memory (900MHz)
- 12pixel pipelines
See also:
All Graphics Cards
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