PowerColor X850 XT Platinum Edition

The X850 is ATI's new power horse. It's no table turner, but it manages to whip out the deck in terms of performance.

The X850 is ATI's new power horse. It's no table turner, but it manages to whip out the deck in terms of performance. The PE edition of the chip has the same pixel pipelines, vertex pipelines, Shader Model support and extra-slot-stealing heatsink design as the X850 XT. The difference between the two is a bump in clock speeds. What we have on the PE is a 20MHz bump in core speed to 540MHz with a 100MHz effective upping in memory speed to 1180MHz.

With similar worryingly insane heat levels as the XT, the PE has the guts to push the X850 even further, producing 4165 3DMarks in 3DMark05, 91.21fps in our FarCry Bunker test and 54.9fps in Doom 3 both in high quality at 1280 x 1024, 4AA and 4AF. The PE gives the 6800 Ultra a measurable kick in the, albeit, non-SLI pants.

In our review of the X850 XT, James managed to pull a pretty decent overclock, pushing it exactly on par with the default speeds of the PE. Naturally we weren't expecting much of a jump for this card, however it managed to peak at a respectable 575MHz core and 605MHz (1210MHz effective) memory frequency. No significant feat, but nothing to blow a boogie at.

Even when you factor in our overclocks, with a 9.5% increase in core and almost an 11% increase in memory frequency when compared with a default clocked X850 XT, the significantly higher asking price may deter some in choosing this over the other. If SLI isn't your thing and you're after a beast, this blistering card brings the cows.