The weight of platinum is defined by Atomic Mass Units. The rate of platinum is defined by our own Atomic Mass Unit, John Gillooly.
With the number of shader intensive games about to balloon, the new generation of graphics hardware is delivering a performance increase well above that expected through pure clock speed gains. The number of shading pipelines is becoming more and more important, and with 16 pixel pipelines the RADEON X800 XT core is a beastly offering indeed.
This Platinum Edition model of the X800 XT runs at higher clock speeds than the standard model, adding a few extra frames to what is already industry leading performance. In our extensive graphics card testing this month (see Head to Head, page 26) it constantly swaps the performance lead with NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 Ultra card while maintaining a lead over the RADEON X800 XT, which differs only in clock speed.
This clock speed difference is, however, slight. The core of the Platinum Edition card is clocked at 520MHz, a mere 20MHz faster than the vanilla XT card, while the memory is an effective 120MHz faster (60MHz in actual speed). It also only supports shader model 2.0, which is not a huge downside to the product, but it will probably become a factor a year or two down the track.
With the majority of cards now on offer exhibiting few differences between the actual hardware, PowerColor has gone all out with its bundling of this card. It not only comes in a nifty backpack (complete with notebook pouch), into which is stuffed not just the card but also copies of Hitman: Contracts and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and one of those soon-to-be actually useful Half-Life 2 vouchers.
If bleeding edge performance is really what you hanker for then the PowerColor X800 XT Platinum edition is a tempting offering, even if the pricetag is heart stoppingly high. It combines the performance of ATI's flagship core with a bundle that helps it differentiate itself from the pack.
Sure, the Quake 2 engine based Counter-Strike: Condition Zero isn't exactly a game that will blow you away, or even touch the sides of the X800 XT's pipelines, but the other titles are very solid offerings indeed.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012