512MB Sapphire Radeon X800 XL

Amidst all the excitement of the next-gen cards about to hit the shelves, there are still some decent happenings back in current-ville. We’ve all been waiting for a doubling in memory to happen, and it finally has occurred. Here we have a 512MB video card, and in the form of the new X800 XL.

Amidst all the excitement of the next-gen cards about to hit the shelves, there are still some decent happenings back in current-ville. We’ve all been waiting for a doubling in memory to happen, and it finally has occurred. Here we have a 512MB video card, and in the form of the new X800 XL.

The X800 XL is ATI’s late safety net to the unpopularity and inherent low performance of the X800 chip. Aside from an extra two letters banged on the end as a suffix, the X800 XL has an additional four pixel pipelines switched on, bringing the count up to 16 - the same as the X850, however the frequencies have been dropped so as not to completely nullify the existence of the powerful X850 range. Naturally this really boosts the X800 and has it matching the 6800GT in terms of performance numbers - exactly where ATI wanted it. Normally these cards come with 256MB, though.

There are differences, however, between the standard RADEON X800 XL 256MB card and this Sapphire X800 XL 512MB card, apart from the inherently obvious. Firstly, the 512MB card requires the new 6-pin video power connector, most likely to power the additional RAM and generate a good dose more heat. As such, on top of that, it also uses a dual-expansion-slot profile for improved cooling, whereas the 256MB edition uses the much smaller single-slot profile, and with some RAM sinks on the rear memory modules.

There are long-running discussions on whether doubling memory really helps the performance of a card. If the application that uses the video card’s memory isn’t loading nearly as many textures, it simply doesn’t have a need for the additional memory. Thus, there should be no performance increase simply because the application doesn’t use it.

Slowly, however, there are games hitting the shelves that can apparently make use of these awesome increases in memory.

There are already existing means of doubling your video memory, however this usually comes in the form of SLI. The difference between 512MB on this and successive cards with 512MB on the one PCB is that the total memory bank is available to the graphics chip. In SLI, the memory is not shared between the two cards/cores, so the performance jump isn’t as big as it could theoretically be, as there is a lot of cross-repetitive information. Slapping it into our Athlon 3500+ test bed shows that this card isn’t ready to perform at its peak just yet - just as we expected. Many have found that even with 256MB cards, selecting Ultra Quality in Doom 3 increases the framerate a notch.

Considering Doom 3’s disappointing texture size, there’s simply nothing left to fill memory with, beyond 256MB. As you can see, there was actually a minor reduction in frames outage. What’s happening here is quite possibly a tiny amount of latency associated with having to address twice as much memory. Then again, it could also be due to the usual mild alteration factor between tests, even if using the exact same card.

What was startlingly surprising, however, was the slow down that exhibited itself quite remarkably in 3DMark05. We’re just as stumped as you on this one.

As more of these babies come out and more games grow to support larger and more expansive textures, much unlike Doom 3, 512MB will quickly become the new enthusiast standard, just as 256MB did before it. That aside, Sapphire have themselves a neat card that isn’t too loud, performs beautifully and packs on VIVO functionality.

Disregarding the performance results, get this card if you’re going through a future-proofing stage. Otherwise, you might wish to play the waiting game and see what else crops up. Overall, a top package.