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Sapphire Hybrid X700 Pro 256MB PCI-E


Date
: 07/26/05 – 04:43:58 PM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: Sapphire Tech

Price
: $165 (newegg.com)

For over 10 years, Sapphire Tech has been supplying the computing industry with products out of their ISO9001, ISO14001, and ISO18001 certified factories. They have been producing quality ATI based graphics boards since the middle of 2001 and are the major manufacturer to top ten tier 1 OEMs for ATI based boards. With a claimed 1.8 million board monthly capacity it is no wonder Sapphire Tech is a recognized worldwide leading producer of ATI powered graphics cards. Today we will look at their PCIe Hybrid X700PRO video card.

Sporting 256MB of 128-bit GDDR3 memory, this X700pro chipset based board fully supports DirectX 9.0 and OpenGL. With double the pixel pipelines of the Sapphires X700 entry, the performance of this fairly mainstream chipset will hopefully satisfy the average gamers needs and requirements of todays games. We will get the complete specifications and conduct a full range of benchmarks to see where this card stands. For now, we'll have a look at the very compact packaging.

Page 2 : Package

As stated, there is not a lot to the package of this video card. I for one agree with the small box as opposed to some of the massive and empty boxes other manufacturers hide their video cards in. There is no view through the box to see the actual card and unfortunately the package did not come in a cellophane wrap to protect it from intruders prior to purchase.

The box itself is quite attractive and eye catching with the shiny finish and metallic-like printing used throughout. The front contains the minimum you would expect with a couple of Sapphire and ATIs logos, but not much else. I would think the downside of the small package is the lack of details. This is evident when we have a look at the back.

The backside is printed with a rear view of the front. This is your typical scantily clad alien-like female we see oh so often in packaging aimed at the 14-28 year old males that constitutes the majority of the gaming community. There is some basic info describing the features of the card, which we will cover in the next section, as well as a small blurb with some more specifications. We also see Sapphires international stature as the contents inside the box are listed in 5 different languages.

System requirements and video connections are on the left of the side panel of the box. All provided information is very basic and, despite not going in-depth of the cards capabilities with a long list of specifications, the package does cover the important points any potential buyer might want to see.

The opposite side of the box provides logos for some of the features and its ISO certificates. You will notice damage to the box that had occurred in delivery. It actually looks like the box was squished, which I would chalk up to retailer mishandling, but it was only superficial. The interior box of the packaging provided ample protection, as you will see in the contents section. Complete specifications of the card will be listed on the next page and all information provided will be obtained from the easy to navigate and informative Sapphire website.

Page 3 : Specifications

As stated in the previous section, the following specifications were taken from the Sapphire website…

and, what Sapphire says about this particular card in their own words…

Now, let's open the box up and see what is inside…hopefully a video card somewhere.

Page 4 : Package Contents

At first glance upon opening the box, my hopes appeared to have dashed as the video card is not immediately evident. It is, however, wrapped in a sealed anti-static bag hidden and secured, in the top flap that is raised to gain entry to the box. All provided accessories and the single cd are neatly placed in the bottom of the box with plenty of room to breathe, but held firmly in place with the top flap closed.

The design of the interior box is very well thought out and, as we fortunately found out, protects the contents quite well. All the damage to the package sustained is definitely superficial and the interior box appears un-touched.

Visually evident above, there is very little that comes with the video card, but nothing missing that would require a further purchase to fully utilize the features the card offers.

Mentioned previously, there is a single CD with the drivers and the ATI Catalyst software suite. Above, we can see everything spread out; this includes one DVI>VGA adapter, even a double CRT setup can be used right out of the box. There is also a very long S-Video cable for output to a TV monitor. A lengthy double male ended standard video cable is also provided for those without S-Video inputs on an older television. To minimize outputs on the card, an adapter to plug into the S-Video output is included for use with the video output cable. Last, and certainly not least, is the final accessory in the box – the HDTV leads for use with a component video cable to connect to a component input device.

It is clear Sapphire is not intent on filling the box with a bunch of promotional flyers, pamphlets, or other useless paperwork. It would have been nice to see some sort of paper manual or at least a diagram for what all the cables and connections were for. That said, the included CD does have a very good PDF manual on it complete with a table of contents that covers all aspects of the card. Some people will still prefer paper of some sort.

My first impression of the video card is that it is very visually striking. The bright red PCB contrasting with the vibrant blue heatsink/fan and blue memory heatsinks will look very nice in anyones case.

The backside shows us the rest of the memory and corresponding blue heatsinks.

The first drawback to the card can be viewed here, one DVI and one VGA connection. Those with dual LCDs will not want to purchase an expensive VGA>DVI connector and will be turned off by this. Dual DVI should and will be the standard soon enough, it would have been nice to see Sapphire adopt that standard ahead of time. Especially considering the cost and ease of DVI>VGA adapters. In the middle you can see the Video/S-Video/HDTV connection.

Before looking at what is under the heatsinks on the modules, I thought I would give you a close-up since they really are pleasant to look at. You will see on installation that the color and appearance of the heatsinks compliment my Zalman northbridge cooler quite nicely.

If you look closely, you will see Infineon is the maker of the memory on this board. The writing is somewhat faint as the adhesive used to mate the module and heatsink decided to take a small piece on removal. A quick search on the Infineon site brings back pleasing information about the modules used. Rated for 500MHz, these modules will give us plenty of headroom for overclocking, above the advertised and default speed of 430MHz. After all, you know how we like to overclock here at Overclockers Online. They are rated for 2.0V so it will be interesting to see if I will be able to get 500MHz, or more, out of them. According to Everest these modules are running at timings of 6-8-6-12. No further data could be found on the Infineon site about these modules.

A quick look underneath shows a fairly decent finish considering what they are being asked to do. Decent enough that the heatsinks will actually help cool the modules with a little thermal compound.

Moving forward, removal of the main heatsink/fan unit shows the ATI X700 chip underneath. I won't bother typing out what is on the chip as it is clearly visible in the photo.

Nothing fancy here folks. Your basic of the basic heatsinks and fan are being used on this board. Being small and fairly lightweight, I will not be expecting a lot out of the main chip as far as overclocking goes. I imagine temperatures will be the deciding factor in what we can squeeze out of this setup. You can see below that the finish on the heatsink is not bad, it has been sanded and is smooth, but no polishing appears to have been done.

For re-installation I will be using Artic Silver 5, which will help draw a bit more heat out of the chip and allow the heatsink/fan to maximize its effectiveness. Only time will tell how well the combo will work. Now lets install this fine looking number and see what we can get out of it before it gets too hot.

Page 5 : Installation & Overclocking

First thing is first, you will need a PCI-E slot to install this card, otherwise it will just be a very poor paperweight as the card itself is not heavy at all. If you have a PCI-E card in the slot, you will first need to remove that from your system. This card does not have a large HS/Fan combo or some elaborate heat pipe setup wrapping around to the top side. This means that it will not interfere with parallel PCI-E slots or PCI slots anymore so than any other video card on the market with an active cooling system. This also facilitates easy installation with nothing more than a screw to secure it to the case frame or a screw less clip that some cases are equipped with.

As you can see, the card fits like it should, and on the A8V-E deluxe, it does not interfere with anything around it. The 1X PCI-E slot just below it might not be useable but there is no way around that as any card on the market will block this slot. The design of your motherboard might differ but if the card does get in the way of anything else, that is going to be more a problem with the motherboard design and not the video card.

The lack of any software bundled with the video card gave us the easy decision to use ATI Tool for the overclocking. To keep things simple, I just let 'Find Max Mem' run for a good 3 hours, noted the speed and then let 'Find Max Core' run for the same length of time. I lowered the given values by 5MHz each and let the 'Scan For Artifacts' run overnight (approximately 7-8 hours) for a very stable overclock of the video card.

The results, albeit a little disappointing, were somewhat expected given the limited cooling provided. A final core speed of
473.73MHz
and memory of
483.55MHz
(for an effective speed of 967MHz) is what we ended up with. This is an increase of approximately 8.5% over the stock speeds of 425/432. The memory being my biggest disappointment, the memory modules are rated for 500MHz, I was expecting no less. Perhaps the removal of the modules heatsinks and replacing the adhesive used with Artic Silver 5 or another high quality thermal compound would allow us to run them faster.

At the overclocked speeds, idle temps were at 38C/36C (core/ambient), this with the fan running at 44% of its capacity. At this speed, the fan is not noticeable over the stock AMD HS/Fan combo that turns at 3300RPM. The fan is actually almost silent up to 65% where it begins to emit whine typical of such a small fan. During all benchmarks and testing, the fan ventured north of the 65% mark only a few times while maintaining a core temp of 62C or lower. This means that temperature might not have been the deciding factor in the overclock and more the capability of the core.

With our stable overclock values found, it is time to put the card to work and see what the benchmarks have to say about its performance.

Page 6 : Testing Guidelines

For the testing the following setup was used…

We decided to pit the x700PRO up against the higher priced and higher powered 6600GTOC to see how the X700PRO chipset would perform against an equally aged chipset in the 6600. The standard battery of benchmarks ran include 3DMark 03, 3DMark 05, Spec View Perf 8.1, and AquaMark 3 on the synthetic side. For gaming benchmarks we ran UT 2004, Far Cry, Doom III, Halo and Half-Life 2.

The synthetic benchmarks where ran manually with the default settings while the gaming benchmarks where ran with BenchEmAll on the 4 various screen resolutions using the Max Details option. Each test was run 3 times with an average of the 3 being plotted in the graphs on the following pages. A reboot of the system in-between each benchmark ensured accurate results. Lets have a look at the outcome…

Page 7 : Synthetic Performance

We start with the standard in video card benchmarking from Futuremark, 3DMark 03 and 3DMark 05.

We can see early indications that the higher priced card will outperform the under powered X700Pro. In both versions of 3DMark, the 6600 pulls ahead; the 05 version showing a fairly large gap of over 1000 points while the gap shrinks in the 3DMark 03. Clearly the extra 128MB the X700Pro has onboard is not enough to make up for the higher clock frequencies, both core and memory, of the 6600 in these tests.

The SpecPerf 8.1 tests are somewhat interesting. These tests are based on the OpenGL rendering capabilities of the video cards. You will notice in a couple tests that the X700Pro surges ahead while some tests show a clear advantage to the 6600GTOC. I am assuming these erratic results are due to the different driver sets used by the two cards and the extra memory on the X700Pro. It really is a toss-up as there is no clear cut winner with both cards taking charge in various tests and competing neck and neck in others.

For the last in our synthetic testing we used another popular benchmark that could be considered a standard as well. Aquamark3 comes up with separate scores for both the CPU and GPU then combines them into an overall score for easy comparison. We can see the gap is not as large between the two cards as the 3DMark benchmarks, but the 6600GTOC still outperforms the X700Pro. The X700Pro overclocked does manage to edge out the 6600GTOC in its stock form despite the lower frequencies of the core and memory.

Lets now move on to the gaming benchmarks where we will see the real world performance of each card.

Page 8 : Gaming Performance

First up, the very popular game, Unreal Tournament 04…

We see both cards performing quite well, keeping the FPS above 100 right up to 1600×1200, with the stock X700Pro just dipping below that. The 6600GTOC clearly has the edge here as it pulls ahead at the 1280×1024 mark by a solid 20FPS. No doubt the higher frequencies showing their face as the work gets tougher, clearly a neck and neck race up until that point.

Now we'll look at Far Cry…

Same story, different game. We see once again that as the work required goes up, the 6600GTOC starts to pull ahead. The higher resolutions require more processing power and the X700Pro starts to drop off at a greater rate than the 6600GTOC once we hit that 1280×1024 resolution.

Moving on, we will witness the first total KO by the 6600GTOC in Doom III…

This is a no doubter. If you had your money riding on the X700Pro in this fight, then you should definitely stay away from Vegas lest you wish to ride the bus home broke and disheartened. From the beginning to the end the 6600GTOC walks all over the X700Pro. The demands of Doom III are just too much for the X700 chipset as it slides a good 20+ FPS behind the 6600. Drivers and chipset design play a role here as Nvidia is just better suited for running Doom III.

More of the same as above seen here in Halo. As the resolution hits the 1280×1024 mark the gap widens once again. Up until that point however, they dance at the same tempo.

In the last benchmark we see the first victory for the X700Pro…

This is almost expected as Half-Life 2 is more of a tax on the CPU than the GPU. The X700Pro manages to eke out the win, even at the highest resolution tested of 1600×1200. The margin of victory is quite minimal though.

Let us turn on Anisotropic Filtering and see how the benchmarks adjust.

Page 9 : Gaming Performance 8xAF

We'll skip the chit-chat and jump into the results.

Unreal Tournament 2004

Far Cry

Doom III

Halo

Half-Life 2

There isn't really a whole lot to report that is any different from the first page of benchmarks. The 6600GTOC tends to walk away once past 1024×768 but the margins are the same as they were without AF turned on.

Page 10 : Game Performance 4xAA

Things get interesting on this page…

While both cards take a definite hit in performance with Anti-Aliasing turned on, you will notice right away that at 1600×1200 we have a tie game in double overtime. The extra memory allows the X700Pro to catch right up and completely remove the performance difference seen earlier by the 6600GTOC.

Once again we see how close these two cards become with AA turned on. It is almost uncanny how the OC and stock results are almost identical at all resolutions.

Seeing as Doom III does not support AA as there really is no change here. Any differences in the results are simply the minimal variation associated with any benchmark.

What is interesting about the Halo results is that the 6600GTOC shows absolutely no change from the results without AA turned on. I used the Nvidia software settings to enable AA and am assuming that the Nvidia drivers were unable to force the use of AA with Halo, thus giving the same results that we saw without AA.

As with the previous pages of benchmarks, the X700Pro shows the advantage when running Half-Life 2. With AA turned on that advantage is increased to a full 10 FPS between the OCd results at 1600×1200.

Page 11 : Game Performance 8xAF 4xAA

The last set of benchmarks run were with 8X AF and 4X AA turned on. We should expect similar results based on what we saw with the AA turned on by itself.

Unreal Tournament 2004

Far Cry

Doom III

Halo

Half-Life 2

As you can see, our suspicions were correct and there is not alot of changes from the AA results on the previous page.

Page 12 : Conclusion

After a lot of photos, benchmarks, and information, we can see that the Sapphire X700Pro is near the top of the X700 pile. Having matched this card up against the more powerful and expensive BFG 6600GTOC, it provided some interesting results. Despite the core and memory running at almost 100MHz slower both overclocked and at stock speeds, the Sapphire X700Pro hung in there in all the games benchmarked with the exception of Doom III. In fact at higher resolutions with Anti-Aliasing turned on, the X700Pro pulled ahead and showed up the 6600GTOC. Sure the extra memory is what can be attributed to that, but you will have to move up to the 6800 series from BFG to get a 256MB card and that price difference is an exponential one. Not to mention a completely different and more powerful chipset than the 6600.

I was pleased with the performance but disappointed in the overclocking abilities of the X700Pro. The memory modules would not run in a stable environment at the rated speeds from the manufacturer and the core only overclocked 50MHz. Although that is not a terrible result, it would be interesting to see if a heftier cooling solution would actually allow a higher core frequency. It is very clear that Sapphire was interested in putting together a solid package while keeping the price very low. The lack of software and elaborate cooler provide backing for this statement. Personally I like this approach and feel I am getting more for my money in a product packaged such as the X700Pro was.

Overall, you shouldn't expect amazing results with an X700 chipset powered video card. The performance for a hard-core gamer would be mediocre as newer chipsets and technologies have increased the expectations of what a video card should do. With SLI, and Crossfire in the works, this card looks basic. That said, I feel this card is quite capable of running any game with very high detail up to and including 1280×1024. Lets face it, you will not be able to play games at 1600×1200 and AA turned on with any card in the $150 price range. For the average gamer or advanced computer user, I would highly recommend this offering from Sapphire Tech. The picture quality in 2D at 1600×1200 is top notch. I work a lot in Photoshop and with manipulating high resolution images from a professional digital SLR and have no complaints of the quality and color representation provided. This card will most definitely be staying in my machine for some time to come.

Advantages:

Reasonable price of $165
Not paying for extra content you won't use
Visually appealing
Quiet stock cooling

Disadvantages:

Lack of software
Stock cooling hinders overclocking potential