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PowerColor X800GTO16


Date
: 01/31/06 – 12:55:32 AM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: PowerColor

Price
: $184 (Newegg)

In under ten years, PowerColor has built itself a very good reputation in the hardware market. They have always positioned their equipment as being powerful, reliable and cost effective. So, if they can make me a product that's cheap and will let me overclock it to something better then they will definitely be getting my hard earned green backs.

The PowerColor X800GTO16 fits into this category of being powerful and cost effective. It utilizes the R430 core, but has 16 pipelines. In fact, it's very similar to the X800XL but costs a few pretty pennies less. Let's see how PowerColor packages this kit for you.

Page 2 : Package

The X800GTO16 comes in a plastic wrapped box. It's very simple and only has a bit of flash to go with the name.

On the back of the box are a few features the X800GTO16 boasts.

Below is a large copy of the features on the back of the box.

On the sides of the box we have additional information for you to read. We'll start with the system requirements, software needed and the monitor requirements.

Another edge of the box shows the connectors and displays the X800GTO16 supports.

A list of the contents is provided for your reference. With the box being wrapped in plastic, it is unlikely you will miss anything. However, it is an excellent idea to check and contact your retailer if you are missing things.

The last side of the box, and one we'll use to wrap up this page, resembles the front of the package.

Let's move on to the specifications.

Page 3 : Specifications

The PowerColor X800GTO16 specifications can no longer be found on their website as of this moment, however when I last saw them they were the following:

A large number of features can be taken from the same page:

On the specifications page it actually read 12 pipelines when there are really 16. Because the R430 is technically a 12 pipeline design, ATi has made PowerColor change the specifications to reflect that. Now the specifications can't even be found….

Page 4 : Package Contents

Opening up the package reveals the Pro Pack software package and the Quick Installation guide. The new retail packages will also feature a manual for one of the games included. Beneath these two items and seperated by a cardboard lid sits the X800GTO16.

Stored in another isolated compartment are the accessories to go with this card.

Teamed up with the quick installation guide, here's a look at the accessories I received.

With the two DVI dongles, we won't be seeing any RGB connectors. This basically means you can use two digital monitors as opposed to one digital and one analog that some video cards still use. To the right of the monitor we have the TV output cables; this includes HDTV output, S-Video output and Composite output. To the bottom left is a 4-pin molex to PCI-E power cable converter. I want to make it known that the new retail X800GTO16 no longer requires the additional power source.

Cracking open the Pro Pack, we see the ATI Radeon drivers, a CyberLink DVD solution CD and the Pacific Fighters game.

It's finally time to pull out the X800GTO16 from the anti-static bag. Taking a look at the expansion panel, we get a clear look at the two DVI connectors flanking the video output port.

Pulling out the card and setting it aside, we see great resemblance to the X800XL that PowerColor also offers.

Turning the card over, there are four exposed memory chips and the retention system for the stock cooler.

You can see that these are Samsung's DDR3 2.0 ns memory ICs. We should theoretically get 1000 MHz out of them, but check out this little warning Samsung has when I searched the part number on Google.

Here is the product specification page.

Here are some relevant specifications:

While we will aim for at least 1000 MHz on the memory as per the specs, this is
Overclockers Online
, so I'm expecting more!

Moving onwards, we will remove the heatsink and get to the processor. The heatsink is held down by a spring loaded nut and bolt system; this is incredibly effective and eliminates the possibilities of applying too much pressure onto the die.

The base of the heatsink has various levels so that it rests on top of components instead of crushing them and so that it makes good contact with the die. The portion with the thermal paste is ever so slightly raised, and means you must ensure the cooler is properly aligned otherwise the processor may not get sufficient cooling or may get damaged.

The 70mm fan on the cooler is made by a company called T&T (Tranyong).

This 70mm fan is apparently the high speed version that uses one ball and one sleeve bearing. We should get about 26.78 CFM with a noise level of 38.0 dBA while the fan rotates at 4400 RPM.

We now have the exposed video card and can get a much better look at the core.

Page 5 : Installation and Overclocking

It's not very difficult to install a video card, all you need to have is a PCI-E X16 slot to take full advantage of the video cards power. With this video card, you don't even have to supply additional power via a PCI-E power connector.

The overall profile of the card is not very high, so installing a PCI-E X1 device will pose no problems for you.

The card is not very long and even on a very narrow Albatron K8SLI, you will not run into any significant problems regarding blocked SATA ports. While every motherboard is different, I'm confident that you won't run into any capacitors or block access to any DIMM slots.

With the video card installed, I used the Catalyst 5.13 modded drivers. This will allow me to do some overclocking using ATiTool. To overclock this card, I first let the
Find Max Core
operation run for 3 hrs. Next I used the
Find Max Memory
for another three hours. Setting those in place, I let it scan for artifacts over night, 7 hrs. With the video card overclocked, I once again let the Find Max Core operation run for another couple hours and the same with Find Max Memory. Once those were done, another 8 hrs of artifact scanning was completed before I dropped the clock speed for both the core and memory down by 5 Mhz to ensure 100% stability. The final result of all this was a new core speed of 430 Mhz and a new memory speed of 535. The default speed is 400/490. While not a huge gain, even a small one is a free performance boost. We'll check this out starting on the next page.

Page 6 : Test Machine

Before we get into the formal benchmarks, I'll use this page to go over the system and the software we'll be using.

The suite of synthetic software used included FutureMark 3DMark2001se, 3DMark2003 and 3DMark 2005 and SpecViewPerf8.1. For games, I put the card through HalfLife 2, Doom III and Battlefield II with various resolutions and combinations of 4xAA, 6xAA, 8xAF and 16xAF.

Each application is executed three times and the final result is the average of the runs. During the performance evaluations, I did not see anything more than a 1-2% deviation in the results.

Let's Begin!

Page 7 : Synthetic Performance

Our FutureMark suite of software should give us a good gauge of how the card will perform on DirectX7, DirectX8 and DirectX9 based applications.

We can see the immediate affects of overclocking the video card with the 300 point gain in 3DMark 2005! It's obvious that our puny X700 Bravo will not be a worthy competitor against the X800GTO16. If we flip over to Jody's review of the HIS X800 GTO IceQ II, our X800GTO16 beats it at stock settings; keep in mind his system is overclocked far more than mine. It's only when his X800GTO is overclocked to 490/600 does it pull ahead. What can we conclude from this? The 16 pipelines are definitely beneficial and we'll see if this trend continues on with the remaining benchmarks.

Our other synthetic benchmark is SpecViewPerf8.1.

SpecViewPerf will test the video card's OpenGL performance. Most of these applications tested in SpecView fall in the category of animation software or engineering software. The performance seems to be very dependant on the overall system performance as we only see a minute gain on the X800GTO16 compared to the X700 Bravo.

Let's move onto the games!

Page 8 : Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 is not an old game and remains very popular. Behind the game is the Source engine that Valve continues to improve upon and license to other developers. The engine in it's shipped state is very dependant on the overall system performance (particularly on the CPU) and we can see this as we look at the frame rate results.

At the lower resolutions, we can see that the performance is limited by the processor. As we increase the resolution up to 1600*1200 and add features such as Anti-Aliasing or Anisotropic Filtering, more of the work is left up to the video card and we can see the frame rates slowly drop. From the numbers, the X800GTO16 isn't doing too bad. We'll get a better look at the performance with Doom III and BattleField 2 next.

Page 9 : Doom III

DOOM is a classic game and the latest DOOM III uses an OpenGL engine and is quite dependent on the processing power of your video card. The X800GTO16 starts off with frame rates in the low eighties and finishes off the high resolution 16xAF and 6xAA benchmarks with frames in the mid-teens.

Page 10 : BattleField 2

The last game we will be looking at is BattleField 2. This is a very new game and one I quite enjoy playing. EA Games has churned up a great title and the X800GTO16 has no problems keeping up with it, often with frame rates close to or above 100 FPS in resolutions under 1600*1200.

Page 11 : Conclusion

The X800GTO16 did not disappoint me in any of our benchmarks. On the side, I have also used this video card to play movies, edit pictures and surf the net. Never a problem. The only thing it's missing is VIVO.

A few people have reported very similar overclocks as to what I achieved and, let's be honest, it's not exactly an impressive gain. If you bought some quality cooling equipment, you might be able to reach higher speeds as I did hit much higher speeds before running into instability, most likely from heat problems. The real problem though is the fact that the card uses an R430 core and not an R480. Needless to say, you get what you pay for – in this case it's a rather high performance to cost ratio.

If you're looking for a cheap upgrade and don't have intention on using either CrossFire or SLI, the X800GTO16 is not a bad investment for anyone in the market not looking for bragging rights.

Advantages

Good performance
Low cost
16 pipelines gives great performance boost
No additional power required

Disadvantages

R430 is not as overclockable as R480
No VIVO

Overclockers Online would like to thank PowerColor for providing the sample.