Conclusion

When we first looked at the 6800 Ultra and X800 series we found there to be a significant gap in performance in favour of ATI, this gap was closed considerably by Nvidia through a series of driver enhancements and also manufacturers deviating from the reference clocks of 400/1100 to higher clocks such as 450/1200. The end result was that in more recent comparisons we have run the 6800Ultra performs on par with the X800 XTPE in a number of tests and only looses out on a few. With the release of the X850XTPE our results show that in recent games ATI has regained a clear performance lead over Nvidia's current competing product.

In our detailed look at the design of the card earlier in the article we noted the difference in cooler/fan/heatsink compared to the X800 XT PE. One question I'm sure many of you will have is "How loud is that thing?". Well we are happy to report that it really isn't noticeably different in volume to the X800 series. Certainly it can theoretically be louder, this is demonstrated when the system is initially powered on and the fan spins at its maximum for a few seconds. However through normal, and extreme, usage we couldn't hear it over the other fans in the system. Even when overclocked considerably past stock speeds and left to loop through 3dmark the fan noise level remained fine. That said, we wouldn’t be surprised if a company like Asus moved away from the reference design cooler to a 1 slot design.

Although the GPU is based on a 0.13micron process which is really being tested by 540mhz core speed we found no stability issues in our testing. The great engineering and stability was further confirmed by the ability to run at 580mhz using auto-overdrive and 621mhz when manually overclocking without issue.

The two main new features the X850 brings, dual DVI and overdrive3 are welcome additions to the Radeon range. As mentioned, dual DVI is something that we have been wanting to see as standard in the Radeon range for a while and finally its happened. Overdrive 3 makes life much easier for the novice overclocker and provides them with some sense of security that they won’t fry their new card and further enhanced performance.

Though it is essentially more of the same from ATI it does deliver exactly what it sets out to do, in all of our tests it outperforms the nearest competitor solution, in most cases by a reasonable margin. Its hard not to be impressed by the X850 XT PE.

Missed our other reviews?

Select 1. Introduction 2. Test System 3. Colin McRae 2005 4. Medal of Honor Pacific Assault 5. Need For Speed Underground 2 6. Rome Total War 7. Tiger Woods 2005 8. Prince of Persia Warrior Within 9. Half Life 2 10. Overclocking 11. Conclusion