ATI Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB

Reviews: Hardware

Motherboards | Power Supplies | Memory | Systems | Video Cards

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Kurtis Kronk
Brian
ATI
May. 8, 2006

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Black & White 2

Black & White 2 may not be a hugely successful PC game in terms of sales, but it does an amazing job of stressing video cards. Since the game does not offer the ability to record timedemos, and since it would be very hard to reproduce a very similar "run' in real game-play time and time again, we resorted to using the game's opening sequence where the Gods fly to the island and the Aztecs attack in conjunction with FRAPS to benchmark. This sequence is rendered in real-time, of course, which is why we're able to benchmark with it. The in-game video settings are all set to High under Custom, and the resolution and AA/AF settings are set as needed. As usual, we test each setting 3 times and average the results. The 1.1 patch was used for testing.

Black & White 2 @ 1024 x 768

All Settings High

XFX 7900 GT 256 MB XXX

XFX 7800 GTX 256 MB

XFX 7800 GT 256 MB

XFX 7600 GT 256 MB XXX

ATI X1900 XTX 512 MB

ATI X1800 XT 512 MB

XFX 6800 GT 256 MB

ATI X1800 XL 256 MB

ATI X1800 GTO 256 MB

ATI X1600 XT 256 MB

FPS

Black & White 2 @ 1600 x 1200

All Settings High

XFX 7900 GT 256 MB XXX

XFX 7800 GTX 256 MB

ATI X1900 XTX 512 MB

XFX 7800 GT 256 MB

ATI X1800 XT 512 MB

ATI X1800 XL 256 MB

ATI X1800 GTO 256 MB

XFX 6800 GT 256 MB

ATI X1600 XT 256 MB

XFX 7600 GT 256 MB XXX

FPS

Black & White 2 @ 2048 x 1536

All Settings High

XFX 7900 GT 256 MB XXX

ATI X1900 XTX 512 MB

XFX 7800 GTX 256 MB

ATI X1800 XT 512 MB

ATI X1800 GTO 256 MB

ATI X1800 XL 256 MB

ATI X1600 XT 256 MB

XFX 6800 GT 256 MB

XFX 7800 GT 256 MB

XFX 7600 GT 256 MB XXX

FPS

In Black & White 2, the 7800 GT froze at 2048x1536. The 7600 GT froze at 1600x1200 and 2048x1536. These cards wouldn't freeze EVERY time at these resolutions, but most of the time, so the scores were recorded as 0.

I should also note that there is a new patch out for Black & White 2 (1.2) which apparently makes a huge difference in the performance on ATI cards, making things more even between NVIDIA and ATI - according to a recent article at Anandtech.

We'd like to thank Directron.com for donating the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 Motherboard which we used for testing.

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Page 11 of 15

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: The Card & Bundle
Page 3: Test Setup
Page 4: Benchmarks: Half-Life 2
Page 5: Benchmarks: Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
Page 6: Benchmarks: Quake 4
Page 7: Benchmarks: X3 Reunion Demo
Page 8: Benchmarks: Chronicles of Riddick
Page 9: Benchmarks: F.E.A.R.
Page 10: Benchmarks: Need for Speed Most Wanted
Page 11: Benchmarks: Black & White 2
Page 12: Benchmarks: 3DMark '06
Page 13: Overclocking... and Unlocking?
Page 14: Performance Summary
Page 15: Conclusion

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5 User Comments

1 - Posted by tobba007 on May 26, 2006 - 12:22 pm

Excellent review there Kurtis - I needed a comparison of these 2 cards, with an unbiased slant, and that's what I've got!

m

2 - Posted by Kurtis on May 26, 2006 - 1:39 pm

i recommend reading my 7600 GT review as well. i found out some interesting information about the pricing while i was writing that review. the main thing you need to see is the conclusion:

http://www.thetechlounge.com/article/276/XFX+GeFor...

3 - Posted by mustafa on July 10, 2006 - 9:29 am

I really wanted to know if i failed in flashing the x1800 gto to x1800 xl would it be easy to restore the default bois of the gto or it is someting out of hands?

by the way what is ur opinion in powercolor x1800 gto?

thanks

4 - Posted by Kurtis on July 10, 2006 - 9:49 am

i have no idea if you'd be able to recover from a failed BIOS flash... i haven't tried it, personally.

as far as the different brands of video cards go, that's all up to you. my personal opinion is i don't care that much who's sticker is on the video card, what i car about is what the GPU is under the heatsink. the deciding factor for me would be the price, the bundle, and the warranty.

5 - Posted by mustafa on July 10, 2006 - 5:53 pm

well what i think about the x1800 gto GPU is that it is has superior power (321 million trasistors and 256 bit memory interface),excellent support for HDR, AA and AF but when it comes to the 7600 gt it is cheaper, hell of a fast card,
designed for specific game titles but unfortunately it only has 167 million transistors and 128 bit memory interface.

i think i would choose the x1800 gto it's eyes looking
for the future.

now for my questions part:
1-would i be able to crossfire this 1800 gto using another 1800 gto on an intel 975 chipset based m.board
2-is this crossfire dongless or not?
3-i read that ATI will have several crrossfire layouts,2 GPUs,1GPU and 1physics card is that true?

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