System setup and notes
Hardware and Software
Test Platforms
| Systems | Athlon 64 S939 PCI-Express System | |
| Processor | AMD Athlon 64 4000+ | |
| Mainboard | ABIT AX8 K8T890 | |
| Memory | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200 XL | Memory timings | 2-2-2-5 1T @ DDR400 | Graphics Card #1 | Gigabyte GV-RX18L256V-B Radeon X1800 XL 256MB PCIe (500/990) | Graphics Card #2 | ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB PCIe (625/1500) |
| Graphics Card #3 | XFX GeForce 7800 GT OC 256MB PCIe (450/1050) | |
| Graphics Card #4 | GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB PCIe (430/1200) | |
| Graphics Card #5 | ATI RADEON X850 XT 256MB PCIe (520/1080) | |
| Graphics Card #6 | NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB PCIe (425/1100) | Disk Drive | 160GB Western Digital 160JB IDE |
| BIOS Version | BIOS 13 | |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional SP2 | |
| Mainboard Software | VIA Hyperion Pro v4.55 | |
Software
ATI 8.173.2.3-050921a-027133C for Gigabyte Radeon X1800 XL 256MB cards
ATI 8.173.2.3-051014a1-027813C for SAPPHIRE X1800 XT 512MB
ATI CATALYST 5.10 for ATI X850 XT
NVIDIA ForceWare 81.85 for NVIDIA-based cards
Futuremark 3DMark05 Build 1.2.0 - AA and AF set via application
DOOM 3 (v1282) Timedemo 1 - AA and AF set via application
Far Cry v1.33 - custom HEXUS benchmark - AA and AF set via application
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.04 - custom HEXUS benchmark - AA and AF set via application
Notes
No problems to report during installation and testing of the Gigabyte card. We've not included benchmark numbers from other ATI Radeon X1800 XL 256MB cards for a simple reason; their identical clock-speed lead to results which would fall into the standard deviation for the Gigabyte sample, so the results obtained here are indicative of stock-clocked X1800 XLs as a whole. The interesting comparison is against NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GT, albeit an overclocked one from XFX, and the GTX and Radeon X1800 XT performance shows what an extra £50-£75 can buy you.
The following table highlights the basic characteristics of each card.
Card Gigabyte Radeon X1800 XL SAPPHIRE Radeon X1800 XT ATI Radeon X850 XT XFX GeForce 7800 GT NVIDIA reference 7800 GTX GeForce 6800 Ultra Manufacturing process 90nm 90nm 130nm 110nm 110nm 130nm Interface/speed PCI-Express PCI-Express PCI-Express PCI-Express PCI-Express PCI-Express Onboard memory 256MB 512MB 256MB 256MB 256MB 256MB Core speed 500MHz 625MHz 520MHz 450MHz 430MHz 425MHz Rendering pipelines 16 16 16 20 24 16 Fillrate (multi-texturing) 8GTexels/s 10GTexels/s 8.32GTexels/s 9GTexels/s 10.32GTexels/s 6.8GTexels/s Vertex shading units 8 8 6 7 8 6 Shader Model 3.0 3.0 2.0b 3.0 3.0 3.0 Memory interface 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit Memory speed 990MHz 1500MHz 1080MHz 1050MHz 1200MHz 1100MHz Memory bandwidth (max) 31.68GB/s 48GB/s 34.56GB/s 33.6GB/s 38.4GB/s 35.2GB/s Cheapest online price £290 £370 £229 £260 £335 £249
Enough statistics, on to the benchmarks
