Sapphire Radeon X800 XL 512MB review

When we reviewed ATI's Radeon X800 XL graphics card in Shopper June 2005 it won a Best Buy award thanks to its excellent performance and price.

This month Sapphire has given us a glimpse of its successor, which features the 512MB version of its graphics chip.

This card has as much GDDR3 RAM as your average computer. Retaining the same core specifications as the 256MB card (16 pixel pipelines, 400MHz core speed and 989MHz memory), the extra memory might seem like overkill. However, it makes a difference, particularly at high resolutions, where textures take up a lot of memory. In our Doom 3 test running at a resolution of 1,600x1,200 the card scored 59.2fps (13 per cent faster than the 256MB version). At this level we're probably hitting the limitations of the graphics processing unit (GPU) - ATI's high-end cards would probably benefit more from additional memory.

The card also manages a high level of performance when running at a standard 1,024x768 resolution, scoring 92.2fpsin Doom 3 and 10,049 in 3DMark03. From these scores it's plain to see that it can cope easily with any game on the market and will be able to take new games in its stride.

Fortunately, the extra memory hasn't made much difference to the design of the card. It's still a single-slot card cooled by a single, relatively quiet heat sink and fan. If nothing else, it will appeal to gamers who are looking for a high-end card for a small cube PC.

The version of the card we received had dual DVI-I outputs, although you can expect variations once retail versions are available.

Final prices hadn't been announced when we went to press, but the cards are expected to sell for around £300, which would position them below the similarly performing X800 XT. We'll aim to get a final product with pricing for next month's issue. In the meantime, doubling the memory on a graphics card seems to be beneficial to games run at higher resolutions.