Power Color X800XL 256MB

ATI's X800XL part was initially delivered well over a year ago accompanied by the introduction of the X850XT PE. Since that point, the R400 series has dimmed in order to let the R500 cores shine. However, not everyone is interested in these latest X1000 series cards with a portion of the users who cannot experience the blazing fast capabilities being alternative OS enthusiasts. ATI Linux users seeking the ultimate in desktop performance are presently limited to the X850 series or FireGL V7100 for the workstation arena, while NVIDIA fans can run a pair of 7800GTX 512MB in SLI. However, we hope ATI's Linux developers will soon alleviate this situation by bringing fourth X1000 series support, and upon that, we will be immediately delivering our in-house results. We have not yet seen any driver builds for 2006, but are certain ATI will continue with its timely releases and offer a calendar full of extravagant feature implementations. In the mean time prior to Linux support for the ATI RADEON X1000 series, we have an X800XL 256MB caressing our systems. The X800XL core packs in approximately 160 million transistors, 16 pixel pipelines, 6 vertex processors, 110nm manufacturing process, 256MB 256-bit video memory, 400MHz core, and 980MHz memory clock. Will this be enough to do justice to NVIDIA's GeForce 6800GT 256MB part under Linux? The graphics card making its appearance today is from Power Color with a part number of X800XL256MBDDR3 R43CA-TD3D.

Features:

Power Color X800 XL
· 16 parallel pixel pipelines
· 6 parallel vertex processing engines
· 160 million transistors on 0.11 micron fabrication process
· 256-bit quad-channel GDDR3 memory interface
· PCI Express x16 lane native support

SmartShader HD
· Support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware
· DirectX 9.0 Vertex Shaders
· Vertex programs up to 65,280 instructions with flow control
· Single cycle trigonometric operations (SIN & COS)
· Direct X 9.0 Extended Pixel Shaders
· Up to 1,536 instructions and 16 textures per rendering pass
· 32 temporary and constant registers
· Facing register for two-sided lighting
· 128-bit, 64-bit & 32-bit per pixel floating point color formats
· Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
· Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL via extensions

SmoothVision HD
· 2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes
· Sparse multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable sample patterns, and centroid sampling
· Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1)at all resolutions, including widescreen

HDTV Rresolutions
· Temporal Anti-Aliasing
· 2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes
· Up to 128-tap texture filtering
· Adaptive algorithm with bilinear (performance) and trilinear (quality) options

3Dc
· High quality 4:1 Normal Map Compression
· Works with any two-channel data format

Hyper Z HD
· 3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with Early Z Test
· Lossless Z-Buffer Compression (up to 48:1)
· Fast Z-Buffer Clear
· Z Cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering
· Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, including widescreen HDTV resolutions

VideoShader HD
· Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
· FULLSTREAM video de-blocking technology for Real, DivX, and WMV9 formats
· VIDEOSOAP noise removal filtering for captured video
· MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration
· DXVA Support
· Hardware Motion Compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion
· All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
· Adaptive Per-Pixel De-Interlacing and Frame Rate Conversion (temporal filtering) additional features

Display Features
· Dual integrated display controllers
· Dual integrated 10 bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
· Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 / HDMI compliant and HDCP ready)
· Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution
· Windows Logo Program compliant
· YPrPb component output for direct driver of HDTV displays
· CATALYST Software Suite
· Compatible with ATI's THEATER video decode and capture devices for VIVO configurations

Contents:

Receiving the Power Color retail container for the X800XL256MBDDR3, its packaging was much more conservative than some, which are abundant with graphics and feature everything from ATI's Ruby to miscellaneous goblins and villains. Power Color's packaging simply covers some of the X800XL features for their GameFX board series lineup. On the front are some X800XL notable features (256MB, VIVO, PCI-E, Dual DVI, 256-bit, 16 pipelines) while on the back and sides are some of the more diminutive product details. Opening the container, inside we were left with the actual PCI Express graphics card, user's manual, Windows driver CD, S-Video cable, two DVI dongles, one HDTV cable, one composite cable, one S-Video to composite adapter, and one PCI Express power extension cable. Also included, as bonus software, was Ubisoft's Pacific Fighters and CyberLink DVD, through Power Color's ProPack. For whatever reason, even though the Power Color X800XL does not require additional power from the power supply unit, beyond what the PCI Express x16 slot provides, included in the box was a molex to PCI Express 6-pin adapter.