X850XT PE most overclockable ATI card ever

SAPPHIRE has managed to make a card that will be remembered as the best overclocking card in recent history. All you need to do is to go to the store, or order one online for around €230 download a new BIOS, overclock it and enjoy at it until it last.

Sapphire started selling these cards a few weeks back and as soon as it released it we learned they will be the most overclockable cards to date. By default, Sapphire X800GTO2 comes with 12 pipelines card clocked at modest 400 MHz code and 980 MHz memory. It's very similar to X800XL cards anyway. But it can be pushed much more. Today you can buy a Sapphire X800GTO regular card clocked at those speeds for some €177 with VAT or even less. It's a great value for a twelve pipeline card, quite fast in most of the games today. Still Sapphire X800 GTO2 will get you much more than that, you just need to overclock.

Sapphire X800GTO2 card, without print on the cooler, early sample

Once you flash the new BIOS you will immediately get sixteen pipelines. You need a utility such as ATI Tool to push this card to Radeon X850XT PE clock speeds. We are talking about card with twelve pipelines clocked at 400MHz core and 980MHz memory that can be turned into a sixteen pipelines card working at 540MHz core, 1180MHz memory. The test card was stable for days and was much quieter than the standard X850XT PE card.You can find flashing and overclocking instructions at this e-tailers website here. It's fairly simple, you download the bios, flash it with ATI bios flash tool, turn the card, overclock it to XT PE speeds and it works, as simple as that.

Doom 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1563
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 12pipelines	77.1	54.2	38.7	23.4
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 16pipelines	87.4	65.4	47.7	28.0
Sapphire GTO2 540/590 MHz 16pipelines	93.3	74.5	56.8	35.0
Far Cry 1.3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1563
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 12pipelines	69.28	68.56	58.83	31.86
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 16pipelines	68.44	68.81	66.48	42.75
Sapphire GTO2 540/590 MHz 16pipelines	67.44	69.27	69.36	54.54
Half Life 2	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1563
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 12pipelines	51.22	51.72	49.64	42.86
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 16pipelines	52.06	52.41	51.39	49.04
Sapphire GTO2 540/590 MHz 16pipelines	51.65	52.93	52.11	51.51
Doom 3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1563
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 12pipelines	43.6	29.8	21.8	10.8
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 16pipelines	48.3	34.8	25.8	12.7
Sapphire GTO2 540/590 MHz 16pipelines	59.5	43.6	32.1	20.6
Far Cry 1.3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1563
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 12pipelines	62.45	64.99	34.98	10.28
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 16pipelines	67.33	56.81	43.30	17.84
Sapphire GTO2 540/590 MHz 16pipelines	67.64	65.94	54.82	20.40
Half Life 2 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1563
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 12pipelines	50.61	51.83	35.30	25.50
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 16pipelines	51.16	47.23	41.62	31.40
Sapphire GTO2 540/590 MHz 16pipelines	51.68	51.01	47.96	39.08
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Nature
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 12pipelines	10060	70.0	57.9	69.6
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 16pipelines	11132	80.5	65.0	73.6
Sapphire GTO2 540/590 MHz 16pipelines	13367	100.7	79.7	89.8
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 12pipelines	2198.0	4417.4	30.0	119.5
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 16pipelines	2604.6	5679.6	30.2	134.5
Sapphire GTO2 540/590 MHz 16pipelines	3188.8	7313.2	38.5	164.6
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	3DMark 05	Game1	Game2	Game3
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 12pipelines	4557	20.7	13.5	21.7
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 16pipelines	5131	23.3	15.0	24.8
Sapphire GTO2 540/590 MHz 16pipelines	6382	28.5	19.1	30.6
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS /VS complex
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 12pipelines	2440.3	4757.8	98.0	52.3/37.0
Sapphire GTO2 400/490 MHz 16pipelines	3050.7	6336.0	121.9	52.4/37.0
Sapphire GTO2 540/590 MHz 16pipelines	3743.0	8569.7	155.6	65.0/50.0

You can clearly see that as soon as you enable sixteen pipelines you immediately gain some additional speed. Doom 3 will boost 10 FPS from an extra four pipes and as soon as you overclock it you will gain 20 FPS in almost every scenario. Far cry 1.3 test is reaching its limits and you need to get to at least 1600x1200 or more to see the difference between the cards and overclocks. A Four additional pipes will get you 8 FPS in this scenario while in extreme resolution or 2048x1535, a GTO2 at X850XT PE speeds will gain some sixty percent faster scores than non overclock card from the box. In Half Life 2 you need to reach for 2048x1536 to get some significant difference of 10 FPS.

In 4X FSAA and 8X Anisotropic filtering overclocked card will score much more. You will gain 10 to 15 FSB by overclocking your GTO2 card at X850XT PE speeds, worth a while for sure. You need to go to 1600x1200 in Far Cry 1.3 to see some 20 FPS difference, at the same resolution Half life 2 you will outrun stock speed card for some 12 FPS. In 2048x1536 you will again gain more than sixty percent from the original speed. At this settings overclocked card can show its muscle.

3Dmark 2003 you will gain 3000 more points when overclocked or 20 FPS in heavy nature test. Al the scores will be much higher when you overclock. In 3Dmark 2005 you get some additional 1800 points and all the scores are faster than on non overclocked card.

Conclusion:

Sapphire X800 GTO2 is great card but its only problem is that it won't last forever. It will last as long as ATI can keep up with demand. On a price - performance level you can compare this card to very successful Radeon 9500 PRO.

We didn't test it head to head with new 6800GS but we compared some data's we gathered and learned that it will at least come close to Nvidia card. It can win in some the test. The biggest argument against this card should be the lack of HDR. High Definition Range is already enabled in old Far Cry and one level of Half Life 2. It looks great but it's still feature to come in 2006. If you want very fast ATI card and you plan to swap it in 2006 this might be great transition option for you. You might want to look at 6800GS cards as well as they might last longer but we still expect that ATI has to react with some new card to fight Nvidia in $249 market. This card will also be a little bit cheaper than 6800GS.

I believe that Sapphire X800GTO ² is the most overclockable card to date and I can highly recommend it to all that likes to overclock but you still might want to think about 6800GS as well. Maybe it can even go faster but we didn't try it. Its stabile, not noisy, works great for the bucks and overclocks like mad. µ