Power Color Radeon X850XT PE AGP

ATI STILL TAKES good care of the AGP market. At this time, it may be lagging Nvidian SLI setups on PCIe platforms but, then again, Nvidia still doesn't have anything new to offer to its AGP supporters. Nvidia still plays with NV40, a Geforce 6800 Ultra card, while ATI already upgraded its AGP offering. You'll remember the R420 Loki code-named card that turned to be what we now recognize as the X800 series. Fastest of those was, and still is, the X800XT Platinum edition, a fairly rare card but still not that rare as many would think.

ATI developed the new chip wrapped under the codename R481. The R481 is an AGP version of its R480 chip. That is not much more than a good old 130nm low-K-based core clocked a little bit faster.

We had a chance to play with Power Color's Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition clocked at 540MHz core, just 20MHz increase from X800XT PE card, and a slightly faster memory clocked at 1180 MHz. The card is using GDDR 3 memory and its memory bandwidth goes to 37.76 GB/s. It is powered with 16 pipelines, six vertex Shaders, supports DirectX 9.0 and Shader model 2.0b.

You will find VGA, DVI, TV out plus TV out with HDTV support. As for Inputs you can plug your Video In and you need to use a power cable to make the card work. It very much looks like the X850XT PE PCIe card.

When you open the nicely-designed box you will find a full version of the game Pacific Fighter, the driver CD, Pro pack software bundle, S video, Composite cable, DVI dongle, HDTV cable, Video In and Video Out cables and an RCA composite cable. To summarize: a lot of cables and CDs.

We compared this card with Connect3D's Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition clocked at 520MHz core and 1120MHz memory, just a little bit slower than the new X850 XT PE card. The third card we used for comparison was Gainward's 6800 Ultra card, clocked at Nvidia reference 400MHz core and 1100MHz memory.

We tested the cards in our AGP test bed equipped with:

Athlon 64 3800+ clocked at 2400 MHz socket 939
Abit K8T800PRO socket 939 board
2x512 MB Corsair DDR 550 PC4400 CL2
Western Digital 8 MB cache 80 GB Drive
Pioneer DVD+-RW A06
Cooler master Athlon 64 cooler
Akasa 450W PSU

DOOM 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X850 XT PE 540 / 1180 MHz	93.2	74.8	57.2
Connect 3D Radeon X800 XT PE 520 / 1120 MHz	91.8	72.8	55.7
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra 400 / 1100 MHz	98.5	83.0	67.2
Far Cry 1.3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X850 XT PE 540 / 1180 MHz	66.45	67.18	67.84
Connect 3D Radeon X800 XT PE 520 / 1120 MHz	67.51	66.30	67.46
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra 400 / 1100 MHz	66.79	68.20	67.50
Half Life 2	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X850 XT PE 540 / 1180 MHz	50.28	51.38	50.47
Connect 3D Radeon X800 XT PE 520 / 1120 MHz	48.70	49.70	48.98
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra 400 / 1100 MHz	47.50	47.72	45.98
Counter-Strike Source	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X850 XT PE 540 / 1180 MHz	151.66	149.30	142.31
Connect 3D Radeon X800 XT PE 520 / 1120 MHz	152.58	147.54	139.72
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra 400 / 1100 MHz	154.37	150.17	127.37
Unreal Tournament 2004	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X850 XT PE 540 / 1180 MHz	168.96	159.79	162.26
Connect 3D Radeon X800 XT PE 520 / 1120 MHz	168.84	161.05	160.77
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra 400 / 1100 MHz	173.12	163.57	164.91
DOOM 3 FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X850 XT PE 540 / 1180 MHz	69.5	50.1	37.0
Connect 3D Radeon X800 XT PE 520 / 1120 MHz	67.3	48.5	35.6
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra 400 / 1100 MHz	74.3	53.9	40.7
Half Life 2 FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X850 XT PE 540 / 1180 MHz	50.29	48.60	44.80
Connect 3D Radeon X800 XT PE 520 / 1120 MHz	48.57	47 .51	43.28
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra 400 / 1100 MHz	47.04	43.70	38.47
Counter-Str. S . FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Power Color Radeon X850 XT PE 540 / 1180 MHz	149.04	131.00	111.11
Connect 3D Radeon X800 XT PE 520 / 1120 MHz	132.24	124.85	103.95
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra 400 / 1100 MHz	153.47	120.24	96.94
Composite Figures 3Dmark03	3Dmark03	Game 2	Game 3	Nature
Power Color Radeon X850 XT PE 540 / 1180 MHz	12782	99.0	77.8	84.2
Connect 3D Radeon X800 XT PE 520 / 1120 MHz	12454	96.1	75.9	81.6
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra 400 / 1100 MHz	12399	98.5	81.9	67.6
Composite Figures 3Dmark03	Single Texturing	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel sharer 2.0
Power Color Radeon X850 XT PE 540 / 1180 MHz	3149.5	7403.0	38.4	155.9
Connect 3D Radeon X800 XT PE 520 / 1120 MHz	3038.8	7093.2	37.1	150.2
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra 400 / 1100 MHz	3311.8	6177.0	33.3	178.7
Composite Figures 3Dmark05	3Dmark05	Game 1	Game 2	Game 3
Power Color Radeon X850 XT PE 540 / 1180 MHz	6173	28.7	17.4	30.3
Connect 3D Radeon X800 XT PE 520 / 1120 MHz	5963	27.5	16.8	29.4
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra 400 / 1100 MHz	5300	22.9	15.2	27.3
Composite Figures 3Dmark05	Single Texturing	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS /VS complex
Power Color Radeon X850 XT PE 540 / 1180 MHz	3702.0	8561.2	155.2	65.2/49.7
Connect 3D Radeon X800 XT PE 520 / 1120 MHz	3513.4	8255.4	149.1	63.3/47.9
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra 400 / 1100 MHz	3605.2	6295.9	151.9	47.5/37.7

If you take a look at the results, you will learn that the Power Color X850XT Platinum Edition does not offer sky-rocket performance compared with ATI's previous X800XT PE card that we tested.

It will end up faster but we are usually talking about marginal performance increase. Power Color's X850XT PE is usually just two to three frames faster than ATI's previous flagship card. If you compare the card with Gainward's standard-clocked 6800 Ultra card you will see that the X850 XT PE ends a bit slower in Doom 3 but still faster in other games.

The Nvidia-based card still leads in Unreal Tournament 2004 but it's just a few frames faster. In all the other games, the 6800 Ultra is a few frames slower and we were surprised by the low score in 3Dmark05, as it scores 5300, while Power Color's X850 XT PE AGP scores 6173.

In 3Dmark03, the X850 XT PE is just little faster than X800XT PE and Geforce 6800 Ultra.

Conclusion
The Power Color X850XT Platinum Edition is indeed fast card. You can say that in most of the cases it is the fastest single slot card made for AGP systems. Its nice to know that companies still care about AGP users and that you will still be able to upgrade for a while and to put your AGP slot to use in years to come. At least, in 2005 you will get R520 in an AGP version as well and until that happens you have a few months to enjoy the X850XT PE AGP. The card is very nice, packed in a decent box, with all the cables you need and a game to boot.

If you're after the fastest AGP card you should consider this one. If you are into Nvidia then you probably want SLI, but there you are talking about two PCIe cards, at least a pair of 6800GTs to compare to this single-card solution. And, of course, SLI is PCIe only. For AGP you cannot use two cards. If you are a X800XT Platinum Edition owner it would be much better to wait for R520 the card that will really make the difference. µ