ATI to overclock its Radeon X1800XTs

ATI WILL let its partners overclock their cards. The partners are aiming to bring a new old card to the market called the X1800XT OC. The card will have a special BIOS and will be shipped with a special tool that will overclock it out of the box. The cards will run at 700MHz core and 1600MHz memory.

We know that ATI's key partners will be able to ship those cards and you can expect them in early December. We don't know if this is going to be enough to overtake the new Geforce 7800 GTX 512 - we think probably not, but it will make ATI look much better and more competitive.

Almost any shipped Radeon X1800XT will work at 700/1600 MHz if not more. We also know that retail cards can overclock much more than the press samples that selected members of the press received in early October as the chips are better, I guess.

This card won't last long as ATI is planning a new card codenamed R580 that should bring it the performance crown again. This card is expected sometime in Q1 2006. ATI and its partners won't give up without a fight, but we saw that Nvidia is letting their partners such is Gainward, XGX, EVGA and BFG to overclock. I guess ATI is doing the same with its partners. µ