ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition AGP Review

[Dave Baumann]

<a href="http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r481/"><img border="1" src="http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r481/images/focus.gif" align="right" width="120" height="75"></a>Both ATI and NVIDIA have been pushing the PCI Express platforms hard, to the point where now it looks as though support for AGP is waning. However, initially ATI were at the forefront of the PCI Express transition, to the detriment of their AGP market. With the late arrival of their "Rialto" bridge chip ATI set about making one last high end native AGP graphics board with the Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, and here we are going to take a look at that board.

Although it may be a bit late to be taking a look at this board now, as ATI's next generation X1000 series of graphics cards have been announced and released, it still looks as though there will be no high end AGP versions coming to market, which currently still leaves the X850 XT Platinum Edition as ATI’s highest performance AGP board produced. With so many AGP systems still in use, and given the stagnation in Intel CPU’s for AGP platforms, we thought it would be useful to ascertain whether upgrading older graphics boards, such as a Radeon 9800 PRO, to something such as the X850 could be possible path as opposed to changing to a PCI-Express system. <a href="http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r481/">Read the full article here</a>.

[dizietsma]

Thanks for this review Dave much appreciated.

My current gaming / general use system is a P4 Northwood 3GHz on Asus P4C800 with an AGP 6600GT . I've just finished Quake IV, just started COD2 and have FEAR waiting on the side. I have a 19inch LCD that has native 1280x1024.

Needless to say upgrading has been most on my mind since getting Quake IV. I thought I could last out till 2006 when Conroe comes along but the lack of AGP G70 or R520 has meant I had thought of doing the hassle of an intermediate PCie rig to ride me over.

Basically I underestimated how much gpu power these latest games would need and whether nvidia or Ati would do one last set of AGP cards. I might just hang on till after Christmas to see if there is anything on the horizon AGP wise for the latest generations, but if not see if I can pick up the Ati X850XT or X800XL for cheap to tide me over.

[dizietsma]

"cheapest XT PE at £195"

All the ones I can see are at about £275 to £300 !! Who are you looking at for that Dave ?

[Dreamweaver]

"cheapest XT PE at £195"

All the ones I can see are at about £275 to £300 !! Who are you looking at for that Dave ?In the UK overclockers have them at £214 + VAT, about £250, being an AGPer myself I am sorely tempted, however an XL at £179 + VAT when they come back in stock maybe the one I may give up my readies for...

Thanks for the review Dave

I am kinda hoping that the GTO2 comes available in AGP because that is a snip at £135 I think and mods to XTish spec...

J

P.S. Thought I'd check before clicking, they have gone onto pre order today...

[Dave Baumann]

I think you guys need to take note of the author!

I have to admit, tough, this was done a month or so back, but has only just got round to being published now - I did have a quick scout around last night and could actually find no high end AGP stuff in stock in a couple of vendors I looked at, with about the X700 being the highest presently available.

[BrynS]

Stirring review, Mr Connery! (Mordenkainen?) :smile:

An AGP GTO2 would be a nice temptation for us AGP slackers, but the way things are going, it seems as though both IHVs want to transition their performance parts over to PCI-E completely, which is understandable. I'm thinking that both ATI and the AIBs will probably just let the remaining (dwindling?) stocks of AGP X8x0 Pro/XL/XT satiate "high-end" AGP demand.

Saying that though, perusual of numerous forums suggests that if one of the AIBs for either IHV released an AGP X1800 or 7800 that there would be takers and this would present a unique selling point. Evidently the AIBs must feel that the market isn't there, as they presumably would have stepped up by now if they determined that to be the case.

GeCube have an AGP X800GTO (only 128MB RAM though) available here (http://www.lowestonweb.com/Products/DisplayInfoMain.asp?e=A4B7ED63-3BD7-41DD-906E-7EE073E25BF4) and here (http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=97827) for ~£115 inc, but obviously an X800XL for £124 would be a much better buy.

An AGP 7800GT or X1800XL for ~£200-250 in the next 2-3 months could be a great last hurrah for die-hard AGP users. Perhaps nV's 7600 and ATI's RV560 will have AGP variants?

[Richard]

Thanks guys; being mistaken as one of Dave's reviews is just about the best compliment you can offer. ;)

As for the prices listed, as Dave mentioned the review was completed a while ago. Before the R520 shipped actually; I then went in and changed it a bit to account for the release of the X1800 and added the Splinter Cell 3 results. That's why the review uses Catalyst 5.8. ;)

[Geo]

I think you guys need to take note of the author!



Prolly got fooled by the listed "Reporter" on the front page --it's happened to me as well.

[Dreamweaver]

Thanks for pointing that out Dave, just saw Reported by DB and then started reading and looking at numbers.

Appologies Richard, great review, thanks.

J.

[Sobek]

Uh..weren't there allready x850xt pe AGP versions out there... :\

Got me confused.

[gojc]

Question regarding memory clock speed. I was looking at ATI's web site and noticed they list the x850 xt's (PE) memory clock speed at 580. Does anyone know why this number is so low compared to most of the other x850 xt's available or am I not understanding memory clock speed which is most likely the case :grin:

[Sobek]

Question regarding memory clock speed. I was looking at ATI's web site and noticed they list the x850 xt's (PE) memory clock speed at 580. Does anyone know why this number is so low compared to most of the other x850 xt's available or am I not understanding memory clock speed which is most likely the case :grin:

Well, being DDR, that 580mhz memory clock is effectively 1160mhz. I'm guessing that's what your looking for? Some sites like to state the full speed (doubled original number), others like to assume the customer either knows how DDR works or has never seen DDR numbers with videocards before.

But yeah, that's an effective clockspeed of 1160mhz. :)

[gojc]

Thanks Sobek...I thought that was the case but wasn't sure.
Thanks again.