Abit Fatal1ty Radeon X800 XL
Introduction, Specifications & Bundle
The Radeon X800 XL has been a very successful GPU for ATI. The X800 XL has been widely available for quite some time, it's built using a .11 micron process that make it a cost effective part for ATI to produce, and retail cards based on the X800 XL GPU offer very good performance for the price. 256MB variants of the X800 XL have also been available for under $250, which made them quite popular with both gamers and the overclocking crowd. The Radeon X800 XL's excellent price / performance ratio was undeniable. But then, back in June, ATI launched a 512MB version of the Radeon X800 XL. 512MB cards offered better performance in some applications and when running at high resolutions with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled, but the cards were also priced significantly higher than their 256MB counterparts. In fact, upon their initial introduction 512MB Radeon X800 XL prices hovered around $500. Unfortunately, $500 was enough dough for a much more powerful GeForce 7800 GTX and the larger frame buffer didn't offer dramatic performance improvements in today's games, so in the end the 512MB Radeon X800 XL wasn't widely accepted by the gaming community.
However, since then, prices for the 512MB Radeon X800 XL have dropped considerably. And companies like Sapphire and Abit now offer 512MB X800 XL's for well under $400. Today on HotHardware we're going to look at Abit's take on the Radeon X800 XL that bares the "Fatal1ty" brand. Unlike virtually every other video card to pass through the labs the past couple of years, Abit has actually veered from ATI's reference design and is offering a unique solution, with features that set it apart from its competition. Abit's Fatal1ty X800 XL 512MB may not be the king of the 3D performance hill, but there is a lot to like about this video card. Check it out...
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ATi Radeon X800 XL Six Vertex Engines High-detail Geometry 3Dc Compression Technology |
Smart Shader HD •_Long pixel shaders •_1536 instructions per pass •_High-detail geometry shaders •_Infinite length shaders (multipass via F-buffer) •_Single pass trig functions (Sine & Cosine) SmoothVision HD •_Sparse sample pattern AA with gamma correction •_Temporal AA (up to 12X effective) •_Centroid AA •_16X Anisotropic filtering with adaptive heuristics HyperZ HD •_Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, including HDTV resolutions •_Lossless z-buffer compression (up to 48:1) •_Rejects up to 256 occluded pixels per clock •_Up to 32 Z/stencil operations/clock VideoShader HD •_High-quality video processing & acceleration •_Real-time user programmable video effects •_Video post processing and filtering •_MPEG 1, 2, 4 encode and decode acceleration •_FULLSTREAM Video Deblocking •_WMV9 decode acceleration •_High-quality resolution scaling •_Adaptive Per Pixel Deinterlacing •_Motion Compensation •_Noise removal filtering •_Display Rotation
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Like Abit's other "Fatal1ty" branded products, the Fatal1ty X800 XL 512MB bares the mark, and endorsement, of professional gamer Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel right on the box. Inside the box though, there isn't anything special to see, other than the card itself that is. Included with Abit's Fatal1ty X800 XL 512MB were a couple of manuals, one a typical User's Guide and the other a guide detailing the use of Abit's proprietary vGuru software, and the requisite driver / utility CD. Alongside the manuals and driver CD were an assortment of cables and connectors, that included an S-Video to composite adapter, an S-Video cable, a composite video cable, and a dual-Molex to 6-Pin PCI Express power adapter. As you can see, the Fatal1ty X800 XL 512MB's bundle wasn't exactly barren, but it would have been nice to see a game or two included to showcase the capabilities of the card, especially considering its relatively high price.
