Sapphire ATI X1800GTO

Features of the Sapphire ATI X1800GTO

RADEON X1800 GTO Specifications:
• ATI RADEON X1800 GTO core = 500MHz
• 256MB Onboard Memory = 1000MHz
• PCI Express x16
• Dual DVI
• 12 pixel shaders
• 8 vertex shaders
• MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264
• Max 3d resolution: 2560x1600
• Sapphire Select (2 unlock keys), Cyberlink Director, Cyberlink PowerDVD
• VIVO

Test System Specifications

The Sapphire ATI X1800GTO Video Card was tested on my test system with the following specs:

• CPU: AMD FX-60
• Hard Drive: Samsung 250GB
• RAM:OCZ PC4000 DDR Gold Edition GX XTC 3-4-3-8, 2GB (2x 1 GB)
• PSU: PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 1KW
• Mainboard: ECS Elitegroup KA1 MVP Extreme
• OS: Windows XP Pro SP2

What's in the Package

• CyberLink PowerDirector 4 DE
• CyberLink PowerDVD 6
• Sapphire Select Game Disk
• User Manual
• S-Video Cable
• Coax Video Cable
• Dual DVI to VGA adapters
• Component Output Splitter
• Molex to PCI Power Adapter
• X1800 GTO graphics card

Installing the X1800GTO

The GTO is a full size graphics card and is much longer than its closest Nvidia competitor. While this is not a problem as far as performance goes, the longer card could make for some clearance issues on your mainboard depending on its layout. For instance on my board, when I installed the GTO the rear edge of the graphics card extended over the fourth onboard port for the SATA RAID. Had I been running a four disk RAID set up I would have had to decide on the last disk in the array or the X1800 GTO, both simply would not work.

The GTO is a single slot card design. This is great because it allows you to use more of the PCI slots inside your system. A single slot video card is very important to consider if you intend or running a PCI sound card. With the launch of the Ageia physics cards imminent, access to the limited supply of standard PCI slots is becoming more important. The X1800GTO does require a six pin PCI-E power plug from your system PSU.

Benchmarks and Gaming with the X1800GTO

Since the GTO is a gamers card I tested it with both synthetic and real benchmark tests. The Synthetic test was done with 3DMARK06 and the gaming tests were performed with FEAR and Quake 4.

The first test series was 3DMARK06 which is a good synthetic test regime for graphics cards. The 3DMARK06 scores for the X1800GTO are as follows:

• Overall 3DMARK06 Score: 3244 (XFX 7600 GT XXX scored 3557)
• SM2- 1228
• HDR/SM3- 1224
• CPU- 1940
• Return to Proxycon- 9.317 FPS
• Firefly Forest- 11.150 FPS
• Canyon Flight- 11.919
• Deep Freeze- 12.558
• Red Valley 1-0.621
• Red Valley 2- 0.969

The next tests I ran on the GTO were the actual gaming tests. For these benchmarks I choose two of my favorite games, FEAR and Quake 2004. Both of these games feature great special effects and graphics. First up was Quake 2004 at the following settings:

• Settings: High
• Aspect Ratio: 16:9
• Antialiasing- No
• Anisotropic Filtering: No

To really get a feel for how a graphics card performs, I like to play FEAR. FEAR is one of the most demanding games for graphics cards around. I tested the GTO with FEAR's built in test demo. I let the game pick the optimum settings based on my system specifications and ended up with the following settings:

• Single and Multi Player Physics: Medium
• Particles Bouncing: Medium
• Shell Casings: On
• World Detail: Max
• Corpse Detail: Max
• Effects: Max
• Model decals: Max
• Water Resolution: Medium
• Reflections & Displays: Max
• Volumetric Lights: On
• Volumetric Light Density: Medium
• FSAA: Off
• Light Detail: Max
• Enable Shadow: On
• Shadow Detail: Max
• Soft Shadow: Off
• texture Filtering: Anisotropic 4x
• Texture Resolution: Max
• Videos: Medium
• Resolution: 1024 x 768
• Shaders: Max

At the settings listed above, the X1800GTO scored well. The minimum frame rate was 42 FPS, the average frame rate was 71 FPS and the Max frame rate was 152 FPS. 100% of the time the test ran the GTO was above the magic 40 FPS mark.