The ATI Radeon X850 XT PE (Platinum Edition) is a new top model for the High-End line of ATI video cards. It has many improvements and major changes in design of the chip and PCB.
The ATI Radeon X850 XT is an AGP video adapter. It has some differences from PCI-Express modifications. The power, which can be used via the AGP socket, is restricted with the value 40 Wt. At the same time, the cards with the PCI-Express can be provided with 75 Wt. An additional power supply is provided directly from the power unit via the Molex socket.
The ATI Radeon X850 XT PE has a space consuming cooling system. It takes two slots so that the card requires some space for two devices in the system case. The cooling system consists of a copper radiator and a cooler, covered with a plastic shell.
When a computer is switched on, then the cooler works with the maximal rpm. The noise is 72 dB (A) on a 10 sm distance. After the video card initialization before the POST (Power Onself Test for the system BIOS initialization) rpms are going lower. At this time the noise is decreased to 62 dB (A). When the operation system is loaded, then the driver starts controlling the cooler's speed of the rotation. This process is stable and the noise stays at the same level.
The testing proves that rpms of the cooler rarely achieve one hundred percent and the VPU does not achieve sixty degrees under the loading. In the automatic mode of the cooler management the parameter "Fan duty cycle" in the hardware monitoring system of Riva Tuner stays on the level of thirteen point six percent.
The Radeon X850 XT 256MB is produced by the 0.13 mkm technological process, but using the Low-K dielectrics allows to work on higher clock rates up to 540 MHz and even higher. The radiator is attached to the memory chips with thermo-layings. It is cooled with an aluminum plate. Such system provides an efficient cooling.
Samsung memory chips GDDR3 are installed on the card and have the access time 1.6 ns. It permits them to work with the clock 600 (1200) MHz. Actually, they are working on a little bit lower clock - 590 (1180) MHz. This is standard for the ATI Radeon X850 XT PE. The ATI Radeon X850 XT PE has an excellent 2D quality. In fact, all video cards, based on the ATI reference design, have such a high level of quality.
Testing for this video card in 3Dmark05 demonstrates the ability of the video card to work under pressure. There have been no games with similar graphics since the very release of 3Dmark05. It actively uses pixel and top shaders. These tests are very serious even for such a powerful 3D adapter as the ATI Radeon X850 XT PE.
The Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition is treated as the fastest video card for the gaming applications with specific settings. It shows excellent results for the games Doom 3 and Doom 4, when anti-aliasing is off. A high quality and fast mode 6xAA is a great advantage of the ATI Radeon X850 XT PE. Therefore, it would have better parameters if the developers provided it with the universal SM 3.0 mechanism. This is not a problem yet, as the most part of applications do not use the SM technology. At the same time, the things may change in the nearest future and this fact should be taken into account for expected models of the Radeon video cards.