LOSTCIRCUITS

Once again, Sapphire is releasing a hidden jewel into the market, this time it is the X800 GTO², a card based on the R480 GPU and boasting 1.6 ns GDDR3 --- and the entire thing sells for about US$ 200.-. From a marketing, logistics and legal standpoint, this is is only possible because officially the card is specked to run on 12 pipelines only at a core and memory speed of 400 and 490 MHz, respectively. In contrast to the X800 Pro series in which some cards could be modded to full 16 pipeline functionality by means of a BIOS flash along with the necessary bridging of blown substrate fuses, the current version only requires a BIOS update to live up to its fullest potential. In the best case, we were able to achieve approximately 70 % overall performance increase over the original configuration of the same, physically identical card. So what did we have to do for this other than selling our souls to the Sapphire aliens?

Gran Turismo Omologato²

Towards its end, every product life cycle brings with it some kind of slump, newer, more efficient designs take over. New architectures bring new features to the table that are very difficult to retrofit into the older cores. After several years of quasi-dominating the high end graphics market, ATI seems to experience just that very scenario, nVidia's new 7800 series is finally catching up with performance and making up lost territory in sales.

High-end markets are for show, midrange is for dough or so the story goes, and the midrange is where ATI has taken even more severe punches from nVidia. In absence of an immediate killer product, there is of course always the known strategy of under-marketing a product and leaking out the way to fix the disabled portions as a way to convert the sheep into the proverbial disguised wolf. Intel has pursued this strategy very successfully with their Celeron series a few years ago and similarly with the 1.6 GHz version of the Northwood core-based Pentium4.

Another thing that usually happens towards the end of a life cycle is that the yields are increasing. Silicon mixtures and design features are tweaked and as a result, the all too well known shortage of high-end cores turns into an oversupply that has to be converted into hard cash. Needless to say that there is always the problem of hurting the high-end sales - therefore, as always, keep it a bit quiet and make sure that the secret is treated with the appropriate discretion.

We are discreet, and therefore, we are only talking about what we are supposed to be talking about and that - to be honest - is quite a handful. Imagine a sub $200 graphics card with 12 pipelines and running at default settings of 400 MHz core frequency and a memory clock of 490 MHz. Imagine then turning this card into a 16 pipelines monster with a core speed of 600 MHz and a memory clock of 570 MHz. Imagine finally the performance boost.…

If this sounds like the fable of the ugly duckling and the swan, Sapphire technologies has set out to prove that there is a real product that meets the requirements for the "dream come true" in a cardboard box. Offset from the rest of the pack by the moniker GTO², borrowed from the car racing scene to mean Gran Turismo Omologato [square] which signifies that it is a souped up version but in enough volume to qualify as a true production model, the Sapphire RADEON X800 GTO² is on the shelves in limited quantities for those who are in for a treasure hunt and to renew the fear in nVidia graphics card owners. So what is it that you get for two bills?

One thing to watch out for before embarking on a shopping spree is that the standard Sapphire X800 GTO does not have the capabilities of the GTO². More importantly, it appears as if some vendors use the GTO² moniker in search engines to direct traffic to their websites that then point to the wrong product. This is completely out of our jurisdiction, however, we would still like to stress the point that it is necessary to MAKE SURE that the product ordered is really the GTO² and not the standard GTO.

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