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The Bundle

The shipping box design is held in the typical Sapphire style featuring their Barbarella-gone-alien figure, the body is ok, the face ... well ... we have seen worse or better and it is really a matter of personal preference whether anyone is attracted to the particular layout. Aside from the shelves of BestBuy and the likes, nobody is going to care much anyway. Compared to the X800XT, the hardware and software bundles are slightly reduced, the DVD Director software and one of the VIVO cables is missing, which is acceptable in view of the fact that the X800XL also lacks the Rage Theatre chip.

Still, what is included is an attractive bundle, especially the games featuring SplinterCell Pandora and Prince of Persia plus Cyberlink’s PowerDVD. Fortunately, the latter does not care about regional restrictions, meaning that Asian or European DVDs that don’t run on a standard DVD Player will play without problem.

           

The "Bundle"

The Quick Start manual covers the basics of installation, that is, how to insert the card into the appropriate slot and securing it with a screw to the frame but that’s about it. Unfortunately, there is no mentioning with any word of the bundled cables and use thereof, likewise, a brief description of the software bundle would not hurt.

The Card

The X800XL series is only available in PCI Express format. The biggest difference between the RADEON X800 XL itself and the X800XT or Pro series is the absence of the power connector. The overall power consumption of the card is less than 75W, meaning that the entire power can be supplied through the slot interface – as long as the mainboard can deliver the appropriate amount. Necessarily, the GPU is cooled, so are the GDDR3 discreets on the backside of the PCB. Those on the front are partially covered by the GPU cooler, however, there is a gap of about 2 mm between the heatsink and the memory components. Arguably, GDDR3 components with their pseudo open drain termination use substantially less power than DDR2 with center-tap termination and, consequently, produce almost negligible amounts of heat. Therefore, the lack of heat spreaders at the card’s front is perfectly in order – those spreaders on the backside are of cosmetic nature only.

           

The X800XL uses eight 2.0 ns Samsung GDDR3 memory components and the R430 core

As mentioned already, the RADEON X800XL uses the R430 core with 16 pixel pipelines and a 256 bit-wide memory bus to address the 256 MB of local frame buffer, likewise, there is no Rage Theatre chip onboard. At the face bracket, the X800XL shows the standard VGA and DFP out connector as well as one s-Video port.

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