SUMMARY: It started off with a couple ATI Radeon X700 graphics cards and then everyone wanted to get in on the act. Today we've got an absolute monster of a roundup for you comparing 11 Radeon X700 cards from 8 different companies including ATI, GeCube, PowerColor, HIS, MSI, Sapphire, Gigabyte and ASUS. Read on as we take a close look at all the cards, their packages and most importantly how they perform against each other!
We received three different versions of the GeCube X700PRO one was your standard run of the mill 128MB DDR3 card, second is the heat pipe variant and the final is the Extreme version. All three boxes were exactly the same with the only difference being the model number sticker located on the side and the extreme version with has the sticker on the front, as you can see. The front of the box clearly shows us that it is a 128MB DDR3 card and is also the PRO version of the card. We also can see that it is PCI Express, has HDTV out, DVI and is Direct X 9.0c compatible.
Moving to the back of the box we see our normal run of the mill extended specs of the card with a feature list and a little run down on the X700PRO along with the maximum resolution supported by the card in 2D and 3D.
In the boxes we have the same package - a Driver CD, PowerDVD and the usual manual that we wont ever touch.
As these cards support HDTV, we find a HDTV out cable in all the packages as well as our normal S-Video cable that has RCA and S-Video so you can make use of the TV out function on the cards no matter how old your TV is.
- A Closer Look
The heat pipe version of the card uses a butterfly like design which completely covers the front of the card. As you can see the heat pipes leave the top of the card and make its way around to the back.
The back of the card shows that the heatsink covers the whole rear of the card. This particular sample we have was one of GeCubes original heat pipe cards that made its way out of their factory before it was in full production, although they are well and truly in full swing.
The standard X700PRO on offer from GeCube uses a heatsink that is very similar to the reference design. The cooler doesnt go out to the memory modules but is designed simply so it can push more heat away from the GPU. The back of the card is completely bare as there was no point offering cooling on the rear memory as its not offered on the front. Far too often we see companies cool the front and not the rear.
The 9600XT Extreme was a huge hit last year when ATI was ruling the mid level market and this time around we see an Extreme version of the X700 come in from GeCube. We see the core and memory speed move from the standard 425MHz / 864MHz to 440MHz / 950MHz. This should offer us a nice little performance increase over the standard cards.
The back of the card has a heat plate that goes across the memory to help keep it cooled when operating at these higher speeds.
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