SUMMARY: Our second review today is of PowerColor's brand new Radeon X800GT EVO graphics card which comes with factory out-of-the-box watercooling. The watercooling unit is actually the ThermalTake Tide Water cooling solution and its clear PowerColor is making moves to get into the hearts of enthusiasts but have they succeeded? Read on for our thoughts on the new graphics card.
The PowerColor X800GT EVO box is a great looking box with a little handle on top. The front of the box shows us a picture of the card and water cooling solution. The front of the box gives us a quick run down on card specifications along with a run down on the water cooling module.
Turning the box over we see extended specifications of the card including the use of the R480 core (used with X850 cards), 1.6ns DDR3 memory (again a feature seen in high-end Radeon cards) and Dual DVI interface (a feature PowerColor and some users seem to love). We also have extended specifications on the water cooling solution and a small rundown on the card in different languages.
Opening up the box we have a very similar package to what we found in our normal PowerColor X800GT. Cable wise we have our S-Video cable, RCA Cable, HDTV cable and RCA to S-Video converter along with two DVI to VGA connectors.
When it comes to manuals we have a Quick Installation Guide for the card and an Installation Guide for the Tide Water - it might be worth actually having a look at this to make sure you setup everything correctly.
The Card
Moving the package contents out the way we have a look at the card which comes in two separate pieces joined by black tubing. One part is the ThermalTake Tide Water part which takes care of all the cooling and the other being the graphics card which takes care of all the graphics, of course.
Where are the memory heatsinks? MIA, just like Crossfire
Turning the card over we have another plain side with no memory heatsinks installed and our serial number and model number.
Moving to the side of the card like the standard PowerColor X800GT we have a Dual DVI configuration which is excellent for people who have digital LCD screens. The S-Video port also lets us output to HDTV with the connector that is included within the package.
The standard core and memory speed on the EVO version is 500MHz and 1050MHz, respectively. The standard PowerColor X800GT comes with a core and memory speed of 486MHz and 1000MHz, respectively. So we have a decent little overclock out-of-the-box but nothing amazing.
Now lets take a look at the cooling solution and installation.
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