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Sapphire Radeon X1800 GTO

£142 inc VAT

Manufacturer: Sapphire

Our Rating: We rate this 4 out of 5

By | 02 August 06

The X1800 GTO isn't a brand-new chip, but the competitive pricing introduced by ATI and Sapphire make this the best deal on the market.

The X1800 GTO isn't a brand-new chip, but the competitive pricing introduced by ATI and Sapphire make this package the best deal on the market.

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It won't be for everyone. Those who want to play the latest games with high detail levels should make a beeline for the £200-plus Power category. But for those who don't mind playing at lower resolutions, the X1800 GTO offers excellent value.

Its biggest rival is the EVGA nVidia GeForce 7600 GT. The 7600 GT is easier to fit into a PC. The X1800 GTO is larger and requires an additional power connector. Both boast 12 pixel-shader processors but, where the X1800 GTO benefits from a full 256bit memory interface, the 7600 GT has to make do with a 128bit version.

The X1800 GTO loses out comfortably on clock speeds, but its memory interface makes up for these shortcomings. The result is that the X1800 GTO's memory bandwidth of 32GBps (gigabytes per second) easily trumps the 7600 GT's 22.4GBps.

What's the importance of this extra bandwidth? Just take a look at the real-world performance, where the X1800 GTO shows a clean pair of heels to the 7600 GT. It averaged an extra 6-8fps (frames per second) at most resolutions. And when we bumped up the anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, the gap frequently hit double figures.

Sapphire Radeon X1800 GTO Expert Verdict »
Post Review
ATI Radeon X1800 GTO graphics processor
256MB DDR3 RAM
core clock 500MHz
memory clock 500MHz (1GHz DDR effective)
manufacturing process 0.09-micron
12 pixel shader processors
256bit memory interface
PCI Express interface
DirectX 9.0 support
DVI
video in/out
  • Build Quality: We give this item 8 of 10 for build quality
  • Features: We give this item 8 of 10 for features
  • Value for Money: We give this item 9 of 10 for value for money
  • Overall: We give this item 8 of 10 overall

The Radeon X1800 GTO has some fairly decent specs for the money and the existence of a 256bit memory interface means that it's easily superior to the 7600 GT in terms of performance. It does need an extra power connector but, considering that it costs no more than the 7600 GTs, we think this is an excellent deal for those on a budget.

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