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     One of the fastest graphics card in the world has landed in the ClubOC labs yet again. This time our friends at Connect3D have sent over their Radeon X1800 GTO. Although ATi has the X1900 series, the X1800 is still an incredibly fast card and is by no means considered a mid level card. Keep in mind, the X1800 was ATi's flagship model just a short time ago. The advantage of choosing a graphics card that is 2nd down on the list is you no longer pay 1st place prices. I'm all about saving money! So how does this card perform with some of our favorite games and benchmarking software? Let's get busy and find out!

     With the X1800 GTO ATI hopes to provide the X1800 technology at a more mainstream friendly price.  The X1800 GTO is in fact a scaled down version of its X1800 XT big brother.  The X1800 GTO uses the same R520 core with only 12 pixel pipelines.  Your full speed X1800 XT uses 16 pipes.  ATI has also scaled down the speed to more closely match the X1800 XL.  The result is a card with a MSRP of about $240 that can compete with the NVIDIA mid level 7600GT cards.  The  X1800 GTO is even compatable with ATI's Crossfire technology providing yet another affordable SLI style alternative.  Rumors are already circulating about the enticing possibility of unlocking the cards through software or firmware hacks.

Overview & Features by ATi

Radeon® X1800 Series — Ultra-threaded 3D Architecture for Maximum Visual Velocity
The ATI Connect3D Radeon® X1800 Series hands you the visual and performance possibilities you only dreamed of from a PC graphics processor. It has been designed with a radically new ultra-threaded 3D architecture and Shader Model 3.0, unleashing the most mind-blowing gaming effects. What’s more, the Radeon® X1800 introduces ATI’s revolutionary Avivo™, our new reference for video and display perfection.

The Most Advanced 3D Performance Arsenal
Get the ultimate gaming performance AND image quality with an advanced ultra-threaded 3D architecture, a ruthlessly efficient memory controller and Shader Model 3.0, all enabled by the most advanced 90 nanometer GPU process. Radeon® X1800 series’ 90-nanometer process technology and ultra-threaded architecture combine power and efficiency as well as support for Shader Model 3.0 to deliver new High Dynamic Range visual effects, enhanced realism with Adaptive Anti Aliasing and lightening fast performance in OpenGL® and DirectX® 9 games.

CrossFire™: Multiply and Conquer with Multi-GPU Performance
Designed from the ground up with GPU sharing in mind, the Radeon® X1800 series allows you to get incredible gaming performance by adding a Radeon® X1800 Crossfire™ Edition graphics card for ultra fast performance that works with all games, all the time. CrossFire’s™ “supertiling” GPU sharing speeds rendering by evenly dividing the graphics processing, intelligently alternating the rendering workload to each Radeon® GPU for efficient load balancing, and optimized performance. CrossFire™ ignites with the higher anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, shading, and texture settings you desire. Adjust your display configurations, experiment with your advanced 3D settings, and check the effect with a real-time 3D-rendered preview within ATI’s Catalyst® Control Center to rule your CrossFire™ system.

For a complete CrossFire™ solution, the following additional products are required:
CrossFire™ Ready motherboard
Compatible Radeon® CrossFire Edition co-processor
Minimum 500W power supply

High Definition Image Quality with Avivo™
Connect your Radeon® X1800 with your home entertainment devices for high definition convergence, enhanced with ATI’s revolutionary new Avivo™ video and display technology platform. Avivo™ technology creates vibrant colours, ultra sharp images, true-to-life image reproduction, and the smoothest HD video playback ever offered by ATI.

Avivo™ redefines the ultimate visual experience for today’s PCs, and sets the stage for tomorrow’s exciting possibilities. Check your board for specific support of Avivo™ features.

Get high image fidelity with CRT and LCD displays, TVs, rear projection and plasma TVs, as well as projectors. Avivo™ introduces new life to colours across the entire spectrum with an advanced 10-bit-per-color display engine. Gain better digital signal reception, and maintain cleaner video with hardware noise reduction. Enjoy high-quality analog video capture enabled by robust 12-bit analog-to-digital converters.

ATI’s Catalyst®: Power and Control
Control your Radeon® X1800 with ATI’s Catalyst® Control Center, the award winning feature-rich and stable 3D software application. Catalyst® automatically configures optimal settings for your system, and is packed with features that go far beyond traditional driver configuration software. Catalyst® supports GPU overdrive, and automatically resets the graphics processor when necessary. Keep ahead of fast-moving gaming effects and technology changes with frequent Catalyst® software updates, and discover Radeon® X1800’s exceptional support for Windows® XP, Windows® Media Center Edition and Microsoft® Vista™

Features
321 million transistors on 90nm fabrication process
Twelve pixel shader processors
Eight vertex shader processors
256-bit 8-channel GDDR3/GDDR4 memory interface
CrossFire Multi-GPU Ready

Ring Bus Memory Controller
512-bit internal ring bus for memory reads
Lossless Z Compression (up to 48:1)
Fast Z-Buffer Clear
Z/stencil cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering
Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, including widescreen HDTV resolutions

Ultra-Threaded Shader Engine
Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware
Full speed 128-bit floating point processing for all shader operations
3Dc+ texture compression
Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® 2.0

Advanced Image Quality Features
64-bit floating point HDR rendering supported throughout the pipeline
Includes support for blending and multi-sample anti-aliasing
2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes
New Adaptive Anti-Aliasing feature with Performance and Quality modes
Temporal Anti-Aliasing mode
2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes
High-resolution texture support (up to 4k x 4k)

Avivo™ Video and Display Engine
High performance programmable video processor
Accelerated MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264 decoding (including DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray playback), encoding & transcoding (requires optional soft DVD player)
DXVA support
De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
Motion compensation, IDCT, DCT and colour space conversion
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
HDR tone mapping acceleration
Maps any input format to 10 bit per channel output
Flexible display support
Dual integrated dual-link DVI transmitters
Dual integrated 10 bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
Complete, independent colour controls and video overlays for each display
High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all outputs
Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays
Xilleon™ TV encoder for high quality analog output
YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays
Fast, glitch-free mode switching
VGA mode support on all outputs

Avivo™ is a technology platform that includes a broad set of capabilities offered by ATI products. Full enablement of some Avivo™ capabilities may require complementary products.

System Requirements
PCI Express™ based PC is required with one x16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard.
Connection to the system power supply is required (Adapter Included)
450-Watt power supply or greater recommended (assumes fully loaded system)
512MB of system memory
Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
DVD playback requires DVD drive and decoder software (not included)

Operating Systems Support
Windows® XP
Windows® XP x64 Edition
Windows® Media Center Edition 2005
Windows® Vista

Display Support
DVI-I connector for digital CRTs or flat panels
VGA connector for analogue display
Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions and refresh rates
Dual Link DVI-I for high-resolution digital displays

DISPLAY MODES: FEATURES
Resolutions, colors and maximum refresh rates (Hz) for 256, 65K and 16.7M colours
2D DISPLAY MODES
Monitor Resolution Hz
640x480 200
800x600 200
1024x768 200
1152x864 200
1280x1024 160
1600x1200 120
1920x1080* 16:9 120
1920x1200 100
1920x1440 90
2048x1536 85
2560c1600 60
MAXIMUM 3D RESOLUTIONS
65K colours 2048x1536
16.7M colours 2048x1536
1.07 billion colours 2560x1600

* 16:9 aspect ratio monitors are supported on 1920x1080 and 848x480 on Windows® XP, Windows® 2000 and Windows® ME. The complete list of resolutions depends on the driver.