Rosewill X800 XL - More of the Card
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On the end of the card, notice there are no connectors. The design allows the possibilities of VIVO and a power connector. This is not the VIVO model, and this model is not one of those that uses the extra power connector on the X800XL. The card is powered exclusively by the PCI-Express slot, so there is no need for the connector.
On the Nvidia 6 series with 256 MB or less of RAM, the memory is located on one side. ATI does it differently; they use half on each side, so this card has 128 MB on each half of the card. The memory on this model is made my Samsung, which is found on many of the ATI cards. Samsung reports these chips are 2.0ns, or 500 MHz, so you are most likely going to be able to do 500 MHz easily on the memory.
Next up we will check the core out. The X800 XL has the R430 core. The core is also found on the cheaper X800 card. They are both clocked at 400 MHz. The difference is that the X800 only has 8 pipelines while the XL has all 16 pipelines. The core is built on a 110 nm fab process while the X850 is built on a bigger 130nm process. The smaller sized core will produce less heat.
One other thing you may notice is the name that has been stamped onto the core. Most cards have the card name stamped, but not this one! If you look closely, you will notice it says "X800 PRO." If you recall I never mentioned a X800 Pro with the R430 core. No, I didn't screw up. ATI doesn't make an X800 Pro with a R430 core. My guess would be ATI decided to change some names around so that it would be less confusing on what card the consumer wanted to buy. Interesting nevertheless.
Next is the single slot cooler. In the next section you will see how well it performs. It cools the core, as well as the memory on the side of the GPU, but there is no cooling for the other side, which kind of defeats the purpose.
Next: Cooling and Overclocking >>
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