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ASUS Extreme Radeon X1800 XT TOP/2DHTV Review January 02, 2006 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: If you're tired of Radeon X1800 XT cards that follow ATI's reference design, you'll definitely want to check out today's review of the ASUS Extreme X1800 XT TOP. Not only does the board feature a nearly silent dual-slot cooler, it also runs at the blazing clock speeds of 700MHz on the graphics core, and 800MHz memory! The board even ships with its own separate power supply and gamepad. But is this enough to overtake the mighty GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB? Find out in today's review!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 13 ) |
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Ironically enough, the tale of the R520 GPU used in ATI’s Radeon X1800 shares many similarities with NVIDIA’s ill-fated NV30 GPU, which was found in their GeForce FX 5800 line.When ATI was developing R520, they envisioned a core clock speed of 700MHz or more, this figure is considerably faster than any high-end graphics product produced to date, while the chip was based on a 16-pixel pipeline architecture. Like NVIDIA, ATI sacrificed shaders in order to hit blazing clock speeds.
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To pull all this off, both GPUs relied on brand new, untested manufacturing processes, both manufactured by TSMC. NVIDIA took the plunge with TSMC’s 130-nm process, while ATI went with TSMC’s 90-nm process.
By now we all know how the story played out for NV30. NVIDIA never could get good yields on NV30 at 500MHz, and the board’s FX Flow cooling ran so loud it was the butt of constant jokes. In addition, the performance of ATI’s Radeon 9700 Pro was superior to GeForce FX 5800 Ultra.
In the end NVIDIA had a part they couldn’t produce in significant quantities that not only ran loud, it also generated an excessive amount of heat and wasn’t faster than the competition. NVIDIA quickly scrapped the GeForce FX 5800 and moved to the more robust NV35 GPU found in the GeForce FX 5900, which solved many of the 5800’s flaws but the damage had already been done and NVIDIA didn’t truly recover until the launch of the GeForce 6800 Ultra many months later.
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This is where the comparisons between NV30 and R520 differ a little. Whereas NV30 suffered from poor performance, noise, and supply issues, the only real setback that’s been nagging R520 is supply -- the chip performs well. While ATI was never able to hit the 700MHz clock speed they were shooting for (opting for 625MHz instead), it’s still a very capable performer, delivering performance superior to the GeForce 7800 GTX256MB in many cases. Only NVIDIA’s flagship GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB runs faster, and this board currently sells for significantly more than the 7800 GTX 256MB or the Radeon X1800 XT.
But what if someone were to produce a R520 card capable of hitting 700MHz? That’s exactly what ASUS has done with their Extreme X1800 XT TOP/2DHTV card. Let’s see how it compares to other X1800 XT cards…
| Board analysis | Page:: ( 2 / 13 ) |
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At first glance, ASUS’ Extreme X1800 XT TOP looks like no other Radeon X1800 XT card on the market. Sitting next to ATI’s own Radeon X1800 XT reference board, the ASUS Extreme X1800 XT TOP looks massive. It even looks large sitting next to a GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB. But actually, the board is based entirely on ATI’s reference board design for the Radeon X1800 XT. ASUS makes no changes to the board’s PCB – the dimensions of the PCB are the same and the card’s core components are indistinguishable. The sole difference lies in the Extreme X1800 XT TOP’s unique cooling.
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The board’s most notable feature is without a doubt its dual-slot cooling. Like their Extreme N7800 GTX TOP we reviewed earlier this year, ASUS uses a cooling solution from Arctic Cooling on their Extreme X1800 XT TOP. In this case though, the cooler is unique to ASUS, according to Arctic Cooling, they have no plans at this time to release the cooler to the public.
This cycle generates a lot of heat. As anyone who’s owned a Zalman VGA heat pipe can tell you. Therefore, to help keep the graphics core and heat pipes cool, Arctic Cooling uses a large copper base, which rests just above the R520 GPU, enveloping the heat pipes.
Finally, cooling all of this is a large aluminum heatsink with thin, long fins. This is where the bulk of the cooling’s size comes from, as the fins are just shy of 1.5” long. By integrating lots of thin, long fins, the heatsink’s surface area is increased, thus improving its effectiveness as heat is drawn up the fins. The downside is that as a result, the card will eat up the slot directly adjacent to your graphics slot.
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Like the VGA Silencer line, the fan Arctic Cooling uses is large in diameter, allowing them to spin the fan at lower RPMs while still generating a considerable amount of airflow. Since it spins at lower RPMs, the fan generates less noise: although we wouldn’t say it runs silent, but it’s definitely an improvement over the stock cooler ATI and their board partners use on their Radeon X1800 XT cards.
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ASUS also places a large black aluminum heatsink on the Extreme X1800 XT TOP’s power circuitry located just behind the card’s cooler. On stock X1800 XT cards, a thin red aluminum heatsink is used. With the Extreme X1800 XT TOP running at higher clocks (and thus requiring more power) ASUS must have felt that the stock cooling wasn’t sufficient, replacing it with a larger, more robust heatsink.
| Faster clocks | Page:: ( 3 / 13 ) |
Running the graphics card at a clock speed higher than ATI’s reference clock speeds was a strict no-no. ATI was very adamant about this, as they wanted to ensure a consistent performance level across the board, particularly in the wake of criticism received over the wild variations in speeds board partners chose for their Radeon 8500LE cards.
In more recent months however, as ATI and their board partners have seen increasing competition from NVIDIA-based cards such as the GeForce 7800 GTX and 7800 GT (both of which have been fashionably overclocked by a wide range of NVIDIA’s board partners) ATI has relented on this, allowing their board partners a considerable amount of wiggle room on their X800 GT and X800 GTO cards. Clock speeds of retail cards based on both of these GPUs are all over map at the moment.
ATI is now providing the same degree of freedom on the Radeon X1800 XT, and ASUS is the first board partner to cash in on this as their robust Arctic Cooling cooler does an excellent job of keeping the R520 graphics core cool.
ASUS clocks the R520 graphics core on their Extreme X1800 XT TOP card at 700MHz – 75MHz higher than ATI’s stock clock speed of 625MHz. This is an improvement of just over 10%, boosting fill rate from 10 Gigatexels/sec on the stock X1800 XT to 11.2 Gigatexels/sec on the Extreme X1800 XT TOP.
But ASUS doesn’t stop there, as the ASUS overclocks the memory on the Extreme X1800 XT TOP as well, running it at 800MHz (1.6GHz effective), an improvement of 50MHz over the stock Radeon X1800 XT.
It’s important to note that while the board’s memory runs at 800MHz, ASUS uses the same Samsung K4J52324QC memory modules that are used on regular Radeon X1800 XT cards. These modules are rated at 1.2ns so technically ASUS isn’t overclocking the memory, as the modules are good for speeds of up to 800MHz according to Samsung. NVIDIA uses faster 1.1ns memory modules on their GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB cards but these modules are currently in very short supply.
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To power all this, ASUS includes an 80-watt external power supply kit, which must be used with the Extreme X1800 XT TOP. ASUS runs a rounded power cable from the board’s external power connection on the back of the board across the top of the card where it rests inside a metal housing. This metal housing also acts as an additional heatsink for the board’s PCB, drawing heat off the card.
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From there the power cable runs across the card’s fan, and finally out to the board’s backplate. Here you’ll hook up the external power supply unit, which is fairly small and fortunately doesn’t generate much heat.
While it sounds complicated, the whole solution is actually fairly elegant, some may even feel it’s easier than reaching inside your case to connect the X1800 card to your system’s power supply unit. After all, with ASUS’ external solution you don’t lose a power connection from your PSU.
This way ASUS can also ensure a consistent level of additional power is going to the card in addition to the power the board receives via the PCI-E graphics slot.
| Awesome bundle | Page:: ( 4 / 13 ) |
The rest of the card
ASUS also includes a USB gamepad with their Extreme X1800 XT TOP card, the ASUS XitePad. The XitePad is a pretty large gamepad, with eight buttons, an 8-way thumbpad, and two joysticks. The XitePad supports force feedback (with dual motor vibration) and digital and analog modes. A small LED indicates whether you’re running in digital or analog mode.
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Four of the controller’s buttons can be programmed to perform macro functions, while the controller itself feels pretty solid when resting in your hands. The layout of the controller is similar to Logitech’s Action controller for the PS2, and overall is pretty good. The downside to the XitePad though is its size. While it’s not as uncomfortable as the original Xbox controller was, it’s considerably bulkier than a PS2 or Xbox Controller S, and feels bloated after playing with an Xbox 360 controller.
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Fortunately though, the thumbpad on the ASUS XitePad as just as responsive as the Xbox 360’s thumbpad, and it is after all free.
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ASUS also includes their latest suite of software utilities with the Extreme X1800 XT TOP. For starters, there’s GameFace Messenger. GameFace Messenger is ASUS’ instant messaging client for gamers. GFM allows up to 8 gamers to talk and even see each other while gaming, making it useful for those of you who are in a clan or guild, meanwhile, with GameReplay, you can record your favorite gaming moments into MPEG4 video files for playback (and bragging rights) later. ASUS also includes a copy of their GameLiveShow software, which allows you to stream your gaming experiences live over the Internet.
Other new software programs bundled with the card include ASUS’ Splendid video enhancement technology (you will need to install the ASUS driver to use Splendid) as well as OnScreenDisplay, which can be used to toggle display settings such as brightness, contrast, and gamma without having to leave the game – in fact you can toggle it via hotkeys with one keystroke.
Also bundled with the card include a leather bound CD carrier, two DVI adapters, a VIVO cable, component cable for hooking the card up to an HDTV, S-Video and composite cables, and an additional power cable. ASUS also includes copies of ASUS DVD XP, Power Director 3, Media Show, Virtual Drive 9, a CD with demos of a few games, and full copies of Project: Snowblind and Xpand Rally.
| Test Systems | Page:: ( 5 / 13 ) |
System Setup
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe
2GB OCZ DDR400 SDRAM
ASUS Extreme Radeon X1800 XT TOP
ATI RADEON X1800 XT
CATALYST 5.13
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB
Driver version ForceWare 81.98
250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0c
Benchmarks
IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles
Call of Duty 2
Half-Life 2
F.E.A.R.
Battlefield 2
Quake 4 (dual-core patch wasn’t used)
| Half-Life 2 4xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 6 / 13 ) |
Half-Life 2 – Direct3D
| Battlefield 2 | Page:: ( 7 / 13 ) |
Battlefield 2 – Direct3D
| Quake 4 | Page:: ( 8 / 13 ) |
Quake 4 – OpenGL
| IL-2 4xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 9 / 13 ) |
IL-2: FB – OpenGL
| F.E.A.R. Performance | Page:: ( 10 / 13 ) |
F.E.A.R. – Direct3D
| Call of Duty 2 | Page:: ( 11 / 13 ) |
Call of Duty 2 – Direct3D
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 12 / 13 ) |
Pros
Radeon X1800 XT GPU: After building largely on the R300 graphics core first launched with the Radeon 9700 Pro over two years ago for their X800 line, ATI starts with a clean piece of paper for the Radeon X1800 XT – this is a totally redesigned graphics processor. The Radeon X1800 XT’s R520 graphics core was built specifically to address the increased use of branching in shader model 3.0 games. The chip has a new ultra-threading dispatch processor that tracks and distributes up to 512 threads across the RADEON X1800’s shader processors, while R520 also has a redesigned programmable memory controller sporting eight 32-bit memory controllers (previous ATI architectures had just four controllers). With more controllers onboard, the X1800 can serve more read/write requests simultaneously and thus increasing efficiency.
Finally, the Radeon X1800 XT provides full support for ATI’s Avivo video technology. Avivo provides improved DVD and video playback as well as dedicated hardware acceleration for high-definition video formats like H.264.
While it got off to a sluggish start at launch, ATI’s Radeon X1800 XT is finally beginning to show signs of promise thanks to newer drivers (which deliver better performance) and increased retail availability, this has helped drive street prices on boards down. Cards can be found between $530-$600, which is over $50 less than ATI’s $600 MSRP for the Radeon X1800 XT.
In terms of performance, the Radeon X1800 XT typically falls somewhere between the GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB and 512MB. Gaming at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and 16xAF with all the eye candy cranked up is no problem for the Radeon X1800 XT.
Clock speeds: ASUS clocks their Extreme X1800 XT at a whopping 700MHz on the graphics core, that’s 75MHz higher than ATI’s stock speed for the X1800 XT, while the memory runs at 800MHz (50MHz above the X1800 XT). These changes netted the board roughly an additional 10% in performance in our testing.
Bundle: ASUS includes a ton of goodies with the Extreme X1800 XT. The most significant addition is a tossup between the game King Kong and the ASUS XitePad gamepad. King Kong is a brand new game, so ASUS has undoubtedly worked pretty hard to get it in there, and unlike most movie adaptations it happens to be a pretty fun game with cutting-edge graphics and a good storyline. The XitePad is a little on the large side, but it still fits well within your hands, plus it provides force-feedback and programmable buttons. It’s definitely a lot better than what you’d expect to get with a graphics card.
Cooling: For their Extreme X1800 XT TOP board ASUS employs a custom heatsink/fan unit manufactured by Arctic Cooling. The new cooler uses heat pipes and a massive heatsink to keep the R520 graphics core cool, and it does this while running extremely quiet.
CrossFire ready: While ASUS clocks their Extreme X1800 XT TOP significantly higher than standard X1800 XT boards, the card is 100% compatible with ATI’s CrossFire technology, and the ASUS card is able to run at its stock clock frequencies without having to underclock itself to ATI’s standard speeds for the X1800 XT. The CrossFire X1800 master board and ASUS Extreme slave board each run at their own separate speeds.
Cons
Price: While we don’t have an official pricetag from ASUS for the Extreme X1800 XT TOP (with the holidays we were unable to get our question answered), we’re pretty sure it will sell for a nice premium over ASUS’ standard X1800 XT card.
Overclocking/Smart Doctor: Unfortunately, our overclocking endeavors with the Extreme X1800 XT TOP were rather limited due to the dearth of software out there for the Radeon X1800 XT. We tried using the DriverHeaven.net overclocking tool for R5xx cards which provides a wealth of overclocking options for standard X1800 XT cards (including voltage control) but since the tool was written for card owners with regular X1800 XT cards, the stock speeds ASUS selected for their Extreme X1800 XT TOP were literally too high for the overclocking tool and it wouldn’t let us bump up the core or memory speeds beyond the ASUS stock settings of 700MHz core/800MHz memory. Our overclocking attempts with PowerStrip were equally unsuccessful.
We wish ASUS had included some form of overclocking tool with the Extreme X1800 XT TOP. We were huge fans of their SmartDoctor software, praising it in our reviews of older ASUS products, as it provided features that went well beyond anything else out there on the market. Unfortunately though, ASUS hasn’t provided any updates to SmartDoctor in quite some time.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 13 / 13 ) |
FiringSquad says:
The board is clocked at 700MHz on the graphics core, making it the fastest Radeon X1800 XT graphics card on the planet and fulfilling the vision ATI’s engineers had intended for the X1800 XT GPU when it was originally designed. ASUS then clocks the board’s memory at 800MHz, 50MHz over the stock speed of the X1800 XT, providing a performance boost to the card at high resolutions with AA/AF. These changes net the board an extra 10% in performance.
This would probably be the fastest graphics card in existence if it weren’t for the GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB.
The most impressive part of the board though is its cooling. Thanks to its Arctic Cooling cooler, the ASUS Extreme X1800 XT runs considerably quieter than ATI’s own Radeon X1800 XT board, all while running faster and cooler. The cooler takes up two slots, but so does the X1800 XT, so we don’t feel this is a major issue. Since the cooler’s fan sucks in the air directly adjacent to the card though you’ll probably want to keep an additional slot free (3 slots total) for improved airflow. Since the reference X1800 XT cooler relies on air from the right side of the board this isn’t a problem for stock X1800 cards with ATI’s reference cooling. Stock X1800 XT cards also exhaust the hot air outside your case, the cooler Arctic Cooling employs on the Extreme X1800 XT won’t do this. This may or may not be a major downside depending on how you have your system’s case cooled.
Finally, ASUS bundles an incredible array of goodies with the card, including the game King Kong on DVD-ROM and a USB gamepad.
Our only real gripe with the card is the lack of overclocking beyond ASUS’ stock speeds. Since it’s clocked so high from the factory already, today’s overclocking tools for the X1800 XT don’t seem to be compatible with the Extreme X1800 XT TOP, the sliders just don’t work properly. This could all be easily solved by ASUS if they just provided their own overclocking tool with the Extreme X1800 XT TOP, but unfortunately they don’t.
It’s a real shame ASUS hasn’t stepped up to the plate in this regard, as in our opinion, with its robust cooling and external 80-watt power supply unit, this board is begging to be overclocked further. Even more puzzling is the fact that ASUS has traditionally provided some of the best overclocking software in the business thanks to their SmartDoctor utility, but this feature has been notably absent from several of ASUS’ latest high-end boards lately. We’d honestly rather see ASUS include SmartDoctor on their cards rather than the other utilities they’ve provided recently, such as GameLiveShow, GameFace Live, and GameReplay. Fortunately this is something that can be easily fixed via an updated download if ASUS chooses to do so, but we’re unaware if ASUS has any plans to do this.
Other than this omission, it’s hard to find anything wrong with the Extreme X1800 XT TOP. With its supercharged clock speeds, impressive cooler, and excellent bundle, the ASUS Extreme X1800 XT TOP is the hottest Radeon X1800 XT card on the market right now, and is an Editor’s Choice product. Congratulations to ASUS for putting together such a remarkable piece of hardware. Now if we can just get our hands on some overclocking software so we can really push this card to the limit!