Madshrimps Forum Madness - Sapphire’s Radeon X800 Pro 256MB @ GamePC

Quote:

The Radeon X800 Pro card does not seem to be incredibly revolutionary in terms of performance or design, but instead is a refined product with an incredible amount of power and a solid driver set right out of the box. ATi’s ability to get these cards on the market so quickly is very impressive, and while prices are likely to remain high while these cards are still new, we’re already seen a lot of demand for these products.
Performance wise, the card simply flattens the competition in most every modern title. The X800 Pro won thirteen of our fourteen benchmarks, and was only one frame per second behind on the fourteenth. Even modern games which push the GPU heavily run like butter on the X800 Pro, and well, for a $450+ graphics card, they should! The performance of this card running Battlefield:Vietnam left the biggest impression on us, as the X800 Pro nearly doubled the performance of the competition.

It’s pretty clear that Sapphire was in a rush to get this card out to market. Bundling a set of early drivers and software which doesn’t fully work with the hardware being the two prime examples. Nevertheless, the hardware is a solid clone of the ATI reference design, and with ATI’s recently released Catalyst 4.5 drivers, the software issues should not be of any concern to anyone. Sapphire’s hardware bundle is quite good, and perhaps some day we’ll be able to use the free Half-Life2 coupon and really see what this card can do.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...irex800&page=1