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Gigabyte Silent-Pipe Radeon X800 XL (GV-RX80L256V) PCIe Review
Date: 2005-06-07 | Author: Shane Unrein
Company: Gigabyte
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INTRODUCTION
Completely silent and fragtastic gaming? Oh yeah, baby, and it comes in the form of Gigabyte's Silent-Pipe Radeon X800 XL. By now, we all know that the X800 XL offers a lot of bang for the buck, and if you read my last couple of X800 XL reviews, you would know that ATI's stock cooler on the X800 XL is quite noisy. While some companies are releasing "quiet" or "nearly silent" X800 XL solutions, Gigabyte completely eliminated the noise problem by extending its Silent-Pipe technology to this excellent VPU.
My first thought when asked to review a completely silent X800 XL was, "Hey, that would be a perfect HTPC card. Good gaming and silent! Sign me up!" Unfortunately, the height of the Silent-Pipe X800 XL (GV-RX80L256V) due to its heatpipes will prohibit it from fitting in my current HTPC case (an Antec Overture) and many others. Nevertheless, it still seems like a top media PC option to me. Keep reading to find out if the performance is on par with other X800 XL PCI Express cards and to learn more about this cool and silent offering from Gigabyte.
FEATURES & SPECIFICATIONS
Features
The differentiating feature of this Gigabyte X800 XL is of course the Silent-Pipe, described on the box as "soundless heat pipe technology." That is exactly what it is -- a fanless, noiseless, passive cooling solution. You can read about Silent-Pipe technology right here. If you take a look at that page, you can see that Zalman is Gigabyte's partner on the Silent-Pipe technology, which is definitely a good thing considering Zalman's leadership in the cooling industry.
- VPU by ATi RADEON™ X800 XL
- Supports the PCI-e X 16 standard
- Integrated 256MB DDR III Memory
- Fully support DirectX®9.0 and the latest OpenGL®functionality..
- 16 parallel rendering pipelines
- All new 256-bit memory interface
- Supports video capture for video editing (VIVO)
- DVI-I and TV-Out connector supported
- Supports “V-Tuner II” for overclocking.
- Bundles PowerDVD 5.0 and PowerDirector 3 ME
- Bundles 2 full version games
Specifications
You can see the general specifications of an X800 XL card below.
| RADEON X800 XL | RADEON X850 XT | RADEON X850 XT PE | |
| Memory Amount (MB) | 256 | 256 | 256 |
| Memory Type | GDDR3 | GDDR3 | GDDR3 |
| Memory Interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Clock Speed (MHz) | 490 | 540 | 590 |
| Engine Clock Speed (MHz) | 400 | 520 | 540 |
| Pipelines | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| Pixel Fillrate | 6.4 Gpixels/sec | 8.32 Gpixels/sec | 8.6 Gpixels |
| Geometry Rate | 600 MTriangles | 780 MTriangles | 810 MTriangles |
Here are the specifications from Gigabyte's web site.
| Model No. | GV-RX80L256V |
| Chipset | ATI RADEON X800 XL |
| Memory | 256 MB |
| Memory Bus | 256 bit |
| BUS | PCI-e x 16 |
| D-SUB | Y |
| TV-OUT | Y |
| DVI Port | Y |
| MultiView | Y |
| H/W Monitor | N |
|
$$ FIND THE BEST PRICES FOR Gigabyte's Silent-Pipe X800 XL @ PRICEGRABBER $$ |
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