Radeon X800 GTO is the latest graphics chip released by ATI targeted to the mid-range market, located between Radeon X800 Pro and Radeon X800 GT and competing with GeForce 6600 GT from NVIDIA. This Radeon X800 GTO sample we’ve got from GeCube came already overclocked under a limited ”special edition“ series, so it is faster than Radeon X800 GTO from other companies.

This new chip officially runs at 400 MHz, while both Radeon X800 Pro and Radeon X800 GT run at 475 MHz. However, both Radeon X800 GTO and Radeon X800 Pro process 12 pixels per clock, while Radeon X800 GT processes only eight (the same amount as Radeon X800 SE). Radeon X800 XT can process up to 16.

The model we’ve got from GeCube runs at 472 MHz for core and 1 GHz for memory, what would create a faster video card than Radeon X800 Pro, which runs at 472 MHz for core and 950 MHz for memory.

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Figure 1: GeCube Overclocked Radeon X800 GTO.

The problem with this model we’ve got from GeCube is that it is a limited edition, which is already sold out. It can’t be found on GeCube’s website and on its box there is no information at all regarding this card being overclocked. We posted an entry on our blog telling you what we really think about this policy. Since it is controversial, let’s keep it on our blog.

You can see in our tutorial ”ATI Chips Comparison table“ the difference between this new chip and the other chips from ATI, while on our tutorial ”NVIDIA Chips Comparison Table“ you can compare it to its competitors from NVIDIA. It is very important to keep in mind that NVIDIA chips from series 6 and 7 use a Shader 3.0 engine (DirectX 9.0c), while ATI chips still use Shader 2.0 (DirectX 9.0).

It is always important to remember that the ”memory clock“ column from these tables informs the chip manufacturer (ATI or NVIDIA) recommended clock. In some cases, specially on cheaper video cards, the card manufacturer uses simpler memory chips (in order to cut the board price) and lower memory clocks (compatible with the memory chip used), making the board to achieve a lower performance compared to boards that use the same graphics chip but with their memory chips running at the chip manufacturer recommended clock. Because of that, we always run PowerStrip software in order to check if the video card memory is running at the standard clock set by the chip manufacturer or running at a lower clock rate.

This video card is targeted to the PCI Express bus, so in our review we will compare it only to other PCI Express video cards.