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Reviews for ATI Radeon X800 XL Graphics Card256MB - MPN: 100435508 
By member:
tonymil
- Dec 6, 2005
Best AGP Card for the MoneyStrengths: Low Power Consumption, Excellent Warranty, Great Performance, VIVO Weakness: Not Dual DVI, Expensive Without Sale / Rebate I have been struggling with the decision of whether or not to upgrade motherboards to get PCIe support. I wasn't sure if it was worth investing serious money in an AGP card at this point. However, seeing as how the mid-range cards are not bandwidth limited with the AGP port, a $200-$250 expense seemed reasonable. The rest of my system (74GB raptor, 1 GB RAM, Athlon 3500+, Shuttle SN95G5) is more than adequate. 100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
patrickgagne
- Oct 28, 2005
This card is the best for the priceStrengths: Fast FPS on benchmark Great detail in games Weakness: Heavy card This card is the best. I can now play Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. without any static screens and great detail. 100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
gtguy01
- Sep 9, 2005
ATI Radeon X800-XL AGPStrengths: Incredible Speed with Good Value. TIVO = TV in and out. Weakness: Cannot use with WinMe or Win98. Catalyst control center. This is an awesome video card. I am able to run all my 3d applications and games at 100FPS at 1280x1024 with 4 x Full Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA) and 8 X Anisotropic Filtering (AF) with an Athlon XP 3200. I can even turn up the AF and FSAA even more with a negligible performance hit, but there is no need. With the AGP version of this card you also get TV in (in addition to TV-out). You can split your cable TV into two wires and watch one channel on the TV and one channel on the computer. The drivers are much improved over the years, and sizzle with the leading games like Half-Life 2, Far Cry, Doom 3, and NFS Underground 2, and Unreal Tournament 2004. The drivers also support clone mode on TV out or stretch mode on the TV out (extending your desktop to the TV). This card supports refresh rates over 100 for most resolutions. The 2D speed of this card lets you run FSAA in the DOSbox program to give you FSAA with older DOS games. There are only a few cards with faster performance than this one, but they are more expensive, and here is the key...with a system of Athlon 3500 and below you basically do not get any more performance increase by going with the more expensive faster cards, because the CPU is the bottleneck. So for anything Athlon 3500 and below including all Athlon XP systems, this is the fastest you can get. The drivers do not work with Windows ME or Windows 98, a disadvantage if you have a dual boot or old system. Do not use the bloated Catalyst Control Center (used to change display settings like FSAA and vsync etc) that comes with the display drivers. Instead use ATI tray tools which runs much faster and is much more convenient to use. 96% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
drstrange
- Aug 5, 2005
XL Means Extra LargeStrengths: Performance, relative price, quality, features. Weakness: Output options. This is a fast, cool running and well priced gaming card relative to the competition (6800GT) and blows it away in motion-video performance and quality. 91% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
julievault
- May 5, 2005
ATI Radeon X800 XL Graphics CardStrengths: Absolutely great card. Has very useful features such as the FM encoder, and still has the ability to game the newer games. Weakness: Price Love the card, can play UT2004, DOOM 3, HL2 at the higher settings with good frame rates. Also provides great everydat features such as the FM, TV tuner. Love the remote and the easy to setup software that came with it. 77% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
bulldog93
- Apr 28, 2005
ATI Radeon X800 XL Graphics CardStrengths: Great price. Weakness: None. Fast card. Low power consumption. Decent manufacturer warranty. Equivalent to the 6800GT, but about $100 cheaper. Hopefully it will be usuable with ATIs Multi Rendering technology when it comes out. 77% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
cmangrum
- Jul 31, 2005
Radeon X800 XL Video Card (256MB, AGP 8X, DVI)Strengths: Fast card. Low power consumption. Decent manufacturer warranty. Equivalent to the 6800GT, but about $100 cheaper. Hopefully it will be usuable with ATIs Multi Rendering technology when it comes out. Weakness: none that i know of Fast card. Low power consumption. Decent manufacturer warranty. Equivalent to the 6800GT, but about $100 cheaper. Hopefully it will be usuable with ATIs Multi Rendering technology when it comes out.Also benchmarks on the card have shown it to out perform the ATI's X850 card in most aspects. So it is very much worth the price and a great card to have. 55% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
IAmSoPoor
- Nov 12, 2005
a good price/performance ratio for agpStrengths: Lets you turn up eye candy at very playable frame rates. I got a good deal on it :) Weakness: last generation=not very future proof; Doesn't render some things correctly; Seems to run hot (55C idle); unresponsive, annoying drivers (w/control center) --I'm coming from a GF4 Ti4400, and I paid $220 AR inc. shipping for this card. 0% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? TopSponsored Links
 
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A midrange card that thinks--and acts like--it costs...
Strengths: TV in/out, Low power consumption, Top-of-the-line features and performance for a midrange price
Weakness: Lack of dual-DVI outputs
I have an eMachines T3256, which was an incredible PC for the price ($399 for an Athlon XP 3200+, 512MB PC3200 RAM, 160GB HDD, DVD+-RW, and second-bay CD-ROM). The system's only real weak point, however, is that it relies upon integrated graphics (GeForce 4MX--better than Intel's integrated option, but not by much). From the beginning, therefore, I'd had it in mind to purchase an AGP video card to better round out my "e" PC.
After considerable research on the Net, I narrowed down my consideration to the nVidia GeForce 6600GT and the ATI Radeon X800XL. Ultimately, I chose the X800XL over the 6600GT, and I couldn't be more pleased with the results. Although the X800XL goes for about $100 more than the 6600GT (on average), you get a lot more for the extra cash: double the RAM (256MB vs. 128MB), double the pixel pipelines (16 vs. 8), double the vertex shaders (6 vs. 3), and double the memory bandwidth (256-bit vs. 128.bit). This translates into higher detail settings, better full-screen antialiasing (FSAA) and anisotropic filtering (AF), and smoother framerates--all at higher resolutions. I couldn't be more pleased with the performance this card lets me squeeze out of my budget PC; I can run Far Cry at 1280x1024 at maximum detail settings with FSAA and AF enabled and achieve consistent framerates over 40fps, which is great for an eMachines PC. For those who are interested, I've included some benchmark results below:
Aquamark 3: 48,275
3DMark2001SE: 17,045
3DMark03: 9,300
As other reviewers have mentioned, the card itself is a hefty piece of equipment, measuring almost nine inches in length. This is because the X800 XL was originally designed as a PCI Express card and requires a bridge chip (named Rialto) to communicate with the AGP bus. It fits pretty comfortably inside my PC, but you will definitely want to measure the clearance around your AGP slot if you're thinking about purchasing this card. The only other negative comment I can make about this card is that although ATI includes dual outputs, only one is digital (DVI); the other is an analog VGA port. It would have been nice to have dual DVI-out in order to connect two digital displays.
Other than that, however, this is an outstanding card. Although it requires additional power from the PC's power supply (via a standard 4-pin Molex connector--a splitter cable is included in the box in case you don't have another free power dongle), this card doesn't require much power. It runs great off of my stock 300 Watt power supply, and I've not had any problems with the card locking up because it's not able to draw enough power. The card also runs relatively cool (at least "as is"--I haven't attempted overclocking...yet). I'm able to monitor the GPU temperature via ATI Tray Tools (a must-have third-party app for ATI card owners), and the X800XL runs around 44C at idle 65C while gaming.
Overall, this is a great midrange video card. It should be fairly future-proof as well. Sure, you may not be able to run next year's games at max detail and max resolution, but they'll still look great and run smoothly. If you're like me--a casual gamer who isn't willing to pay a premium for the latest and greatest or to upgrade your system four times a year--this is the card for you.
100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?