InsaneTek

PowerColor Radeon X800 GT

One of the main reasons behind a video card purchase is the bundled software.  If you can get card A for the same price as card B and get a better bundle, there are very few reasons why you should not go with card A.  Fortunately, PowerColor previous bundles has been pretty decent.  The X800 GT came with a full game of Pacific Fighters, an airplane game.  I am not too big on flight simulators, but it does look interesting enough to try out and spend a few hours on.  Also found in the box are the other usual accessories like the drivers CD, CyberLink DVD software, user's manual, video cables, and a DVI-to-analog adapter.  The X800 GT comes with dual DVI connections and only a single adapter is included.  This means that running dual CRTs is going to be out of the question, that is if you don't have a second adapter.

Cooling used for the X800 GT is nothing to write home about.  There are no heatpipes, no special cooling ducts, and no copper.  The heatsink is all aluminum and only makes contact with the GPU.  The disappointing part about the cooler is that it does not make contact with the memory chips, although it is large enough to hover over it.  The good news is that PowerColor did not resort to use cheap inefficient thermal tape as the TIM between the GPU and the heatsink; gray thermal paste was used.  The stock cooler on the X800 GT ran fairly quietly throughout all tests, even at overclocked speeds.

What a surprise!  The X800 GT is powered by the powerful R480 core.  For those of you who do not understand or haven't done all your homework on GPU chipsets, the R480 is the core used to power the previous generation flagship X850 series.  The 256MB DDR3 video memory is powered by Samsung's 2.0ns memory ICs.  Theoretically, the memory is capable of running a speed of 500MHz.  And with a slightly lower rating of 490MHz by PowerColor, the video card at least has a little overclocking headroom for the memory.