Crucial Radeon X800 Pro

Best known for its high quality and keen memory pricing, Crucial recently launched a line of ATI-powered graphics cards. The Radeon X800 Pro sits at the top of the range, aimed at high-end gamers wanting to upgrade.

While not quite as powerful as the XT version in the HIS Excalibur, the card's X800 Pro chip is impressive. Its 510MHz core boasts 12 parallel pipelines that deliver a fill rate of 6gigapixels/sec, which translates into smooth animation even at high resolutions and fast frame rates.

The Pro supports 3Dc compression and Videoshader HD for video encoding and decoding and DVD playback.

This is all combined with 256MB of GDDR3 memory, a 400MHz Ramdac and AGP 8x support. There are also DVI and TV-out connections along with a VGA port, and the card can output resolutions up to 2,048 x 1,536 pixels.

The Radeon put in an impressive performance during our tests, with a score of 8,573 in 3Dmark03 and a consistent 65fps in Far Cry at 1,024 x 768. This matches the HIS, but performance drops off at higher resolutions.

Although a very good card, it is more expensive and slightly slower than the impressive Sapphire Radio X800 Pro tested in the August issue. You do, however, get S-video-to-component video and composite leads, and a DVI-to-VGA adapter.

Contact: Crucial Technology 0800 013 0330
www.crucial.com/uk

Specifications:

• ATI X800 Pro 510MHz core
• 256bit quad-channel GDDR3 interface
• DirectX9
• 256MB GDDR3 memory
• 400MHz Ramdac
• AGP 8x/4x
• VGA, TV-out and DVI-I connectors
• Driver CD
• PowerDVD 5