Well ive been waiting patiently for months now to get my hands on this card, ive had pre orders at various stores who never could deliver at the dates they kept saying, in the end i put myself on the mailing list at tekheads so if they got any XT's come into stock i would get notified 
On Thursday at like 9 am I got an e-mail from them stating they had recieved 2 Club 3D X800XT PE's in stock, naturally i ordered imediately, the card cost me a bit more than the £320 pre order i had at dabs (£370) but as the cards were so hard to source i thought what the hell. Unfortunately i had to get the card delivered to a fried as I wasnt going to be around to recieve it so i personally got it in my hands yesterday.
My thoughts on the card:
The card is great, however i was a bit shocked that i didnt notice any significant difference in fps when playing at normal res's, i run at quite a low res and i generally dont use AA and AF unless they are set to on as default, due to this i was seeing a minimal 20 or so fps over my 9800 Pro which was a little disapointing as i just layed out £370 for this card.
HOWEVER
Crank the res up to 1280x1024, max the AA and AF and i was loosing barely any fps but getting a much much crisper smoother experience, the detail level in games such as Doom3 is so much better when AA and AF are cranked right up!
I do have a bit of a bone to pick with the package tho, for £370 i expected to find more than the card, few cables (vivo) driver CD, DVD player CD and a case badge, the majority of the competitiors are throwing in free games bundles, and these are the companies who are selling their cards cheaper too, whats that all about ? pay more for less?
Anyway thats my whine over
Overclocking:
I initially tried my card with the stock HSF i didnt bother checking the temp (my bad) but i did notice it was rather noisy, much noiser than the artic 3, and due to this i imediately shut the computer down adn fitted my water cooling.
Ive been running at 555/570 perfectly sinse yesterday, during idle/doom3/benchmarks and havnt had a single glitch, ig i go much higher on either ram or core i get a video lockup, NOT any artifects, so not sure if a volt mod is needed to get more out of the card?
Anyway, overclocking my X800XTPE from stock to the above rated speeds from my 3dmark03 score from 12.6k to 13.2k quite a significant leap i think you'll agree, so definately a worth while overclock, as the card runs at an idle demp of 32-35 at these overclocked settings (30-31 at default) it looks rather safe to me too
Anyway some pics for you (didnt bother taking any with the water block on it as it looks ugly compared to with the HSF on - a side note the screws holding the HSF on where a bitch to get out, they were rather tight and the screw heads are really tiny!!!)
On Thursday at like 9 am I got an e-mail from them stating they had recieved 2 Club 3D X800XT PE's in stock, naturally i ordered imediately, the card cost me a bit more than the £320 pre order i had at dabs (£370) but as the cards were so hard to source i thought what the hell. Unfortunately i had to get the card delivered to a fried as I wasnt going to be around to recieve it so i personally got it in my hands yesterday.
My thoughts on the card:
The card is great, however i was a bit shocked that i didnt notice any significant difference in fps when playing at normal res's, i run at quite a low res and i generally dont use AA and AF unless they are set to on as default, due to this i was seeing a minimal 20 or so fps over my 9800 Pro which was a little disapointing as i just layed out £370 for this card.
HOWEVER
Crank the res up to 1280x1024, max the AA and AF and i was loosing barely any fps but getting a much much crisper smoother experience, the detail level in games such as Doom3 is so much better when AA and AF are cranked right up!
I do have a bit of a bone to pick with the package tho, for £370 i expected to find more than the card, few cables (vivo) driver CD, DVD player CD and a case badge, the majority of the competitiors are throwing in free games bundles, and these are the companies who are selling their cards cheaper too, whats that all about ? pay more for less?
Anyway thats my whine over
Overclocking:
I initially tried my card with the stock HSF i didnt bother checking the temp (my bad) but i did notice it was rather noisy, much noiser than the artic 3, and due to this i imediately shut the computer down adn fitted my water cooling.
Ive been running at 555/570 perfectly sinse yesterday, during idle/doom3/benchmarks and havnt had a single glitch, ig i go much higher on either ram or core i get a video lockup, NOT any artifects, so not sure if a volt mod is needed to get more out of the card?
Anyway, overclocking my X800XTPE from stock to the above rated speeds from my 3dmark03 score from 12.6k to 13.2k quite a significant leap i think you'll agree, so definately a worth while overclock, as the card runs at an idle demp of 32-35 at these overclocked settings (30-31 at default) it looks rather safe to me too
Anyway some pics for you (didnt bother taking any with the water block on it as it looks ugly compared to with the HSF on - a side note the screws holding the HSF on where a bitch to get out, they were rather tight and the screw heads are really tiny!!!)
things get cranky when i do, i think i need to get my board re-volt modded as my old mods i pulled off as they werent working proeprly and were limiting overclocks at the time.
