Introduction

I would like to thank Diamond Multimedia for supplying the review sample.

Diamond Multimedia like many other OEMs are making ATI Video Cards from chips that failed to meet the standards of their high end kin and are taking advantage of "dead die SKUs". We're going to take a look at the Diamond Viper X800GTO which is part of ATI's basement bargain GPUs. This is best explained by D_O_S in his Max Moxx X800GTO² review, in which he explains the "dead die SKUs". Now this can be seen as a good thing or bad thing depending on your perspective. In some cases the extra pipes can be unlocked but in this case the Diamond Viper X800GTO is among the "not this time club". The Diamond Viper X800 GTO has the same core as the ATI X850 series using an ATI R480 as well as Samsung GDDR3 memory, the Diamond GTO has 4 less pipes bringing the total to 12. For more information on GPUs look in the GPU Database. To also understand why the pipes are not unlockable read through the article by W1zzard here. The Viper X800GTO from Diamond looks to be a solid performer, so with the preliminaries out of the way let's proceed with the Diamond Viper X800GTO review.


Fuse Data

Featuring:

• DirectX 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0
• SmartShader™
• SmoothVision™
• HDTV Support
• Hyper Z™ III
• VideoShader™
• Dual Display Support
• CATALYST Software Drivers

Specifications:

• ATI Radeon® X800GTO (R480)
• GPU Core Clock: 400 MHz
• Memory Speed: 490 MHz
• RAMDACS: Dual 400 MHz
• Memory Support: 256MB GDDR3
• 256-bit memory interface
• 12 Full Precision Pipelines
• API Support: DirectX 9.0, OpenGL 2.0
• PCI Express® x16 lane native support
• Output: VGA, DVI, TV-Out
• Hardware Transform and Lighting (T&L)
• Includes temperature chip for temperature control

Samsung K4J55323QF-GC20= DataSheet

From the Datasheet one can see that the GDDR3 is spec'd to run at 500 MHz 2.0ns

Source Samsung

Radeon R480 GPU Thermal Specs