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ATI’s Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition is their current flagship graphics board. With 256MB of GDDR3 memory and extremely high clock speeds, the XT Platinum won’t necessarily lead to more frags in your gaming, but it will definitely make them look prettier.

The core clock speed is 540MHz and the memory clock is rated at 590MHz (with dual data rate leading to an effective clock of 1.18GHz). That kind of power is going to need some serious cooling, and the XT Platinum has it built in. The large red fan on the side of the graphics processor means the card will take up two slots inside a computer, so you need to make sure you’ve got the room for it. The fan is a bit noisy when you first boot up the system, but it powers down to barely audible levels and is fairly quiet even when gaming for extended periods.

There are DVI and VGA connections (one each) on the back of the card, letting you hook up your system to two displays (ATI includes DVI-I-to-VGA adapters for analog displays). There’s also integrated HDTV support, so you can output the signal to an HDTV monitor for extremely high-resolution gaming.

Even without a fancy display, the XT Platinum leads to some impressive numbers on the latest games. With all the bells and whistles turned on (anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, etc.), the XT Platinum still managed frame rates in the high 70s at 1,600X1,200 resolution in Half-Life 2.

ATI offers a lengthy 3-year warranty on the XT Platinum, and that probably amounts to a lifetime warranty as it’s longer than most serious gamers will use the same board. There are both PCI-Express and AGP versions of the board available, so even if you don’t have the cutting-edge PCI-Express connection on your motherboard, you can still bring an XT Platinum home.

The XT Platinum retails for $449 and has a street price of around $400. It’s a hefty price tag for even hard-core gamers to consider, but if you need (or just lust after) the best card on the market, the ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition is the fastest graphics board currently available.

Pro: Excellent performance, DVI output.
Con: Expensive.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

ATI Technologies
1 Commerce Valley Drive East
Markham, Ontario, Canada L3T 7X6
905-882-2600
http://www.ati.com

Warranty
3 years limited