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1. Introduction

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01 - Introduction

With Doom 3 on store shelves and the upcoming release of Half life 2 driving people insane, more and more people everyday re-evaluate their need for a VGA upgrade. All the different brands, codenames and product families, PCI-Express or AGP, only add to the confusion for someone trying to make a decision. Over time and with forthcoming reviews, we will try to pinpoint and clarify all these differences between the models and explain the technologies available on the market.

In this review, we will be investigating Powercolor's X300. The X300 is ATi's latest chipset which is designed expressly (no pun intended) for the PCI-Express architecture.

But what is PCI-Express anyway?

PCI-Express is an I/O interconnect bus standard that expands on and doubles the data transfer rates of original PCI. PCI Express is a two-way, serial connection that carries data in packets along two pairs of point-to-point data lanes, compared to the single parallel data bus of traditional PCI that routes data at a set rate. Initial bit rates for PCI Express reach 2.5Gb/s per lane direction, which equate to data transfer rates of approximately 200MB/s. PCI Express was developed so that high-speed interconnects such as 1394b, USB 2.0, InfiniBand and Gigabit Ethernet would have an I/O architecture suitable for their transfer high speeds. (Extract taken from Webopedia.com).

In simple terms, you'll need it if you want to install your graphics card on your motherboard. Currently, unless your computer is more than 6 years old, your VGA card is seated in the AGP slot on your motherboard. As today's and tomorrow's processors and Input/Output (I/O) devices demand much higher bandwidth than AGP 8X can provide, PCI-Express was created just for such a need with a maximum bandwidth of 16X. In the following 2 years, AGP will be phased out as all VGA cards, soundcards and other peripherals will be manufactured for PCI-Express capable motherboards. However, for the time being, PCI-Express is backwards compatible, meaning that it still uses the same principles as PCI2.2 to avoid application and driver problems. Due to these compatibility restriction, an issue in performance arises since the AGP8X version of a VGA card is currently faster than the newer PCI-E version.

Even though the X300 is aimed at the budget minded, ATi raised the standard for low-end cards and built it using a 0.11 micron process giving the card some really strong points as you will see for yourself later on.

- Packaging - Bundle

The card ships in a relatively small package. Nothing fancy here, just a plain black box wrapped in Powercolor's metallic theme. On the front you can clearly see the card's main features, 256MB memory and 128 bit bus along with support for DirectX 9 and OpenGL.

Inside the package you'll find as usual a DVI-I Connector, S-Video cable, composite video cable and a printed version of the manual.

Bundled along inside a "ProPack" cardboard cd-case is a full version of Hitman: Contracts, a Cyberlink DVD Solution Suite (featuring Powerdirector, Mediashow, PowerDVD, PowerProducer DVD and Power2Go) and of course a CD with ATi's drivers and some additional utilities

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2. A closer look

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02 - A closer look

Main Features
GPU	Radeon X600 - R370
Memory	256 MB 128-bit DDR1
Memory Speed	400MHz
Core Speed	325MHz
AA Sample per Sec	7.8
Memory Bandwidth	6.4 GB/sec
Pixel Pipelines	4
Shader Pipelines	2
Fill rate	1.3 Giga pixels /sec
DX Support	9.0
OpenGL Support	1.5
Output	DVI-I / TV-Out / D-Sub
Bus	PCI Express
Processing technology	0.11 micron

As we mentioned earlier, the Powercolor X300 features 256MB of DDR1 RAM, which might seem impressive to some for a low-budget card but it's a common mistake, to opt for one VGA card over another based purely on the amount of memory. What is more important is the chipset, the memory bus interface (which in our case is 128 bits wide where high end cards normally have 256 bits), plus the fact that the memory is DDR1 and not DDR3. The memory modules are from Mosel Vitelic which might not be such a high quality choice but contribute to the card's relatively low price.

A close-up of a memory module.

The X300 fully supports DirectX 9 which means you can at least run all your favourite games with approximately the same amount of detail as an X800 would provide.

The strange thing with the X300 is that beginning with this card, ATi decided to introduce the first GPU chipset built using 0.11 micron manufacturing technology. This makes the card very resistant to overheating making it potentailly a good candidate for overclocking.

The only heat protection on the X300 is a small plastic fan.

The card sports a red coloured PCB with it's board layout being the same as ATi's reference. There's nothing on the card to give away its brand, however we can see some markings indicating the card's 256MB memory and R370 architecture.

Removing the fan and heatsink leaves the GPU exposed (click to enlarge)

Zooming in on the chipset

Hard to do with the naked eye but with a litle more zoom and you can read the X300 and PCI-Express label.

The rear side of the X300 (click to enlarge)

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3. Test System

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Test System - Page 03

One more thing to note about the tests, is that since we changed our CPU and motherboard and this is our first PCI-Express review, we will not be comparing this card with any others.

Also, you might notice that we've updated the list of benchmarks, since some games were either obsolete for benchmarking or just not so popular.

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4. 3DMark05

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3DMark05 - Page 04

With 3DMark05, Futuremark continues the tradition in its benchmarking software by providing a state-of-the-art Microsoft ® DirectX ® 9 3D performance benchmark.
3DMark05 is an all new 3DMark version taking the most out of Microsoft's DirectX 9. The previous version 3DMark03, did a nice introduction into this level of technology. However 3DMark03 used DirectX 9 specific features in a limited manner, because fully supporting hardware was rare at the time of its launch. In contrast, 3DMark05 requires DirectX 9 hardware with full support for at least Shader Model 2, and takes shader usage to never before seen levels.
Just like its predecessors, 3DMark05's point system is set so that at the moment of release, the high-end VGA cards available in stores can only score around 5000 3DMarks, whereas the worst card that meets the programs requirements yields a score of 1000.

Game Test 1 - Return to Proxycon

Being the sequel to the "Battle of Proxycon" from 3DMark03, in "Return to Proxycon" we're once again set in space and the battle continues as space pirates invade a cargo ship in order to take control of its valuable cargo.

This test tries to simulate a future first-person shooter game with all the high details that it entails. The dynamic shadows, high-detailed environment and advanced lighting techniques ensure that under normal circumstances, no recent card can run it with decent frame rates.

The framerates on the first test of the 3DMark05 are really low in comparison to GT1 in 3DMark03, where a typical card would get more that 200+ fps. Still, the X300 performed suprizingly better than the 9600pro.

Game Test 2 - Firefly Forest

A forest gets filled with magic fireflies in the night. The moon is nearly full, illuminating the forest with a bluish faint light. The magic fireflies have flickering bright green lights that playfully move around the forest.

This scene is a nice example of a smaller scale outdoor scene with rich vegetation. Immediate visibility is not so far, and there is a skybox surrounding the whole scene.

A large number of trees with their branches swinging separately, and dense vegetation being dynamically distributed according to the camera movements, make this test the most demanding of the three.

 

With only a negligible difference of 0.2 between them, we can only conclude that the two cards are equally slow...

Game Test 3 - Canyon Flight

A Jules Verne type airship flies through a canyon guarded by a dangerous sea monster. The airmen defend their ship using heavy cannons, but these seem to have no effect on the huge sea monster. Finally the crew manages a narrow escape using the "last resort" afterburners of the airship.

This scene is fairly complex with large areas of water reflecting the high canyon walls. The water actually is one of the key points of interest in this scene. The water not only does realistic looking reflections and refractions, it has a depth fog, making the sea monster swimming under the airship actually look deep down in the water. The air in this scene also uses
a volumetric fog, making distant cliffs of the canyon really look far away.

 

The X300 performed slightly slower than the 9600pro. This game test is the lighter, yet most impressive of the three and hence the higher framerates.

Final Score

 3DMarks on 3DMark05 are now calculated by the following formula:

(Game Test 1 * Game Test 2 * Game Test 3)^0.33 * 250

That's basically the geometric mean of the total frames in each game multiplied by 250. That means that all game tests are now equal.

Let's see our result for the X300:

The conclusion depends on your way of looking at the scores. According to Futuremark, 1000 3dmarks is the minimum score you'll ever get with a videocard on 3DMark05. In which case the X300's 1045 points are a bit disappointing. On the other hand though, its score is at the same level as the 9600pro. Maybe some older benchmarks with a wider range of scores will provide us with a clearer indication.

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5. 3DMark 2003

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05 - 3DMark 2003

3D Mark is a widely used and accepted benchmark that stresses the DirectX performance of a VGA card. A very strong point of 3DMark is that it's VGA card measuring is does not require any CPU power. So the resulting fps are a good reference of a VGA card's rendering performance. For testing the performance of each card we used the 4 game benchmarks 3DMark has.

- Game Test 1 - Wings of Fury (DX7) This test is a combat flight simulator written for older hardware (DirectX 7). Particles are used a lot in this test - smoke and vapor trails, flak and gunfire, and explosions are produced using point sprites and quads.

- Game Test 2 - Battle of Proxycon (DX8) This test is a simulation of first person shooter game types. 1.1 and 1.4 Vertex shaders are widely used since all character models are skinned using vertex shaders. This makes this test a good vertex shader comparison for VGA cards.

- Game Test 3 - Trolls' Lair (DX8) This test should be the favorite of all RPG lovers. It is a cut scene of a female warrior facing two malicious trolls. Again the same vertex and pixel processing is used as in game test 2. This test also uses post-processing effects, such as Depth of Field and Bloom effects which are widely used in today's game cut scene sequences.

- Game Test 4 - Mother Nature (DX9) Mother nature represents the level of effects and realism that are possible using 2.0 vertex and pixel shaders, plus some other features that DirectX 9 offers.

 

- 3DMark Official score

If you test your machine with 3DMark, you can post the results at 3DMark's online result browser. For more information visit futuremark.com.

The total score, widely known as 3DMarks, is an immediate result of the framerates the games where run under. Not too bad of a result but we did expect more from the X300.

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6. 3DMark 2001

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06 - Aquamark3 / 3DMark 2001

Since the majority of today's applications and games are compatible with DirectX 9, the need for benchmark applications that use DX 9 has been brought up. The benchmark uses the 3D engine (Krass engine) of the Aquanox game.

Aquamark Triscore

The Aquamark Triscore comprises 3 values: the overall system performance, the performance of the graphics system and the CPU performance. Keep in mind that this is not the total result of the tests, but the result of the whole benchmark process including all 9 chapters.

 

3DMark 2001

3DMark 2001 is the predecessor to 3DMark03. It's mainly a directx8.1 benchmark and the score depends a lot on the CPU power of your computer. However for reference use only we decided it'd be best to just leave it in our benchmark list so you can compare the next generation cards with the possibly outdated one you have at home.

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7. Codecreatures

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CodeCreatures is a synthetic 3D benchmark that is a good reference for VGA performance comparison. This is a high-end 3D benchmark that also requires DirectX 8 hardware, making a good tool for measuring the potential of DirectX 8 game performance.

The Codecreatures benchmark is written with Microsoft's DirectX 8.1 API and incorporates the use of Vertex and PixelShaders popular on next generation 3D accelerators.

The benchmark plays a photo-realistic nature scene and calculates the performance of the graphics adapter by measuring the fps that it can display at 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 resolutions. The score is a geometric mean of those three resolutions called the Codecreatures number.

 

-Codecreatures number

The codecreatures number is the resultant score of the total benchmarking process which includes some other measures except from a plain sum up of the fps results.

The X300 produced a quite low codecreatures number as it couldn't run any of the tests at a satisfactory level.

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8. Half life 2

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9. Doom 3

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10. Far Cry

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10 - Far Cry

You are Jack Carver running your own boat charter business in beautiful Micronesia. With a past best left behind you, you'll be focusing on your present assignment: escorting an ambitious journalist named Valerie Cortez to the Island of Cabatu. It seems like a piece of cake, but you'll soon learn: paradise can be hell.

Farcry is an awesome First Person Shooter (FPS) based on a last generation 3D engine named as CryEngine. Real-time editing, bump-mapping, static lights, network system, integrated physics system, shaders, shadows and a dynamic music system are just some of the state of-the-art features that the CryEngine offers.

A great advantage and strong point of the CryEngine is its physics system which supports character inverse kinematics, vehicles, rigid bodies, liquid, rag doll, cloth and body effects. All physics seem to be very realistic and you never get bored when facing enemies, since character models have multiple animations that blend in believable ways.

With an integrated shader system and a massive terrain which maximizes the view distance to 2km these features make Farcry a perfect action game and also a referable benchmark to speak of.

- Benchmark Settings

For this game, we recorded a new demo from the start of the Rebellion stage. We chose an indoor scene in order to avoid being CPU bound under any circumstances. This will produce slightly higher results since it is also less GPU intensive but we can't afford being stuck at 40-50 fps because of CPU limitations.

The latest patch (1.2) was used for our tests which updates the game's graphics engine to use the Shader model 3.0. Unfortunately this is supported for the 6800 series only.

The resolutions we ran the demo at are the following: 800x600,1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. The first test was committed with Anti Aliasing (AA) and Anisotropic Filtering (AF) features off. In the second test we leveled up AA at 4x and AF at 8x.

Can you believe that? Excellent performance! We'd never expect ATI's latest low-end chipset to be able to handle such a graphically intense game as Far Cry with all its eye candy settings enabled. The result is really stunning. We couldn't believe our eyes so we checked our settings one more time to make sure we had set everything correctly. Far Cry is actually playable under 1024x768! Of course, don't expect the framerate to be above 25 at all times but it's not something you can't sacrifice for a higher resolution.

Enabling 4x Anti-aliasing and 8x Anisotropic Filtering halved the framerates we got when we had these set to off. The results are once again suprizingly high for our card. We thought the X300 was made for office applications and we were totally wrong.

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11. Medal of Honour Pacific Assault

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12. Thief 3

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12 - Thief 3

Instead of Deus Ex from now on we'll be testing our cards using Thief 3. It's based on the same engine but it's much less GPU intensive and playable by more VGA cards than Deus.

The game makes severe use of Pixel Shader 1.1 instructions, the bloom effect and stencil shadows to achieve a wonderful result in your screen.

In the game you play the part of Master Thief Garrett who is back to rule out any evil forces using his unique stealth abilities. Deadly Shadows shows what stealth gameplay is all about. This game really gives you the feel of sneaking around and holding your breath when stuck in a sticky situation.

Since there is no official benchmark for the game, we'll do our tests using a GPU intensive scene from the tutorial-level which we believe that represents the average fps you'll get when playing the game.

The X300 had a hard time rendering this really graphically heavy game. At 640x480 the game is barely playable.

Since Thief 3 is based on Deus Ex's engine, there is no support for Anti-Aliasing but instead it uses Multisampling technology which is something similar. That way, we set Multisampling to 4x and Anisotropic filtering to 8x through ATI's control panel. The resulting scores are a disaster. We could almost count the frames without the use of a program!

 

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13. Colin McRae 05

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14. Ground Control II

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14 - Ground Control II

Ground Control 2 is an action-oriented game of tactics and warfare. As Captain Jacob Angelus of the Northern Star Alliance, you will command squads of infantry, artillery, and airpower against the might of the Empire of Terra. Base building and resource-collecting are replaced with unit control and combat tactics where your knowledge of the battlefield maneuvers will make the difference in your fight against a ruthless enemy. Position your troops on hilltops for better aim or inside buildings and forests for protection as you'll need to use every inch of terrain to your advantage. Call in air strikes or assault pods to bring the battle behind enemy lines. Send out scouts to locate the enemy and use spotters for your artillery with the 360° free-roaming camera. Experience the total immersion of futuristic warfare as you lead your forces to victory!

 

For our benchmarks we used the highest possible settings on the first mission of the single player game, moved around the camera and got an average framerate using fraps.

Ground Control II offers really impressive graphics without requiring much GPU power. Click on the picture above to view a screenshot from the game. Check out the excellent water effects!

The 33.6 fps we got at 800x600 make it the best setting to play this game along with 8x Anisotropic filtering enabled. Moving to 1024x768 is still possible but don't expect very smooth gameplay.

Enabling 4xAA and 8xAF in this game is out of the question with this card. You can see for yourself how low the results are.

 

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15. Overclocking

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15 - Overclocking

Before we start, here's a little note: Don't try to do this at home unless you are completely sure of what you are doing. It might sound a bit cliche but believe me, the kind of overclocking that you are about to see can't be done with any kind of VGA card.

Normally, you can clock most cards using their stock cooling system from 25 to at most 100 MHz over their default speeds for core and memory. From that point on, you either get strange sand-like effects or other anomalies on your screen (called artifacts) or between some short amounts of time the whole game pauses for 2-3 secs.

The first case is a sign that you have pushed your memory clock speed beyond its limits and the second is that the core's clock is the one that is set too high. In both cases, you should lower the clocks until you experience none of these effects for 10-15 minutes of intense gameplay.

Here comes Powercolour's X300 to become the exception to the rule.

It's stock speeds were 320Mhz for the core and 400Mhz for the memory. Using AtiTool, we managed to clock this card to 500MHz for the core and 490MHz for the memory!!! It's simply an insane amount of overclocking. But the most insane thing we saw is yet to come.

Most cards when overclocked, get an average boost of 5 fps on the games. We pushed this baby again to 500/490 and ran our Half Life 2 Video Stress Test and Doom 3 benchmarks:

That was too much to believe. 22 more frames per second on the Video Stress Test for Half Life 2. We ran the two benchmarks one more time to make sure we were not mistaken but we got the same results. Then we ran our Far Cry benchmark.

21 frames more at 800x600 and 14 at 1024x768. This time we knew nothing went wrong. It's just that this card is born with a mysterious overclocking potential.

The funniest part is that it has no heatsinks on its RAM modules and its only method of cooling the GPU core is this little fan:

I'm sure you'll agree with us as we present the Powercolor X300 with our Overclocker Award for this year.

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16. Conclusion

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16 - Conclusion

We're still shocked about Powercolor's X300 overclocking abilities. Not only did we get to set the clocks at a very high level while maintaining stability, but the performance increased accordingly contrary to our expectations.

Always keeping in mind that the X300 is here to substitute the 9200 and 9600SE for the PCI-Express slot, we must admit it did a great job. Powercolor's X300 is not a port from any older card, its architecture is new and that shows on games like Far Cry and Doom 3. It's hard to believe that the future low-budget systems will be able to play Far Cry with little problems where even the Fx5900 had trouble rendering.

This card costs around US$130-140 which might be one of the priciest of the budget market but it's still not a lot to spend given it's performance.

As for the software bundle, it's not too exciting but not too bad either. Hitman contracts might not be the game you were planning to buy but it's still better than any other mediocre game some other cards might give you or even nothing at all.

Pros:
-Extreme overclocking potential
-Nice performance for its class
-Reasonable price
-Silent operation

Cons:
-Lower quality memory modules

Performance:
Value for money:
Overclocking:
Bundle: