Pros: With its 256mb of memory it runs Doom 3 on ultra high (Which uses over 500mb of texture memory) without any problems on a pretty high resolution. Oblivion runs fantastically, and this thing really owns Source games, running everything but AA on with 1600X1200 res. I have it overclocked to 560 memory clock and 444 VPU clock. Huge upgrade from my 6200.

Cons: Waiting so long to get it.

Overall Review: This is the first review on the retail version of this, I don't really know why. It came with everything the OEM's came with but was 5$ cheaper. Just a thought.

Pros: Price, Features, Quality, Good Stock Cooler, 1.6ns Memory, Power Consumption

Cons: R430 Core, Loud Fan when at 100%, Not as Overclockable as Previous GTO

Overall Review: My current system: Dell 400SC w/P4 2.4C 1GB Crucial ECC DDR RAM 2x120 GB HD Audigy2 ZS Planinum Radeon 9800 Pro 128 AGP I purchased this card not knowing that the core was the newer ATI R430. While it is a very good chip, there is no way to overclock the core above 450mhz. I have a friend that ordered the same card about 2 months ago and he has the R420 and can easily hit over 500mhz on the GPU core. This translates to higher frame rates and over 1000 higher score on 3DMark05. As an upgrade from my 9800PRO, this card is over 70% faster, so it was worth the money. 3DMark05 Results 9800PRO non-oc'd 2374 x800GTO non-oc'd 4197 9800PRO 427C/342M 2831 x800GTO 441C/554M 4476

Pros: works great, runs oblivion beautifully, just what I needed

Cons: had some problems with getting s video to work properly at first, but I worked it out (boo catalyst)

Overall Review: didnt have the money to get a whole new rig, so this seemed the best AGP card for the money to be able to run the highest end games out there and squeeze a little more life out of my computer. Coming from a 9600SE, I am very satisfied with the performance boost

Pros: Going from the numbers alone, this card pulled over a 9000 on 3DMark03 compared with 1700 from my 2.5 year old 128MB Sapphire 9600SE. 3DMark05 wouldn’t run on the 9600SE (pixel shader issue) but the x800 scored a 4143. If you consider the mail-in rebate, there isn’t a card that comes close to these numbers for the price in the AGP realm. I had no problems physically installing the card although it is about 1.5 inches longer than the 9600 it replaced. Driver setup, including the Cataylst Control Center, was a breeze using the latest Cataylst v6.5 (drivers + CCC is over 36MB) from the ATI website. Guild Wars went from clunky to amazing with all settings maxed except for anti-aliasing (2x) and shadows (medium). The card gets power from an Ultra 400W PSU which is daisy-chained through 2 PATA hard drives. This has caused no problems what-so-ever. The x800 has breathed new life into my old rig.

Cons: The fan is loud. I would not recommend this card for anyone creating a home theatre system. In my old rig where the case fans and CPU fan are all getting old and noisy, it doesn’t bother me all that much. I’m hoping that the Trixx software will allow me some control of the fan speed so I can reduce the noise a bit.

Overall Review: I can’t speak to the problems people have had with tech support. With a BS in computer science and 7 years in tech industries, I look at it like, if I can’t fix it, no one over the phone can either. Find a geek friend – we don’t eat much and are handy around computers. :P My aging rig consists of: Asus P4P800-E Deluxe Mobo Intel PIV 2.8GHz CPU 512MB Corsair PC3200 RAM Maxtor 120GB hard drive (primary drive) Seagate 8GB hard drive (for posterity sake)

Pros: One of the best remaining AGP cards out, great performance boost over previous Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB, Plays CS:S and GTA: San Andreas very nicely with 2X Anti-Aliasing, Good bundle of connections including S-Video, Composite, and HDTV.

Cons: Large card (about 22 cm in length), power connector didn't work with the quick release power supply connector (needed to use the included power cable), absolutely no paper documentation. Some DVI monitors have trouble on boot-up displaying images, my Dell 2001FP won't show anything unless you turn the monitor off and back on while it's booting. The monitor is always working by the time Windows actually loads regardless though (After all of the boot sequence is over). I read more about this on the Sapphire Forums and apparently this is a common problem with certain DVI monitors.

Overall Review: This is a great card for those of use who can't go and upgrade our whole system to get a better graphics card. I actually bought this so that I could replace the card in another computer with my old Radeon. The only reason I gave this 4 stars is because of the issue with my monitor described above. I never had any problem with my old graphics card and this does appear to be a Sapphire problem. Even so, I'm extremely happy with my purchase so far!

Pros: After having this card for a little over a week now, I continue to be impressed. Since mine came with an R430 core and the correct fuse configuration, I was able to unlock the extra 4 pipes with ease. Using the ATITool v0.24, I boosted the core and ram speeds just a bit. So, 3DMark05 12 pipes, no OC = 4341 (correction from earlier post of 4143). 16 pipes, no OC = 4866. 16 pipes, 425 core, 550ram = 5122. No OC is 400 core and 490 ram, btw. Not only has the performance been boosted by almost 20%, my idle temps are the same (37-39°C) and my full load temps are only 5-7° higher (65-67°C). The ATITool also allows some fan speed tweaking so the card isn't nearly as noisy any more.

Cons: Be VERY CAREFUL when using the "Find Max Core" and "Find Max Mem" functions of ATITool. Neither worked properly for me causing lockup and/or major artifacting. Just don't walk away from your system while it's doing the tests in case you have the same issue I did. *doh* On the up side, the card recovered very, very well for me. :D

Overall Review: I'm using v6.5 of the driver and v0.24 of ATITool. v0.25 beta didn't work for me and probably isn't necessary unless you have a x1x00 card anyway. Again, my aging rig has a Asus P4P800-E Deluxe Mobo, Intel PIV 2.8GHz CPU, 512MB Corsair PC3200 RAM, Maxtor 120GB hard drive (primary drive), Seagate 8GB hard drive (for kicks and grins)

Pros: A very nice card for <$xxx post rebate. Longer than the 9800pro it replaced but no real problem installing on my ASUS A8V board. Loaded Omega Drivers 3.8.252 (Catalyst 6.5) and flashed it to 16 pipes easily. My 3Dmark05 score went to 5035 w/o overclocking and 3Dmark06 to 1731. These are about double that of the 9800.

Cons: None so far. The fan noise is certainly no worse than w/ the 9800. It really doesn't bother me at all.

Overall Review: I have no trouble running dual monitors which some other reviewers seem to have had trouble with. I love this card.

Pros: Unlocking to 16 pipes was a piece of cake and resulted in about 20% performance increase at stock clock speeds. Oblivion now reccomendeds High quality with distant lands. Upgraded from a 9600. 3DMark06 SM2.0 scores were: 654 with 12 pipes, 796 with 16 at stock speeds, 999 with 16 and O/C (452/550). Max 3DMark05 score is 5592. Avg FPS in ATITool is as high as 255.

Cons: The card is fairly big, but I was more worried about it from these reviews than when I actually tried to put it in the case. I have a regular ATX case with 3 HDs, and while the cables had to be pushed to the side everything else was fine. The fan seemed noisy during the initial driver install but I haven't noticed it since. Overclocking abilities are average, not great. Still only gets 13-14 FPS during 3DMark06 demos (but gets 25-30 FPS on 3dMark05). Anti Alising is still too choppy in Oblivion to use.

Overall Review: To unlock, Google "GTOAGPR430.zip" and follow the links through the TechPowerUp forums to download a CD ISO. It was really very simple. Boosted my performance over my overclocked 9600 by about 3.6 times, from 522 3DM06 to 1891. (P4 3.4ghz HT, 1.5 GB PC3200 Corsair VS RAM)