Connect 3D Radeon X700 256MB Pro Review

So, all your friends have shiny new Radeon X850s and you are still getting by with your trusty old GeForce 4. Connect 3D has you covered with the next best thing, the Radeon X700 256MB Pro. Designed to compete with the popular GeForce 6600 cards. Lets see how this card measures up.

Connect 3D may be a new name to us here in the USA, but they have grown to be a major provider of aftermarket and OEM cards in the European arena.

Based on the very successful X800 architecture, the X700 uses a new processor code named RV410.

Specifications:

Full-throttle Gaming
Boost your game play performance with the visual power and instant response you need to get the most from any DirectX® 9 and OpenGL® title. RADEON™ X700 delivers beautifully rendered 3D animation for the ultimate in intense, interactive game play. Experience richer, movie-quality visual effects than ever before with SMARTSHADER™ HD, the world's most advanced pixel shader engine. Experiment with your advanced 3D settings, and check the effect with a real-time 3D-rendered preview. With up to 8 parallel pixel pipelines and 256 MB or 128 MB of high performance GDDR3 memory, the RADEON™ X700 has the muscle to meet the demands of today's fast-and-furious gaming, and tomorrow's new applications and operating systems.

420 mhz Engine / 432 mhz Memory

Full-thrill Video
Enjoy the full visual impact of DVD movies with smoother, clearer, more detailed video playback than before. ATI's VIDEOSHADER™ HD accelerates video processing and imaging with programmable pixel shaders for improved DVD playback and better multitasking while watching DVD video, and ATI's FULLSTREAM™ sharpens image quality by removing blocky artifacts from streaming Internet video. Record TV programs like a Personal Video Recorder (PVR). Digitize, edit, and play back your taped home movies with high performance analog video capture capabilities. The RADEON™ X700
connects to your television using S-video and composite video outputs, and supports both High Definition (HD) and Standard Definition (SD) modes for every type of available display.

Full-featured Software
Far beyond traditional driver configuration software, ATI's CATALYST™ Control Center is the world's most feature-rich and stable 3D acceleration control application that puts you in complete command of your RADEON™ X700. CATALYST™ automatically sets optimal settings for your system and enables safe GPU overclocking, custom profiles, and assignable hotkeys. In the unlikely event of a graphics hang, ATI's VPU Recover automatically resets the graphics processor so you can continue without interruption or data loss. Featuring frequent updates, reliable customer service, and an interactive user feedback program, ATI's CATALYST™ Control Center is backed by ATI's technical confidence, industry-leading capability, and uncompromising commitment to creating your ultimate visual experience.

TECHNOLOGY FEATURES
8 parallel pixel pipelines
Six programmable vertex shader pipelines
160 million transistors on 0.11 micron fabrication process
128-bit dual-channel GDDR3 memory interface
PCI Express™ x16 lane native support

SMARTSHADER™ HD
Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware
DirectX 9.0 Vertex Shaders
- Vertex programs up to 65,280 instructions with flow control
- Single cycle trigonometric operations (SIN & COS)
Direct X 9.0 Extended Pixel Shaders
- Up to 1,536 instructions and 16 textures per rendering pass
- 2nd generation F-buffer technology accelerates multi-pass pixel shader programs with unlimited instructions
- 32 temporary and constant registers
- Facing register for two-sided lighting
- 128-bit, 64-bit & 32-bit per pixel floating point color formats
- Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® via extensions

SMOOTHVISION™ HD
2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes
- Sparse multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable sample patterns, and centroid sampling
- Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1)at all resolutions, including widescreen HDTV resolutions
- Temporal Anti-Aliasing
2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes
- Up to 128-tap texture filtering
- Adaptive algorithm with bilinear (performance) and trilinear (quality) options 3Dc™
High quality 4:1 Normal Map Compression
Works with any two-channel data format HYPER Z™ HD
3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with Early Z Test
Lossless Z-Buffer Compression (up to 48:1)
Fast Z-Buffer Clear
Z Cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering
Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, including widescreen HDTV
resolutions

VIDEOSHADER™ HD
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
FULLSTREAM™ video de-blocking technology for Real, DivX, and WMV9 formats
VIDEOSOAP™ noise removal filtering for captured video
MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration (requires optional soft DVD player)
- DXVA Support
- Hardware Motion Compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion
All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
Adaptive Per-Pixel De-Interlacing and Frame Rate Conversion (temporal filtering)

ADDITIONAL FEATURES
Dual integrated display controllers
Dual integrated 10 bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 / HDMI compliant and HDCP ready)
Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution
CATALYST™ Software Suite