The speculation about the clock speeds of ATIs flagship X800XT Platinum edition has come to an end as the company has confirmed that the boards will carry an official 520/560 MHz rating. This statement had to be produced by the Canadian graphics firm since the latest rumours suggested an inconsistency on the versions of the boards sent to review sites.

Most of the boards tested, did feature the same clock speeds as the ones announced but there were, also, some exceptions with some review cores going as low as 500 and some memory peaking at 600 MHz. For those of you who cannot yet determine if 520/560 is adequate, have a look at the reviews but also consider that the monster used by ATI to reach that record breaking 15,738 points in 3DMark03, was running at 715 MHz (engine) 639 MHz (memory).

If something will deter gamers from getting the X800XT Platinum Edition, it will not be the clock speeds but rather the price. Nonetheless, when considering buying one ask yourself if you will also want to purchase Half-Life 2. If the reported July 7 ( 2 days after mi b'day,wooooot) date is confirmed you could get your hands on a neat little package.

XT will be a bit expensive, the Pro ,on the other hand is a little more like it.

I brought a hercules Radeon 9800SE AIW. AIW for those nubs being the gfx card with all the gadgets. Video capture (can use it like a HD video recorder) remote control (very handy for wathcing films in bed) etc. etc. The Card cost me just under £160 a fair fwe months back. Basically it uses the same chip set as the 9800pro. These chips (correct me if I am wrong) are from a batch where a certain number failed as 9800pros. However if your a lucky guy like myself the chip disabled is actually fully functional.
To cut a long story short, I am using Omega drivers written specifcally for mine and similar cards. It enables the previously disabled chip. Making my card a 9800pro (which at the time was selling for £300 rather than the £160 I paid for my SE AIW).
Some people have tried these drivers and get artifacting, (spelling) meaning that infact the chip was faulty and therefore should remain disabled. But I was lucky and got a decent chipset

Anyways I've ranted on but... must say was the best value computer component I have ever bought

Wish I could say the same about my Athlon XP2800+ just cant seem to squeeze any extra juice out of it without probs (must be doing something wrong).

Well Bartons do run pretty hot as standard, so unless youve got some nice cooling your gonna have probs.

acutally bartons run pretty cool its the palomino core thats a hot head

Well I've got a ThermalRight heatsink with a Akasa coloured fan. And two more Akasa fans on the case going in and out near where the cpu is. Under load it runs at about 58 degrees. Though I've had the machine on for 15 minutes now and it's sitting at 39. i'm sure I can get some more juice out of it. Running an Asus A7N8X-X nForce2 with 1 x 512Mb Corsair 3500. Motherboards running at 166 atm. If someone could help me it would be much appriciated

Scrappy, start with upping the core voltage a small notch.

Don't do anything else, just watch the temps, make sure things stay nice and cool. If they do, try upping the FSB 2mhz. Even with a picky barton cpu, you machine should still boot.

If this all worked, theres and NF2 software FSB setter that works inside windows, I have same issues as you with getting the machine to boot over 168 FSB, but I've been way beyond 170 using this tool.

Providing you've add enough power you should be able to go quite high, certainly 10% of clock speed shouldn't be too hard with decent cooling.

Well ill rephrase that to my Barton runs pretty hot then , but not to the point of crashing/locking up, so thats good enough for me.