While searching for an old AGP or PCI graphics card to test my Ultimate AMD Athlon Windows 98 build, I stumbled upon a graphics card that I have had for a while. I don't know for how long and where it came from, but I never tested it since it didn't say what it was more than "2004" on the back and "ATI Radeon" on the front.

While being stuck waiting for the AGP card I ordered from Ebay, I decided to give this PCI-E a try in another system to see what it actually is. And it happend to be an ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition. Not bad, this was the fastest (ATI) graphic card around in december 2004 and for the whole of 2005 until january 2006 when the Radeon X1900 XTX arrived. At that time the Pentium 4 was really overdue, dual cores arrived and the Core 2 Duo was about to be introduced. So maybe this is the nicest Pentium 4 graphics card around.

So let's build a time-correct system around it and give it a try. I had an old Pentium 4 3,6 GHz, 1GB DDR-400 and an Asus P5RD1-VM laying around and put everything together. Although the Asus is a mATX motherboard, it is well-equipped with 4x SATA RAID and 2x ATA giving the possibility to have 8 devices connected. It has onboard audio and LAN as well.

After installing Windows XP, drivers, 3DMark03 and Unreal Tournament 2004, I did do some testing.

13890 3DMark03 points, not bad. CPU overclocked to 3978,72 MHz (no, I couldn't get it stable at 4 GHz with a crappy stock cooler, otherwise I would have done it, I promise) and GPU at 587 MHz (540 MHz stock) and the graphics memory at stock speed of 587 MHz. Overclocking of the graphics card was not maxed, but at least it wasn't stable at 600/600 and I got tired of the hanging up every time after 10 minutes of 3DMark.

Time to do some UT2004. All settings in both the Catalyst driver and the game are maxed. This includes 6xAA, 16xAF. Resolution is 1280x960 (4:3 CRT). This time everything is running on stock speeds and I can get it only down to 42 fps in a heavy map when a lot happens. Most of the time we're at 85 fps (vsync).

While playing UT2004, there is about 80% CPU load (at 3600 MHz) and 524 MB RAM is being used.

Just wanted to share my excitement about this rare find. With a price of $549 in 2004 I can imagine that there aren't many out there.