The Radeon X1800 series was more than just another generation of graphics cards for ATi, it saved them from an impending dooms day. Although the series was tremendously late on arrival, the fact that the series did come to light saved the day. Ironically as successful as the X1800 series was for ATi, it has also been the shortest lived flagship series in history. Just months after X1800 supportive cards began to hit shelves, ATi announced the X1900 series. Nevertheless, this is all still very good news for ATi and also the consumer.

Those that have already purchased a Radeon X1800XT graphics card still hold a very powerful product. The performance of the Radeon X1800XT was exceptional and was certainly comparable to that of the competition. Even by todays standards it is still an exceptional graphics card that is more than capable of delivering extreme performance in the latest games. Given that new Radeon X1900XT graphics cards are now retailing for roughly $550 US, the price of graphics cards featuring the older Radeon X1800XT core have dropped significantly in price.

There are also other ways in which manufacturers such as ASUS can add even more value to a particular graphics card. For example per-overclocking the core and memory is a method used to improve performance, thus adding to the cards value. Upgrading the reference cooler to something a little more out there is another method manufacturers use to help make their product a little more desirable. There are many ways to make a product more exciting and ASUS has does their best to incorporate them all into their flagship Radeon X1800XT product.

The ASUS Extreme AX1800XT TOP 512MB is a serious Radeon X1800XT contender offering overclocked core and memory frequencies, along with an improved cooling solution. Interestingly, ASUS has also included an external power source that helps regulate the power delivered to this pre-overclocked graphics card. Furthermore, this also means there is far less demand placed on the computers primary power supply unit. This is particularly important when running two of these graphics cards in CrossFire mode.

ASUS have made a number of unique design adjustments to the Extreme AX1800XT TOP that are much different to that of the ATi reference design. For the most part these adjustments are quite good, though there are some that have the potential to create a few compatibility issues. These issues will be discussed in the following section of this review. Before we move on let's just take a moment to go over the Radeon X1800XT specifications.

Rather than increase the rendering pipelines for the Radeon X1800XT, ATi has shrunk the die and gone for higher core clock frequencies. Using a 90nm TSMC process, core frequencies of over 600MHz are achievable. The Radeon X1800XT utilizes 16 pixel pipelines and 8 vertex pipelines. The core comes clocked at 625MHz with a memory frequency of 1.4GHz, though ASUS has significantly boosted these frequencies for the Extreme AX1800XT TOP.