Is bigger always better? Well it's fairly hard to answer this question with one sentence, but delving into the problem might give us some clues and ideas. I'm sure a lot of you've been waiting for a video card that will finally sport half-a-gig of RAM. Some will ask, do we really need 512MB's of memory on a video card? We sure will, maybe not this year, but it will definitely boost performance in applications that use very high resolution textures with additional FSAA turned on. I don't want to rant on this topic as it's not the right place and time, let's just see what we can squeeze out of this beast.

Okay, so what if I told you that in addition to 512MB's of RAM, our PowerColor X800 XL is passively (sort of) cooled? If you don't know what I mean, check out our PowerColor Bravo X700 review to see what I'm talking about. The XL version comes with a similar system, but greatly improved. The SCS2 (Silent Cooling Solution 2) is what keeps the PowerColor X800 XL cool and quiet.