To be fair to ATI, producing a high-performance, next-generation graphics card that maintained a single slot form factor, and kept the power draw the same as the outgoing model was quite an achievement. When ATI launched the X800 XT PE it made a huge issue of the fact that its board was a single slot solution while Nvidia's was a dual -slot board. Getting back to the X850 XT PE, the board that ATI sent over couldn't look more different to the old X800 XT PE. The core is running at a blisteringly fast 540MHz, while the memory is speeding along at 590MHz - that's 1.18GHz effective. Starting with the X850 XT PE, you get a VPU with 16 pixel pipelines, six vertex pipelines and support for 256MB of GDDR 3 memory. Top of the tree is the X850 XT PE that I'm looking at here, but there will also be an X850 XT and an X850 Pro. Just like the X800, the X850 comes in three different flavours. After all the exposure that Nvidia has been getting with its SLI dual-graphics card solution, ATI needed to hit back with something of its own, and the X850 does a pretty good job. Despite the fact that we're only just seeing X800 XT PE cards hitting the shelves, it doesn't come as much of a surprise to see ATI rolling out a new, super-fast card. To be fair, there aren't many differences between the X850 XT PE and the X800 XT PE, but the clock speeds have been given a boost. The Radeon X850 XT PE - or R480 as it was codenamed before today - is the fastest graphics card ever created by ATI. Yep, that's right, even though it's only just becoming available in the retail channel, the X800 XT PE has been usurped by ATI's latest and greatest graphics solution, the Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition. So this seems like a strange time for ATI to be superseding its high-end graphics solution. However, as we roll into December, stock of X800 XT Platinum Edition cards is finally starting to arrive. As the days, weeks and months ticked by, finding a retail X800 XT PE didn't become any easier and many potential buyers settled for X800 Pro cards instead, writes Riyad Emeran. However, even though the X800 XT PE was a great card, it soon became apparent that no one could buy one. This was ATI's next generation graphics solution, and it took graphics performance to the next level. Review Way back in May I looked at the ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition graphics card.