The FireGL X3-256 was an enthusiast-class professional graphics card by ATI, launched on August 3rd, 2004. Built on the 130 nm process, and based on the R420 graphics processor, in its R420 GL variant, the card supports DirectX 9.0b. Since FireGL X3-256 does not support DirectX 11 or DirectX 12, it might not be able to run all the latest games. The R420 graphics processor is an average sized chip with a die area of 281 mm² and 160 million transistors. It features 12 pixel shaders and 6 vertex shaders, 12 texture mapping units, and 12 ROPs. Due to the lack of unified shaders you will not be able to run recent games at all (which require unified shader/DX10+ support). ATI has paired 256 MB GDDR3 memory with the FireGL X3-256, which are connected using a 256-bit memory interface. The GPU is operating at a frequency of 491 MHz, memory is running at 454 MHz.
Being a single-slot card, the ATI FireGL X3-256 draws power from 1x Molex power connector, with power draw rated at 57 W maximum. Display outputs include: 2x DVI, 1x S-Video. FireGL X3-256 is connected to the rest of the system using an AGP 8x interface. Its price at launch was 1099 US Dollars.