X1600 PRO vs. ???

S

SlitheryDee

I have a friend who is considering the purchase of this graphics card. It's an ATI x1600PRO 256mb PCI Express card manufacturted by Sapphire. It's my understanding that the x1600 cards are midrange class GPUs meant to compete with Nvidia cards like the 6800 GS. If that's true then at $122 this is an incredible (if a bit unbelievable) bargain. Furthermore the few benchmarks I have been able to find seem to put this card more in the 6600GT class with one in particular showing a 6600GT beating it in virtually all tests.

What I want to know is where does this card actually stand in performance-wise. I'm obviously more familiar with the Nvidia line-up so a comparison to one of their parts would be
helpful.
 

Munky

Diamond Member
Feb 5, 2005
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In currently available games the x1600's are about even with the 6600gt. However, the design of the x1600's is really better suited for shader-intensive games likely to come out in the near future, something along the lines of FEAR. In those games the x1600 will likely pull away from the 6600gt due to its 12 pixel shaders, where the 6600gt only has 8.