We seem to be getting a lot of mid range cards here at Gaming Nexus and while it’s great to have the most powerful card out there to test, the mid range area shouldn’t be overlooked. PowerColor is one company we have never tested and this will be the first card from them that we have on board today. PowerColor is an ATI solutions provider and today we’re going to look at their X1600 offering.
The PowerColor X1600 XT Bravo Edition is based on the RV530 chip. The card sports core clocked at 600MHz with the memory clocked at 700MHz DDR. There are 12 pixel pipelines and 4 TMUs. Like all current ATI solutions, this card is Crossfire ready so if you want to potentially double your graphics power at a modest price, you can tag another one of these bad boys on a Crossfire board. This is the most powerful of the X1600 line with the pro coming in at a slower 500MHz core and 400MHz memory speed. The card has 256MB of memory, which should be enough for a mid range card.
Packaged in a grey box with a female standing in front of a robot on the front, the card is the traditional red PCB with a PowerColor branded black heatsink and fan combination. The cover for the cooling system is a clear plastic piece so you can peer underneath. There isn’t a need for an external power supply as the PCI Express port puts out enough juice to power this card. Other than the PowerColor logo in the center, the card’s look is pretty standard for ATI cards.
On the bracket are two DVI outputs. If you have two digital LCD monitors, this is a nice option as you won’t be hunting for a converter to plug your card into. Included with the card an S-Video cable, VIVO connectors, component connectors, and a DVI->VGA adapter. My package didn’t come with a game but there seems to be other packages of that do include one. The only game included in the bundle is one I’ve never played in Pacific Fighters so I can’t tell you if it’s any good or not. The game has a 78% average on Game Rankings so it shouldn’t be too bad. All in all, the bundle you get is on the light side but you still get the cables you’ll need to input or output video to and from the card. The regular X1600 XT from PowerColor does not come with the same amount of IO cables.
A quick search on PriceGrabber yielded a $169 price tag from one vendor: NewEgg.Com. For near the same price, say $30 less, you can also grab a GeForce 6600 GT which is what we are comparing to today. We don’t have a 6800GS on board to test as that’s also close to this card’s price point as well.
Our test setup included:
* The product in this article was sent to us by the developer/company.
I've been reviewing products since 1997 and started out at Gaming Nexus. As one of the original writers, I was tapped to do action games and hardware. Nowadays, I work with a great group of folks on here to bring to you news and reviews on all things PC and consoles.
As for what I enjoy, I love action and survival games. I'm more of a PC gamer now than I used to be, but still enjoy the occasional console fair. Lately, I've been really playing a ton of retro games after building an arcade cabinet for myself and the kids. There's some old games I love to revisit and the cabinet really does a great job at bringing back that nostalgic feeling of going to the arcade.
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