|
PowerColor X600 XT PCI-Express 128MB
The Card
PowerColor's product package is definitely eye-catching. There is a sort of metallic / carbon fiber theme going on, with an explosion of red behind the product name. You will find the usual things on the box - specifications, what is bundled, features, etc.   As the vast majority of Radeon cards, this card is on a red PCB, as usual. The heatsink PowerColor has put on their X600 line of cards, on the other hand, is quite unusual. It is obvious that they were trying to make a statement, although I'm not sure what. Upon closer inspection, you can sort of see that the heatsink looks similar (from top view) to the design on the front of the product packaging. Imagine looking at the spikey ball thing from in front of it, staring into the lens, and that (I assume) is what PowerColor was trying to make the heatsink look like. The actual construction of the heatsink is nothing extraordinary; it simply extends out from the GPU in an "L' shape to cool the memory as well. The circular thing on top of the heatsink is screwed in place over the fan, and isn't actually part of the heatsink construction. Something worth noting is that this little decoration restricts airflow for the underlying fan, and likely won't have a positive impact on cooling.    I find it interesting that PowerColor has decided to cool the memory on this card. While a little cooling certainly isn't going to have a negative effect on the card, I would like to point out that the memory doesn't really need to be cooled on these lower end cards. I think that the only reason PowerColor even chose to cool the memory was to provide a larger base for the big decoration they slapped on top of the heatsink. Had they left the decoration out, I think we would have seen just a square heatsink cooling only the GPU.   There is nothing interesting on the front edge of this card - no auxiliary power connection or otherwise.  The noise level of the fan on this card is higher than I would have expected, which can probably be attributed to the airflow being limited by the decorative metal disk. It only has small slits in it to allow air to come in. The X600 XT has a core clock speed of 500 MHz and 128 MB of DDR clocked at 370 MHz (740 MHz DDR). The RAM chips are labeled as Hynix HY5DU283222 AF-25 which are rated to run at 400 MHz (800 MHz DDR). This means that PowerColor has left us a bit of room to overclock the memory, but we'll find out more later on.   Technology-wise, ATI left Shader Model 3.0 out of this generation of cards. While SM 2.0b has done a good job of providing great quality and performance, and considering most games don't currently benefit from SM 3.0, it is still questionable whether or not they should have supported it. NVIDIA has, and we will have to see how it all plays out. The Bundle Power-Color's X600 XT software bundle is fairly decent. They included the full version of Hitman: Contracts, a Cyberlink DVD 5-in-1 Solution Bundle, and of course a driver CD. In addition to the software goodies you also receive a DVI-to-VGA adaptor, Composite and S-Video cables, and a User's Manual.   
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: The Card & The Bundle Page 3: Test Setup Page 4: Benchmarks: Doom 3 Page 5: Benchmarks: Half-Life 2 Page 6: Benchmarks: Counter-Strike: Source Page 7: Benchmarks: Far Cry Page 8: Benchmarks: Splinter Cell Page 9: Image Quality Page 10: Overclocking & Conclusion 
Related Reviews Video Cards September 23, 2009
Video Cards June 25, 2009
Video Cards June 8, 2009
Video Cards April 6, 2009
Add Comment
0 User Comments Add Comment To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields. |
Recent Articles Editorials August 27, 2009
Editorials August 18, 2009
Editorials March 3, 2009
Editorials February 12, 2009
Recent News VICE Nov. 20, 2009 - 7:17 pm
Wired Nov. 20, 2009 - 7:07 pm
Engadget Nov. 20, 2009 - 6:58 pm
Telegraph.co.uk Nov. 20, 2009 - 6:48 pm
BBC Nov. 20, 2009 - 6:38 pm
Destructoid Nov. 18, 2009 - 11:55 pm
Wired Nov. 16, 2009 - 11:56 pm
Ultimate Typing Championship Nov. 16, 2009 - 11:42 pm
|
|||||||||||||||
