John Gillooly decides he'll just call this card 'Steve'.
In the AGP space, the previous generation's high end cards like the RADEON 9800 PRO and XT have experienced a drop in price that has now put them into the mainstream space, and are definitely viable options for gamers unable to afford the high end X800 cards. However, in the PCI-E space there are no legacy chips in ATI's line-up, so the X600XT is one of the only viable mainstream choices.
This is even more important now that NVIDIA has paper launched its GeForce 6600 series of mainstream Shader Model 3.0 cards, as now it only has the lacklustre GeForce FX based PCX cards in its line-up. We are still unsure about when we will see the 6600 cards on the market.
In performance terms, the X600XT card hovers around the same level of NVIDIA's PCX 5900 card. However, in terms of features, it is a much superior offering. Based upon the RADEON 9600XT, the X600XT sports four full precision Shader Model 2.0 pipelines, which makes for a much more rounded solution than the heavily flawed PCX architecture.
Gigabyte's GV-RX60X128V card is a robust solution, which combines the competent performance of the X600XT with a game bundle that includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Rainbow 6: Raven Shield, which is pretty good for a card available at a mainstream price point.
However with the eight-pipeline GeForce 6600 imminent, it may well be one of those rare cases where holding off non- essential upgrades for a month or so might be a good idea. If you simply must have an ATI mainstream card now then this is the one for you, although bear in mind that overall it is only a good card, not an outstanding one.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012