Product Reviews

Sapphire's latest graphics card is based upon ATIfs brand new Radeon X1050 chipset. The only thing is that it's not really brand new at all. It's actually just a rebadged version of ATIfs previous budget card, the X600, which has been renamed to fit neatly at the bottom of ATIfs current X1000-series of graphics cards.

Just reeling off the card's specifications makes it sound like it should perform reasonably well. The graphics processor runs at 400MHz and the 256MB of DDR2 memory operates at a speedy 666MHz. However, one thing the X1050 shares with its startlingly similar predecessor,

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the X600, is its terrible performance in 3D games. While our Call of Duty 2 test looked just fine, the X1050fs chronic lack of grunt turned it into a slow-motion slideshow. A benchmark result of just 20% shows that this card won't handle demanding modern games, and certainly not at the 1280 x 1024 resolution of most PC monitors.

It wasn't until we'd significantly reduced Call of Duty 2fs detail settings and dropped the resolution to a jagged 800 x 600 that the X1050 started to run smoothly enough to be playable.

That said, at £34, the Sapphire is one of the cheapest graphics cards we've seen in a long time and expecting it to take on the latest games with any finesse is perhaps a bit optimistic. With that in mind, the X1050 does have one small trick up its sleeve, namely that it'll happily enable Windows Vista's gorgeous Aero visual effects. In the unlikely event that you own a PC with a PCI-Express graphics slot and don't have a DirectX 9-capable graphics card capable of running Aero, the Sapphire is a fairly cheap solution. However, seeing that you can buy a much faster nVidia GeForce 7600GS card for an extra £25, the X1050 isn't the bargain it claims to be.