Product Reviews

We expected big things of this card. It's built around nVidia's GeForce FX 5900XT graphics chipset, the little brother of the FX 5900 Ultra chipset that powered MSI's FX5900 Ultra VIVO card to the highest score in our last graphics card group test. That card cost a whopping 400 quid - the XFX GeForce 5900XT comes in at a much more healthy £148 including VAT, but that's still 40 quid more than our Top 50 card, the Sapphire Radeon 9800 SE.

So what does it have to justify the extra? Its games bundle had a few welcome surprises, including Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, Comanche 4, Racing Simulation 3 and MotoGP 2. It also comes bundled with an S-Video lead and an adapter for converting the DVI output on the card into an output for a second analogue monitor.

But what really counts in a graphics card is power. To ascertain performance in current games, we measured the card's performance in 3DMark 2001 and Unreal Tournament 2003. In 3DMark

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2001, the XFX racked up a whopping score of 15798. More than enough 3D power to slice through any game on the market! To see how the card performed under pressure, we cranked up the anti-aliasing setting, which smooths jagged edges, to 4x. We also increased anisotropic filtering (which helps preserve the detail of graphical objects that are fading into the distance), turning it up to its maximum setting of 8x to keep textures crisp and clear. If your graphics card can handle them, these settings can make both new and old games vastly better. The XFX took everything in its stride, romping home to an impressive score of 11488 in 3DMark 2001. Even in the demanding Unreal Tournament 2003 test, it managed a silky-smooth frame rate of 55 frames per second. Both scores are double those of our Top 50 card, the Sapphire Radeon 9800SE.

Our final benchmark, the Mother Nature test from 3DMark03, assesses a card's ability to produce the graphical effects required by Microsoft's DirectX 9 standard. Water shimmers realistically, trees sway, and butterflies flutter in a scene that's serenely beautiful - but incredibly difficult to render. If a card does well in this test you can be sure it'll happily run future games. It's a shame, then, that the XFX flounders with a frame rate of only 22 frames per second.

The XFX is a powerful card, with a good bundle of software at a great price. Unfortunately, the Sapphire Radeon 9800SE beats it for sheer value - and the Powercolor Radeon 9800 Pro noses ahead with its superior 3D muscle.