Product Reviews

This is one of the first cards based on ATi's X600 GPU. Apart from the Gigabyte branding, this card is almost identical to the ATi Radeon X600 XT preview model we saw in issue 119.

Performance from the X600 was broadly what we expected based on ATi's engineering sample. Unreal Tournament 2004, with no anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering - luxuries most gamers can live without - raced along at 66fps at 1,280 x 1,024. Halo fared similarly well at 1,280 x 1,024, managing a decent 25fps, but it was at this point that we started to encounter the card's technical limitations. Turning Unreal's resolution up to 1,600 x 1,200 and switching on 4X anti-aliasing and 8X anisotropic filtering dropped the

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frame rate to a visually appealing but barely playable 16fps.

No matter how fast the RAM, just four pixel pipelines is always going to limit performance. Scores for Halo at 1,600 x 1,200 dropped to around 17fps, and there was an audible squeak of pain as we inflicted 1,600 x 1,200 Far Cry with AA and AF on it - 6fps is a pretty woeful effort.

Outputs on the card are identical to those on ATi's X600 sample, with DVI, VGA and S-Video out comprising the available options. Cables for all of these were in the box.

The Gigabyte is a bit of a mixed blessing for overclockers. On the one hand, V-Tuner 2 is supplied, allowing easy, GUI-based overclocking. The drawback is that it's very easy for over-zealous gamers to irreparably damage their new hardware - the small heatsink and fan onboard mean that overclocking to more than 10 per cent doesn't work and causes instant system failure. Overclocking to 10 per cent or less results in a negligible performance increase - less than 1fps in Unreal Tournament 2004.

The X600-based cards will probably retail cheaper, but the performance increase offered by the nVidia card is likely to sway consumers with an extra £20. While this card is available now, it's worth seeing what the competition can offer before making a purchase.