Product Reviews

Having spent a generation of graphics cards playing catch-up with nVidia, ATI went back to the drawing board to work on its new chip. The result is the Radeon X1900XT, and we looked at PowerColor's version of the card.

Where ATI's previous top-of-the range cards, the X1800 series, used highly clocked components to achieve fast throughputs, the X1900XT takes a rather different approach: lots of pixel pipelines. The X1900XT has 48 pipelines, three times more than the X1800 and double the number of nVidia's GeForce 7800 GTX. That's a lot of power.

On top of this, the graphics core runs at a speedy 625MHz. The card has 512MB of GDDR3 memory running at 725MHz (1.45GHz effective), which helps it deal with high-resolution graphics. On paper it appears to do exactly what ATI wanted it to do, which is to provide fast graphics at high resolutions and high levels of detail.

We put the card through its paces in a number of games. First, Doom 3, which uses OpenGL for its 3D engine. ATI has previously lagged behind nVidia on OpenGL performance and

Most games use Direct3D, though, and here the X1900XT doesn't disappoint. In our Call of Duty 2 test it outstripped every other card we've reviewed by 15fps. We pushed the resolution up to 1,600x1,200 and put every setting to maximum, and the card still managed an incredible 37.1fps. This is our most difficult graphics test and the X1900XT stormed through it without a problem.

We found similar results in Splinter Cell and 3DMark05. This is by far the fastest card we've ever reviewed and, perhaps more importantly, one that still maintains the highest levels of detail. Unbelievably, a faster version of this card, the Radeon X1900XTX, is available. To see how this performs, read our review of the Mesh PC on page 12.

Performance doesn't apply only to games, though. A lot of work has been put into video playback, especially High Definition (HD). If you use this card, you should get some of the cleanest images you're likely to see outside high-end consumer video players.

If you're thinking it can't all be good news, you're right. A card this powerful comes at a high price, and £370 for a graphics card is a lot of money. It's also quite large, taking up two slots, so it's no use if you want to install it in a mini PC.

It's pricy, but PowerColor's X1900XT will do everything you could want a graphics card to do. You'll need a 20" LCD to display the 1,600x1,200 resolution it excels at, though. Those on a tighter budget should opt for a GeForce 7800 GT, which offers excellent performance at resolutions of 1,280x1,024 and costs around £140 less.