Product Reviews

HDMI is the connector that all High-Definition (HD) devices, including Blu-ray and HD DVD players, will use to connect to TVs. As well as delivering a digital picture, it's also used for sound: one simple cable is all you need. It's strange, then, that PCs haven't caught on and been released with HDMI outputs. Sapphire and PowerColor's X1600 Pro HDMI HDCP-compatible cards provide one.

Both cards are based on the same reference design and have an HDMI output where the DVI connector would normally be. Sapphire provides the HDMI cable and a DVI converter, so you can use the card with a standard PC monitor; PowerColor does not. The cards also have analogue D-sub connectors, so you can use them with regular monitors as well.

One of the main benefits of HDMI is that it carries sound, something you don't normally associate with graphics cards. To provide sound, X1600 Pro HDMI cards also have a coaxial S/PDIF input on the rear. Just take the output from your sound card and connect it to the graphics card's input, and the sound is passed along the HDMI cable to your TV.

If you're feeling more adventurous, you can ditch the ugly

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external cable, take the digital output directly from your motherboard and plug it into your graphics card internally. You'll have to know what you're doing and be happy to unplug the card's S/PDIF input, however.

Both Sapphire's and PowerColor's cards are slim, but Sapphire has the more flexible design, as you can replace the standard back plate with a low-profile one. As this doesn't leave enough room for the video outputs and digital audio input, Sapphire provides a second low-profile back plate for the audio. You'll need a screwdriver for the conversion, but it's not too difficult.

Both cards use ATI's 12-pipeline Radeon X1600 Pro chipset. Sapphire's card has a core speed of 500MHz and 256MB of GDDR3 memory running at 400MHz (800MHz effective); PowerColor's card has a core speed of 500MHz and 256MB of GDDR3 running at 450MHz (900MHz effective). PowerColor's X1600 Pro HDMI was faster than Sapphire's, but there was little in it. As you can see from the scores below, high-resolution and high-detail gaming is out of the question. You can play modern games, but you must turn down the detail and resolution settings first. Video performance is pretty good; the X1600 Pro uses ATI's AVIVO technology, which helps speed up HD (H.264) video decoding.

Both cards cost around £20 more than the standard non-HDMI X1600 Pros, so they're not good value if you're interested in gaming. If you're going to use an external set of speakers, there's not much point to HDMI. You may as well save the money and buy a DVI-to-HDMI converter for your existing graphics card. For a media centre PC, HDMI is a nice touch. Sapphire's X1600 Pro just edges out PowerColor's thanks to its extra cables and back plates in the box.