Final Words

We mentioned in the intro that ATI seems to be having some problems with paper launching cards and not having parts available to consumers at their suggested price (e.g. the X1950 Pro). The X1950 Pro is a good competitor to NVIDIA's 7900 GS, but we advise potential buyers to stay away from this card if it's over $220. Just pay very close attention to the price when buying one of these cards and you should be alright. We also want to reiterate that the X1900 GT is no longer the same card so stay away from it. Again, it's just poor on ATI's part to bump down the clock speed of a card that has already been on shelves for a while now, without bothering to change its name in order for consumers to distinguish it from its faster predecessor. This is a move that is sure to confuse and frustrate consumers.

The performance of the X1650 XT is just what you would expect from a mainstream graphics card of this type. With the 7600 GT being on the market for so long without any competition from ATI, the X1650 XT was overdue. With the release of this card, we now see performance from ATI that is very similar to the popular 7600 GT. This card handles a wide variety of games with ease at flexible resolutions. It still has trouble running some of the games at 1600x1200 and above, but getting smooth frame rates at 1280x1024 in nearly all the games we tested is a nice achievement in a card projected to be in the <$150 price range. Those with 1280x1024 monitors can easily shun more expensive GPUs without sacrificing that much in the way of gaming enjoyment.

With regards to the issue of the card's price, because of what we are seeing with the X1950 Pro, we can't be sure of what the X1650 XT will sell for once it actually becomes available. Perhaps the fact that this is a paper launch (as opposed to the X1950 Pro's hard launch) will mean prices will be closer to ATI's mark when the X1650 XT finally hits the market. Unfortunately, one current indicator is in a price we saw on an X1650 XT from Gigabyte, available for pre-order at $200. This might be a feasible target for some vendors when they start hitting shelves, but it still wouldn't be a good price for consumers, as it's not quite as fast as other cards currently in the $200 price range. The X1650 XT only really shines when pitted against the 7600 GT at $150.

All said the Radeon X1650 XT looks to be a good option for a lower-midrange card, depending on what it will sell for. We think this will be a decent buy if it makes it out in November at its projected $150 price tag, but honestly we aren't getting our hopes up too high about this happening. As it gets closer to the holidays, we will hopefully see some deals on this card and others, but right now there's really no point in waiting to fork over the money for this card instead of the 7600 GT. A 7600 GT can currently be found for under $140, with mail-in rebates dropping some prices to under $120, which makes it pretty much a no-brainer as to which one to go with.

We are definitely interested to see what direction ATI is headed in now that AMD appears to be at the helm. Hopefully this paper launch will be only a one-time slip on ATI's way to providing consumers with products the day of launch in much the same way NVIDIA does. There's never much debate that ATI consistently provides quality products to computer users; we would just like to see the kind of competitive prices and hard launches with their products that we see from NVIDIA.

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  • guidryp - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link

    They spec like this:

    1650XT: 8 vertex Pipes, 24 pixel pipes, 8 Raster pipes, 575MHz, Mem 675MHz X 128 bus.
    7600GT: 5 vertex Pipes, 12 pixel pipes, 8 Raster pipes 560MHz, Mem 700MHz X 128 bus.

    And the ATI card barely holds it's own? I was expecting a walkaway after reading the specs.
  • coldpower27 - Saturday, November 4, 2006 - link

    It should be 24 Pixel Shaders vs 12 Pixel Shaders.

    while both have 8 ROP's, it is probably the X1650 XT only has 8 TMU while the 7600 GT has 12 as both are half their flagship derivatives. Ignore vertex amounts those tpyically aren't half and don't contribute to much on the most part to performance it seems anyway.

    X1900 XTX 48 Pixel Shaders, 16 Rasterization Operators, 650MHZ, Mem 775MHZ x 256 Bit Bus
    7900 GTX 24 Pixel Shaders, 16 Rasterization Operators, 650MHZ, Mem 800MHZ x 256 Bit Bus

    The X1900 XTX doesn't walkaway from the 7900 GTX on the whole either.
  • trinibwoy - Wednesday, November 1, 2006 - link

    Do you guys do other testing that you comment on that is not represented by the graphs? The numbers show a 1 fps difference, yet you use terms like "significant" and "clearly beats". Maybe some median low fps numbers would help demonstrate what you're saying.

    quote:

    An interesting thing about Oblivion is that it favors ATI hardware over NVIDIA, and this is evident here when we look at the X1650 XT compared with the 7600 GT. In this case, the X1650 XT has a small but significant performance lead over the 7600 GT. Because of this, the X1650 XT is more likely to be playable at 1024x768 than the 7600 GT. This is one case where the X1650 XT clearly beats the 7600 GT just in terms of performance. Oblivion players may want to consider this card once it's available, but only assuming the price is reasonable.
  • soydeedo - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    hey i know i can make an educated guess as to where the x1650xt would end up on q4 benches compared to nvidia's offerings, but i'm still curious why this game was not included in the testing? with quakewars around the corner i think people are still interested in doom 3 engine performance.
  • johnsonx - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    I suppose this name is part of ATI's general trend lately. It used to be that the XT moniker meant the same GPU with slightly higher clocks. Now it seems like the XT parts are a separate family. The X1300XT has nothing to do with the other X1300's (rather it's a rebadged X1600Pro), the X1900XT has more pipes than non-XT members of the X1900 family, and now the X1650XT has nothing to do with the rest of the X1600/1650 family.

    It all makes it a bit hard to choose.
  • Kougar - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    On page 10 it is mentioned that

    quote:

    Something that jumps out at us here is that the X1650 XT got slightly better performance than the 7600 GT in both of these games with 4xAA enabled. Without AA enabled, the 7600 GT did better than the X1650 XT in these games. The amount of difference between the performance of both of these cards is about the same with and without AA.


    This is completely going against the bar graphs, specifically the HL Episode One graph. The x1650XT got up and began walking away from the 7600GT without AA, but with AA it tripped and slide into place just behind the 7600GT. At resolutions below 1600by1200 it even began losing by a sizeable margin.
  • Josh Venning - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    This paragraph has been tweaked a little bit. In HL2 Episode one the X1650 XT only does better than the 7600 GT at the highest resolution with AA enabled, but in Battlefield 2 it performs a little better over most of the resolutions.
  • Cybercat - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    How many vertex units does this thing have?
  • JarredWalton - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    See (updated) table on page 2: it has 8 vertex units, 24 pixel pipes, and 8 ROPs. Basically, lots more power than the X1600 XT. I would guess the pixel pipes are more like R580 pipes (i.e. more shader power, but not necessarily the same as an NVIDIA pixel pipeline in raw power).
  • Cybercat - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    Alright, cool. I keep a chart with stats of graphics cards, so I'm just making sure I have the vertice throughput correct. Other than the useless X1650 Pro, ATI seems to have a much more competitive mainstream line now. There is now more confusion than ever, though.

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