ATI Graphics Card Buyer's Guide 2006, Part II

Powercolor Radeon X1600 XT

This card's cooler covers both the GPU and the memory modules. However, the modules and the cooler don't actually touch, and the gap of 2 millimeters is too large for thermal pads. The board is a single-slot solution that supports Pixel Shader 3 as well as HDR rendering with simultaneous anti-aliasing. From a performance perspective, the X1600 XT is a little over one third slower than the X1800 XL, meaning it is just fast enough for the current crop of complex 3D games.

Powercolor's Radeon X1600 XT features two digital DVI outputs as well as an S-Video / HDTV connector.

The retail box contains HDTV, S-Video and RCA video cables, as well as a Vivo cable for video input and output. Power DVD 6 2ch is included as the card's software DVD player. A DVI-to-VGA adapter allows the use of an analog display.