Final thoughts, HEXUS.awards, HEXUS.right2reply
Overall thoughts, HEXUS Awards, HEXUS Right2Reply
Our initial ATI Radeon X1600 XT roundup highlighted that the SKU was a reasonable performer given the ~£85-£95 asking price, offering between 25-40FPS in a trio of good-looking, fast-moving games. Additionally, the SKUs' 2D-related abilities, including Avivo and twin dual-link DVI support made them a decent proposition for those of you looking to upgrade, say, onboard graphics to a PCIe card with considerably more grunt. Our roundup also found HIS' cards to be amongst the best, so we decided to investigate CrossFire performance, by adding another card, on the same platform.Dongle-less CrossFire for the HIS X1600 XT IceQ Turbo DL-DVI DVI 256MiB GDDR3 cards raised performance by up to 75%, with 40% increases almost guaranteed. The effect this had on games playing was profound. Whereas the average framerate for a single card run at 1280x1024 4x AA 8x AF caused jerkiness, a second card's augmenting performance ironed out the extreme lows and made for a more-immersive experience. Multi-GPU technology is good right across the board, but it makes even more sense with the midrange market, and upgrading to two cards, when funds permit, is always a decent idea.
Given a starting budget of, say, £190 we wouldn't buy these two cards and run them in CrossFire. ATI's Radeon X1900 GT and NVIDIA's 7900 GT single cards are more appealing propositions. However, if you already own a Radeon X1600 XT, and judging by ATI's sales many of you do, adding in a second card, hardware- and wallet-permitting, is a worthwhile exercise. It allows you to upgrade performance without having to take a large financial hit selling the initial card. Recommended as the simplest and cheapest method of increasing gaming performance should you already own an ATI Radeon X1600 XT.
HEXUS Awards
- HIS X1600 XT IceQ Turbo DL-DVI DVI 256MiB GDDR3 CrossFire
