Thoughts
It's safe to say that any card, and I mean any card, based on the R420 GPU will be a good one. Greater rendering parallelism and higher core and memory speeds ensure that benchmark performance will be stellar. That point of view is corroborated by decent benchmark results from Crucial's X800 PRO. If, then, all X800 PROs are considered to be 'good', what makes one better than another?. What immediately springs to mind are cards that arrive pre-clocked at higher-than-default levels, or ones that bundle in the very latest games, or, for most buyers, the ones that are the cheapest.Crucial fails to hit the mark when evaluated on any of these criterias. That's the problem right there. The bundle is basic, with just enough to get the card working correctly. There are no additional games that one can play with, and the card is very much reference in every respect. A keen online price of ~£270 could have minimised the inadequacies that exist elsewhere, but an asking price of £316 inc. VAT puts it close to the price of the cheapest X800 XT PE card.
Crucial's X800 PRO 256MB graphics card is based on sound technology. Crucial, however, doesn't do enough with it to warrant an outright recommendation. The company may be one of the best with respect to customer service, but its card packages are decidedly mediocre.
