PowerColor Radeon X1650XT faces off MSI 7600 GT

ATI certainly had some huge birthing troubles delivering the RV560 chip. We heard about it a while ago and it was originally planned for the latest Computex. As the ATI chaps messed about with this chip out and as a quarter year delay was a normal procedure for the former red boys, it announced it yesterday, months after the original projected date.

It is now the second 80 nanometre chip out there, sort of. Nvidia has some mobile 80 nanometre chips out but these are not the real desktop parts, at least not publicly. It will sell for around $149, which can give the 7600 GT a fight but not without casualties.

The PowerColor Radeon X1650XT is clocked at 600MHz core and 1400MHz memory. The card uses only 256MB of 128bit GDDR3 memory and has eight real pipelines and twenty four Shader units. The card also supports Vista, is HDCP ready and uses the CrossFire Bridge Interconnect, dual way - the same as on the RV570 cards.

The cards should be available by the end of November so this is sort of preview of what is to come. PowerColor uses a nice massive cooler and we like the fact that it's quiet. The card has dual DVI ports and the S video in and out. To this day we still haven't seen the new Crossfire connector and therefore we can not try it, anyhow you need to have two cards for it.

This card was delayed due some driver issues but the ones that we finally received was stable and worked well with the card. We still don't know why ATI didn't move to a 256 bit memory interface for this card as this is what is holding performance back. I guess it has to do something with the chip size, heat dissipation, yields and costs.

We decided to compare the card to PowerColor's own X1800GTO card based on the R520 chip and clocked to 500/1000MHz. the second card we decided to compare is the MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz as we wanted to test it against a 7600 GT card. Even the X1800GTO had problems catching the 7600 GT in the scores where effects were turned off.

The MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition is clocked a bit higher than the reference 7600 GT. It works at 580 MHz memory and 1500MHz core while the reference one works at 560/1400MHz. it has a massive dual slot cooler, that is surprisingly silent and we are sure it can be further overclocked. Strangely we could not find it anymore in the European retail, I guess MSI sold them all.

The retail package includes RGB - HDTV cable with S Video out, two DVI dongles, S video cable, a driver CD, StarDVD Family, Power cinema, Power producer, Power 2 Go and a quick user guide.

MSI 7600GT Diamond dual slot card

Benchmarketing
We used :
Foxconn C51XE M2aa Nforce 590 SLI motherboard
Geforce 7900 GT 450/1320 MHz
Athlon FX 62 2800 MHz 90 nanometre Windsor core
2x1024 MB DDR2 Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3 memory
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Thermaltake Mini Typhoon Athlon 64/X2/FX cooler and Intel CPU's
Silverstone Strider ST60F, 600W ATX 2.0 SATA

Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Game3
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	12483	90.2	74.4	87.5
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	13548	100.3	78.7	86.9
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	14123	99.7	86.9	86.5
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	1879.0	4533.1	59.3	80.0
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	2739.8	5760.1	51.1	137.7
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	2517.8	6680.7	40.1	293.3
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	3DMark 05	Game1	Game2	Game2
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	7760	34.7	23.1	37.3
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	7018	30.0	21.2	34.8
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	6321	27.9	19.2	30.2
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS/VS complex
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	2095.9	4570.1	199.1	96.8/56.5
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	3153.9	5964.8	137.5	75.3/46.7
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	3002.3	6847.6	190.5	54.4/39.4
Composite Figures 3Dmark 06	3DMark 06
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	3397
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	3286
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	3464
SM2.0 Test	Score	GT1	GT2
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	1264	9.137	11.930
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	1241	9.424	11.254
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	1367	11.179	11.610
HDR/SM3.0 Test	Score	HDR1	HDR2
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	1288	12.286	13.465
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	1219	11.841	12.548
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	1246	10.972	13.951
CPU Test	Score	CPU1	CPU2
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	2155	0.680	1.092
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	2152	0.679	1.092
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	2107	0.679	1.046
Doom 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	90.6	67.4	49.2	29.0
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	105.2	77.4	57.8	34.5
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	120.7	97.6	74.3	48.8
Doom 3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	62.6	43.3	31.3	11.6
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	74.5	50.7	37.4	21.8
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	76.1	50.7	37.2	21.8
FEAR	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	80	58	39	20
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	77	54	38	20
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	80	60	41	27
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	49	35	24	9
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	53	37	24	12
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	46	32	22	13
Quake 4	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	136.8	114.0	89.1	54.5
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	140.4	118.7	94.7	59.1
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	161.3	134.7	103.4	68.9
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	116.3	86.4	65.2	20.8
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	122.9	92.0	71.3	43.0
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	125.2	87.4	65.8	37.5
Half Life 2 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	82.82	56.60	48.03	27.96
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	83.97	58.29	49.91	43.00
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	82.02	60.46	49.75	31.03
Far Cry	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	95.14	91.37	71.05	36.84
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	91.86	91.82	78.20	43.92
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	96.90	95.40	79.07	51.82
Far Cry High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	80.00	56.42	42.57	17.85
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	91.25	69.64	52.14	27.87
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	85.24	58.02	41.11	24.00
Serious Sam 2	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	129.4	99.4	71.9	40.4
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	139.7	109.1	79.4	48.3
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	129.3	95.9	68.2	47.0
Serious Sam 2 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
PowerColor X1650XT 595/695 MHz	70.0	52.9	40.2	19.3
PowerColor X1800GTO 500/1000 MHz	88.9	67.4	51.9	31.4
MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz	83.1	60.3	42.7	26.9

The MSI 7600GT Diamond Edition 580/1500MHz clearly wins in 3Dmark03. It is some 600 points faster than the GTO and 1500 points faster than X1650XT. 3Dmark05 rates the PowerColor X1650XT clocked at 595/1400MHz best, 1400 marks faster than the 7600 GT and 750 marks faster than the GTO. I guess it's because it has more shaders than the R520 based GTO or 7600 GT.

In 3Dmark06 the MSI 7600 GT wins by 60 marks but I guess we can call them evenly matched. The X1800 GTO loses by some 130 points to both cards. Shader model 2.0 score is slightly faster on 7600 MSI while RV560 based PowerColor X1650XT wins in HDR / Shader model 2.0 test by 40 marks, again you can call them even Steven. Then we ran the games and that's where the X1650XT stopped shining.

In Doom 3 the MSI 7600 GT is significantly faster, by more than 50 percent, at all resolutions. The RV560 looks a bit better with the effects on, however Nvidia still wins, but scores almost identically to the X1800 GTO.

The Radeon X1650 XT can keep up with Nvidia in FEAR and only significantly loses at 20x15. It is even faster in FEAR with FSAA and Anisotropic Filtering on by up to three frames but it runs out of breath at 20x15.

Nvidia again dominates in Quake score and runs sometimes more than 20 frames faster. With FSAA and Anisotropic Filtering cards are very close only a frame or two difference except at 20x15 where Nvidia clearly wins.

In Half-life all cards score around the same until 16x12 and at 20x15 GTO wins, MSI 7600 GT is second and X1650XT ends up third.

Far Cry runs a bit faster on MSI 7600GT by up to eight frames, a roughly ten percent difference and in Far Cry 4X FSAA and 8X Anisotropic Filtering X1800 GTO beats them all by up to eleven frames while MSI is slightly faster than X1650XT and significantly faster at 20x15.

Serious Sam 2 is the fastest on the X1800 GTO card while X1650XT wins the first three resolutions and loses at the last one. GTO is yet again the fastest at Serious Sam 2 FSAA and Anisotropic Filtering and 7600 GT ends up second.

In Short
We expected more from the RV560 card, but it's not without its merits. It should be priced at $ / €149 which is still around 20 bucks more than the cards we used for testing. The MSI card is a bit more overclocked than the reference design but to be honest we think it is a good card and you wouldn't regret it if you bought one. If you have 7600 GT you are a happy man, ATI still doesn't have the card to really make you want to upgrade, at least not at the same range.

We believe that ATI will have to drop the X1650 XT price further to help it sell against the X1800 GTO or 7600 GT especially the fancy ones such as the MSI we tested. The X1950PRO card based on the RV570 that we reviewed here or 7900 GS are definitely the better choice but will cost you about $ / €50 more. µ

Reviewed and tested by Sanjin Rados and Fuad Abazovic