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MSI Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Saturday, 06 May 2006 |
Hardware Zone brings us a review on the MSI Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB PCIe graphics card. It's been a pretty rough spring for ATI in the graphics arena. Its Radeon X1800 GTO response to NVIDIA's winning streak of GeForce 7600 and 7900 series have not been entirely convincing. For sure, they still have a strong flagship performer in the Radeon X1900 series but in the mid-range, the prices of the paper-launched and delayed Radeon X1800 GTO have not exactly endeared themselves to the popular masses, a requisite for the more budget conscious mid-range segment. Whatever the strategy ATI plans for the mid-range, consumers will of course welcome any price cuts.
 MSI Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB PCI-E Review
Just compare the number of vendors that offer Radeon X1800 GTO cards versus that for the GeForce 7600 GT and you'll find it tilting heavily in favor of the GeForce. Already, silent and overclocked editions of its NVIDIA rival are widely available while we could only find the standard Radeon X1800 GTO reference designs on the shelves; that seems somewhat like a sign of disinterest from the vendors themselves, while in contrast, the under-performing but relatively cheaper Radeon X1600 series has had more love. It could be that there isn't that many rejected R520 cores available.
All the Radeon X1800 GTO cards available now are reference models that are basically similar to each other. Going by the small handful of vendors offering these cards compared to its much more popular mid-range rival, the GeForce 7600 GT, it would be safe to say that we don't really expect to find any more vendors jumping onto this chipset in the near future, even with a price cut. The hard truth is that power consumption and heat output concerns matter nowadays and this is where the more efficient GeForce 7600 GT retains the advantage even if the Radeon X1800 GTO ties it on pricing.
So far, the rumored price cuts for the Radeon X1800 GTO have not been reflected on online retailers. It could take a while, it could be totally unfounded or it could be that the price adjustments will coincide with the launch of the next new ATI product, the Radeon X1900 GT in a concerted bid to regain ATI's mind share. Slated to compete against the GeForce 7900 GT, this new product reuses the more successful R580 core, hence the Radeon X1900 moniker and hopefully will add more competition to the upper mid-range by taking advantage of the relatively tight supply of GeForce 7900 GT cards at the moment.
While we are unable to get the official retail price at the time of publication as this is a relatively new offering from MSI, we expect it to be around the average selling price of a Radeon X1800 GTO in the market now. That could be around $249 if the price cuts are not implemented yet though it could probably be found for less than that. However, it would need a rather more attractive price for us to recommend the MSI Radeon X1800 GTO over the other competing Radeon X1800 GTO cards out there now.
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