Last week saw the launch of a handful of new refresh parts in ATI's graphics board line-up, in what should be the last of DirectX 9.0 capable boards. Naturally, the main focus of the day was on their GDDR4 sporting, R580 based high-end refresh part, in the form of the Radeon X1950 XTX and CrossFire edition. However, in many ways this isn't the most interesting board of the bunch, considering that ATI are also launching new parts aimed at capturing further market share in the mid-range and low-end. It's that mid-range segment we'll be focusing on today. For some time now NVIDIA have largely ruled the roost in this discipline, and mainly reassured by their GeForce 7600 chips. - Elite Bastards

PowerColor Radeon X1650 PRO 256MB HDCP Review

Although the Radeon X1800 GTO has succeeded in running the GeForce 7600 GT close in the performance stakes, from ATI's point of view this part, based as it is around a cut down high-end R520 core, isn't really as cost effective as they would like. However much we like to sit and crow about performance as consumers, for the GPU manufacturers and their partners considerations such as manufacturing costs, yields and profit margins are at least as important, if not more so. Thus, ATI's aim at the mid-range with these new parts is to launch SKU's based around new cores which can take back their respective performance crowns.

Replacing the aforementioned Radeon X1800 GTO we find the Radeon X1650 XT, which is based around the new, 80nm RV560 core, complete with twenty-four pixel shader processors via eight pixel pipelines. In the place of the Radeon X1600 XT comes the Radeon X1650 PRO, which can utilise either the 90nm RV530 core or the new 80nm RV535 core, featuring twelve pixel shader processors and four fragment pipelines. Finally, what was the Radeon X1600 PRO becomes the Radeon X1300 XT, via either the renaming of existing inventory or parts based around the same RV535 core, albeit at lower clock speeds.

Architecturally, the Radeon X1650 is identical to its forebear, the Radeon X1600, which in itself shares many of its design traits with the high-end Radeon X1900, R580 based parts. Indeed, the Radeon X1600 was the precursor in many senses to the later release of the Radeon X1900. So, this means that our Radeon X1650 board features three shader units per pixel pipeline, of which there are four pipelines on both RV530 and RV535. This gives us a grand total of four fragment pipelines, four texturing units and twelve pixel shader units, coupled with five vertex shader units and four ROP's.

Besides the process shrink to 80nm with RV535, the only difference between the Radeon X1600 XT and its direct replacement, the Radeon X1650 PRO, is a miniscule boost to both the core and memory clock speeds of the board. From the Radeon X1600 XT's speeds of 590MHz core and 1380MHz memory, the Radeon X1650 PRO gains just 10-20MHz in both disciplines, giving us final clocks of 600MHz core and 1400MHz for memory. Not enough to make any real difference to performance, but worth mentioning nonetheless. The Radeon X1650 PRO will also use the high performance GDDR3 memory.

I don't think it's too unfair to say that, over the past couple of generations, ATI's efforts in the important mid-range discrete graphics market have been poor. The Radeon X600 and X700 were never any match for NVIDIA's GeForce 6600 parts, and similarly the Radeon X1600 has never really had any traction over the GeForce 7600. ATI's best parts in this area have tended to be cut down versions of high-end boards which, although great for consumers, have hardly been ideal for ATI themselves with regard to yields and manufacturing costs. All this needed a turn around to get back on track.

Hence my thoughts that the Radeon X1650 is of far more interest than the R580 refresh part that is the Radeon X1950 XTX. The mid-range is where ATI really needed to freshen up and rearrange their product line, and that's exactly what they've done. Although we don't have a Radeon X1650 XT part on hand to see how it stands up against a GeForce 7600 GT, ATI's shrunk to 80nm RV535 in the form of the Radeon X1650 PRO has struck an important blow against NVIDIA's GeForce 7600 GS part. From testing with PowerColor's X1650 PRO offering, we can see that it topples the GeForce 7600 GS almost totally across the board.

So, now that all is said and done, we have to play the waiting game, and line up all our if ducks in a straight line. If the Radeon X1650 PRO ships on time, and if it retails at the price promised by PowerColor, it's looking like the graphics board to buy for its particular price range. It may be a little late in the day with DirectX 10 on the horizon, but the discrete graphics mid-range just got interesting...