The Radeon X1650 XT is ATI's stab at the GeForce 7600 GT, at least as it sits from a price point perspective. While ATI has been playing catch up on the top of the line video cards, it has done very well with keeping an edge in the value line-up. Why, you might be asking, should we pay attention to these cards? Well, the simple fact is, the Radeon X1650 XT and the GeForce 7600 GT can both handle most of todays games at decent resolutions, with some games being very playable with all the effects enabled. But then again we are wondering which would be the better one, and come out on top as the best performer? Time will tell, but let's see what we could find out. - Viper Lair

ASUS Extreme AX1650 XT 256MB Video Card Review

Interestingly, ASUS has the 6-pin power connector on their version of the Radeon X1650 XT whereas ATI does not. I am not sure why the ASUS version of the RV560 GPU would be more power hungry, for some reason ASUS thought so. Of course the obvious answer is that voltage stability should be improved, especially during overclocking. One other thing that kind of rubs me the wrong way with the Radeon X1650 XT line is that you can't plug and play CrossFire with it, you have to purchase a Radeon X1650 CrossFire card to allow this card to run in CrossFire mode, unlike its younger sibling.

While the availability of the Radeon X1650 XT has been spotty, the results appear to be worth the wait. ASUS has done a nice job, and maybe the added external power is the oomph needed to allow this card to outperform equal costing cards on the NVIDIA side of the house. As a gaming card it performs well enough for the intended target market. Quake 4 played very nice, as I mentioned earlier, the engine on this game is beginning to age and the hardware has more then caught up especially with idSoftware's implementation of dual core CPU support.

Unfortunately, ATI has muddied the waters with the whole CrossFire master scenario again, I liked it much better when it was plug and play similar to the NVIDIA SLI technology... So is the Extreme AX1650 XT a proper replacement for your aging Radeon X850 XT accelerator? I would answer most certainly, is it a proper replacement for that Radeon X1600 PRO? A tougher call to be sure!