Power consumption is an essential element of any review because it greatly contributes to the final judgment of a video card. Often this aspect of performance is overlooked; however, it makes a large impact on customer satisfaction.

Consumption of both cards was measured with a power monitor. We Analyzed consumption of the whole system under identical conditions, the only difference being the cards themselves. The “Idle” test was carried out using a blank desktop in Microsoft Windows XP while the test under full load was carried out with F.E.A.R. running at AA 4x and Anisotropic filtering at 16x. The GeForce 7600 GT consumed less power under idle and full load. The RV560 core, as the above tests reveal, had very similar power consumption compared to the RV570 core giving the theory the RV560 is only a RV570 with some calculation units disabled further backing.  

Overclocking tests were conducted using the integrated Catalyst utility. We would have used ATI Tool to overclock the video card, but we weren’t able to since the utility does not yet have support for the RV560 GPU.

The most stable clock we were able to reach in our testing was 612 MHz GPU and 770 MHz Memory.

Overclocked, we ran some more gaming tests with the X1650 XT using Prey. The results it gave us was interesting. With faster clock speeds, the X1650 XT was able to have more FPS than it would have with stock settings. In addition, the overclocked X1650 XT also had slightly more FPS than the 7600 GT in all tests.

Conclusion

The match-up between the 7600 GT and X1650 XT is a close one. The performance both cards offer is very similar to each other. Keeping this in mind, it is difficult to actually declare a winner between the two cards. The performance offered by the X1650 XT is pretty good considering it is aimed towards the lower-midrange sector of the market. The X1650 XT was flexible in gaming and was able to run most of the games, with filters on, at 1280x1024 at smooth frame rates. Although this card wasn’t able to run a couple of games at 1600x1200 with smooth frame rates, it is understandable in our opinion keeping in mind the card is aimed towards a market sector where most people aren’t hardcore gaming enthusiasts who always play with the highest resolutions available to them.

On ATI’s end, it seems that they are still having some trouble actually launching their products. The launch of the X1650 XT so far has only been one on paper. Quite possibly because ATI is still in the process of merging with AMD and things might be a bit hectic over there, ATI just hasn’t been able to provide manufacturers with enough parts yet. From what we are being told, X1650 XT cards should start actually appearing for sale mid-November.

The MSRP that ATI has set for the Radeon X1650 XT is $149. If the video card actually sells for this price, it would be a good buy. Unfortunately, that might not be the case. What we have seen with the X1950 PRO so far because of its limited availability to manufacturers prices have shot up. Currently, NewEgg is selling the card for $274.99, around $75 more than its MSRP. We hope that that will not be the case for the X1650 XT, but at this moment it is hard to tell. The projected price tag of $149 makes the X1650 XT a decent buy, but if it hits the $200 mark there wouldn’t be much point in buying the card when the 7600 GT can be easily found for less than $150.

We hope that this paper launch from ATI will only turn up to be a minor mess-up for the Canada-based company. With AMD now controlling the direction of both companies, we hope to see more steps being taken in order to ensure product availability at launch. We have high hopes that ATI will rectify this situation soon and that in their upcoming launches we will see actual hardware available on the market.