Introduction

2004 has shaped up to be one of the most exciting years for graphics cards that we can recall. NVIDIA kicked things off with the launch of their GeForce 6800 GPU. GeForce 6800 brought shader model 3.0 support and a 2X performance improvement over previous DirectX 9 cards. ATI countered NVIDIA shortly thereafter with RADEON X800, which offered similar levels of performance as GeForce 6800. A month later PCI Express was unveiled, and, a few weeks after that, NVIDIA announced their SLI technology.

With the arrival of Fall, you’d probably expect things to cool down a bit, but actually the opposite has happened as both ATI and NVIDIA have introduced new mainstream graphics cards: from ATI comes the RADEON X700 family, while NVIDIA counters with their GeForce 6600 series. Both of these cards incorporate technology from their flagship $500 graphics cards, only they cost significantly less, about $200 in the case of the mainstream cards we’ve looked at so far.

GeForce 6600 GT up top, X700 PRO in middle, and RADEON X700 XT bottom

Sapphire X700 PRO and ATI RADEON X700 XT compared

However, what’s really drawn gamers’ interest to these cards to date (besides their low price tag) is their groundbreaking performance. In our tests, we’ve found that in many cases, both the RADEON X700 and GeForce 6600 deliver performance that’s equal to, if not better, than last year’s top-of-the-line $500 graphics cards.

Both are PCI Express cards

The Sapphire X700 PRO compared to RADEON 9600 XT

This is pretty important, as last year’s fall refresh cards for the mainstream segment were pretty underwhelming. ATI’s RADEON 9600 XT was nothing more than a faster RADEON 9600 PRO, while the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra was an improvement over the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, but as time has shown, the GeForce FX architecture delivers anemic DX9 performance. These cards are essentially little more than enhanced DirectX 8 graphics cards. With cutting edge games such as DOOM 3 and Half-Life 2 becoming more prevalent, millions of gamers with GeForce 4 Ti/MX cards as well as RADEON 7500/8500 users have been looking for a compelling card to upgrade to that won’t break the bank. RADEON X700 and GeForce 6600 are prime upgrade candidates for these consumers. In fact, we haven’t been this excited about the mainstream graphics card segment since GeForce4 Ti 4200; and we all know how well that card did in terms of sales and how quickly it was adopted among enthusiasts.

With current mainstream offerings delivering so much performance, we couldn’t wait to get our hands on a retail sample. Sapphire was first to deliver a shipping card to our hands in the form of their Hybrid RADEON X700 PRO 256MB. Let’s see what this card is made of!