Date:
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Author:
Casey Brewer
Editor:
Brent Justice
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PowerColor Radeon X1600 XT BRAVO

Would you like a powerful video card but are on a strict budget? We’ve got the card for you; PowerColor’s X1600 XT BRAVO edition packs a punch at a very affordable price.

Introduction

There have been recent price drops in the mainstream video card market pushing prices down. When the ATI Radeon X1600 XT 256MB was announced it started out at $249 in October of 2005. Prices have fallen so low since then that it has been pushed into the price range of a low end video card now. For more information on the X1000 series and the technology within please read our X1000 series introduction here. The Radeon X1600 XT’s specifications are listed here.

The ATI Radeon X1600 XT GPU features 157 million transistors and 12 pixel processors (ALUs) but only 4 texture mapping units (TMUs) and 4 raster operator units (ROPs). The Radeon X1600 Pro and XT are the same GPU but with different GPU clock and memory frequencies. The ATI Radeon X1600 GPU offers HDR+AA support and non-angle dependent anisotropic filtering which ATI calls high quality anisotropic filtering, both currently are exclusive to ATI GPUs. The ATI Radeon X1600 GPU also supports shader model 3.0 and up to 6x adaptive AA. ATI's adaptive anti-aliasing allows alpha textures, such as foliage and fences, to receive the benefits of antialiasing.

PowerColor, partner of the Tul Corporation, is a major retailer of ATI GPU based video cards. PowerColor is not new to the scene but it has been quite a while since we have evaluated video cards from them. PowerColor is kicking off some new ATI Radeon X1600 GPU based video cards with one being under the BRAVO edition brand name. BRAVO indicates that the video card will be the best performer in the Radeon X1600 series that PowerColor has to offer. The PowerColor X1600 XT BRAVO edition is that card. Below that is the introduction of the PowerColor X1600 Pro. The primary difference between the two models are memory size and GPU clock and memory frequency. Today we are evaluating the PowerColor Radeon X1600 XT BRAVO edition.

The default GPU clock speed for the PowerColor Radeon X1600 XT BRAVO is set at 590 MHz and the 256MB of 128-bit GDDR3 memory is running at 693 MHz (1386 MHz effectively). These are the ATI suggested clock speeds for a Radeon X1600 XT. As an added bonus the PowerColor Radeon X1600 XT BRAVO includes video-in/video-out (VIVO) functionality with the Rage Theater chip. ATI's current driver allows the video card to encode and decode video on the card which frees up your CPU to do other tasks.

PowerColor's Radeon X1600 XT BRAVO is listed on Newegg at an amazingly low price of $139.99 currently.

PowerColor Radeon X1600 XT BRAVO

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The bundle included with the PowerColor Radeon X1600 XT BRAVO includes quite a bit. It comes with a composite cable, a VIVO cable, an s-video cable, a DVI to VGA converter, a Quick Installation Guide, driver disk, Cyberlink DVD software, and a World Cup top 16 chart with stickers.

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As you can see the card does not require additional external power. Size is very compact taking up little space inside your case. It has two DVI outputs and a multimedia connector for S-Video, composite and HDTV out. PowerColor has implemented the Rage Theater chip for full video input and output capabilities.

CrossFire is fully supported with this video card and no external dongle is needed for that operation. In fact you can use two of these cards and enjoy CrossFire performance. The video card features an aluminum heatsink that is covered in transparent plastic with a large fan. The memory modules are located under the heatsink but are not touching the heatsink therefore not being cooled by it.