It is always interesting to see a manufacturer doing something different from their competitors, and launching a mid-range VGA with 512 MB was a bold move from PowerColor.
We saw this Radeon X1600 Pro with 512 MB being sold around USD 135 on the day we published this review. It was quoted at USD 140 at Newegg.com, while in this same on-line store the 256 MB model was quoted at USD 109. So we are talking about a USD 30 price difference for you to have a 512 MB Radeon X1600 Pro instead of a 256 MB one.
For the same price of this 512 MB Radeon X1600 Pro from PowerColor you can buy a GeForce 7600 GS (a model from MSI is quoted between USD 117 and USD 136 at Shopping.com).
The thing is, except on 3DMark05, GeForce 7600 GS simply smashed this Radeon X1600 Pro we reviewed: it was between 16% and 43% faster on 3DMark03, between 35% and 69% faster on Doom 3 and up to 34% faster on Far Cry (here the reviewed VGA was 8.42% faster than GeForce 7600 GS at 1024x768 with no image quality settings enabled, and both achieved the same performance at 1280x1024 also with no image quality settings enabled).
On 3DMark05, however, the reviewed card was between 4% and 24% faster than GeForce 7600 GS. It seems that 3DMark05 takes video memory seriously, as Radeon X1600 Pro with 512 MB was up to 150% faster than GeForce 6600 GT here, which had only 128 MB.
Talking about GeForce 6600 GT, this VGA was also faster than Radeon X1600 Pro with 512 MB except on 3DMark05. The differences were up to 23% on 3DMark03, between 29% and 55% on Doom 3 and up to 15% on Far Cry – here, however, Radeon X1600 Pro was 13% faster than GeForce 6600 GT at 1024x768 with no image quality settings enabled and 6% faster than GeForce 6600 GT at 1280x1024 also with no image quality settings enabled, and both achieved the same results at these two resolutions when we enabled image quality settings.
What we can say? Our conclusion is pretty obvious. Unless you only run games that really need more than 256 MB of video memory, GeForce 7600 GS is a far better product.
On the other hand, browsing Newegg we found a real bargain, an OEM model from PowerColor with 256 MB being sold by only USD 86.00. Keep in mind that OEM models don’t come with fancy boxes, CDs or any other extra feature.
