Sapphire Radeon X1650 PRO

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Sapphire Radeon X1650 PRO - Sapphire Technology's RADEON X1650 PRO has come out swinging at an excellent price point. Can the X1650 PRO and Sapphire's reputation for quality deliver a knockout blow to NVIDIA's 7600 GS series?

It is not often that the MSRP of a product is lower than it's retail or street price, but that is the case with the Sapphire's RADEON X1650 PRO. It does not have the performance to justify a $129.99 price tag, when a GeForce 7600 can so dramatically outstrip it for nearly the same price. If and when its price comes down to a realistic range, it will be a good video card at a good price. Right now, though, it is merely a mediocre video card at a high price.
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ATI has, recently at least, been lost and confusing with the midrange segment.

The 9500 Pro was a nice card, the 9600 pro was decent. The x600s, x700s, x1600s, were all mediocre or had problems of some sort.

I guess they've had some success with high end cards cut down (like the x1800 XT 256 mb card), but I wonder how profitable that is.

Doesn't seem to make any sense for gamers to buy any $80ish card when something like this is so cheap, basically a 7600 GT for $100 AR.
 
There's nothing really wrong with this card, except for the price. Performance is spot on with the 7600 GS, but the price is wrong.
 
This is a minor gripe: I have looked carefully at the fan from the pictures posted in the article. The fan does not blow air towards out of the hole because the impellers are not designed for it to do so. Compare it to the noising X1800 series fan which does pull air from the front and blows it out the back. It may feel like the fan is blowing air out of the hole, but it is nothing more than air turbulence. I can attest to this because I have an Arctic Cooler for 9800 Pro with a similar impeller design. You can feel some air being pushed out of the hole becasue the air is glancing off the blades. The desing used for most fans used in computers that are blower type don't have the shroud covering part of the blades on one or both sides which reduces the fans efficiency and it allows air to escape (the are glancing off the impeller).

Anytime the blades are exactly parallel to the fan it pushes air outward away from the fan it is a blower type fan. If the impellers are angled to push air perpendicualr to the fan then it is an axial type.

Sorry guys, it irritates me to no end when someone calls a blower an axial or says that it works on the principle an axial fan does.

Great article as usual.
 
I miss the days when naming schemes were something like: Voodoo3 2000, 3000, and 3500; or Geforce4 Ti4200, Ti4400, and Ti4600. Nowadays you have Geforce 7600GS, 7600GT, 7900GS, 7900GT, 7900GTX, 7900GTO, 7950GX2, 7950GT, plus the slew of 7300 cards. ATI is even worse: 1600 Pro, 1600XT, 1650Pro, 1650XT, 1900GT, 1950GT, 1900XT, 1900XTX, 1950XTX.

Why ATI is worse? Because you have cards in the same family (1600 or 1900, for instance) with differing pipelines, not that Nvidia is excluded with the 7900GS. The ATI 1650XT is an 8/24 setup, but the 1650Pro is a 4/12 setup.

Is it me, or could both companies profit off elimiting half their cards they sell?
 
Majestic12 said:
Doesn't seem to make any sense for gamers to buy any $80ish card when something like this is so cheap, basically a 7600 GT for $100 AR.
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How about a real 7600GT for $109 AR instead?
 
Varmint said:
That seems like a really good deal. Is ClubIT reputable?
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I know people who've ordered from them without issue, I'm going to order one this weekend.
 
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