In terms of performance, the card performs Ok in respect that it is a mid range mainstream card. Its competitor 8600GT does slightly better in synthetic benchmarks. When it comes to games, unless you can difference 2-3 fps, I woudl say the difference isn't that much to be noticable. One thing we do notice is the images in 3DMark05/06 tests looks sharper.

For those who love to overclock, the ATI CATALYST 7.6 driver comes with the overdrive feature. You can meddle with it straght away. There is also a temperature reading in the driver for you to monitor the temperatures.

For the HDTV buffs, this card simplifies the cabling or requirement of an addtional graphics card for sound output. Through the DVI-HDMI connector it is able to deliver the audio through the DVI-HDMI interface to your LCD TV.  For a technical perspective of the ATi HD Radeon series, please visit this page.

When it comes to playing back of HDDVD/BluRay H.264/AVC contents, this card did very well with its UVD. In fact, the two AVC H.264 clips , a TS and a movie were thrown in to the test. The CPU Utilisation is halved of the NVIDIA 8600GTS. That is impressive. Image quality is excellent on this card too. in fact, it is on par with the HD 2900XT delivering vivid, low noise videos with full 3:2 detection.

Although we are happy about the image quality, one thing we noted is that our clip "Step into liquid" have portions blacked out by PowerDVD with Catalyst 8.6 driver. The clip played back properly on the same board, software with the NV 8600GTS card.

Overall, the card impresses me with its low noise, low GPU temperatures and low CPU utilisation when playing back H.264/AVC movies. For gamers looking for performance, this card should suffice for most of your games if you lower down some of the resolution/shadows etc. For the price of ~150USD, i think this card is affordable and has the best cost/performance ratio. FOR DX10 benchmark tests, please refer to our forum.

Price ~ 115 USD

Pros

• UVD / AVIVO
• DX10 support
• SM4.0
• Integrated audio controller
   

Cons

• Performance could be better
• Packaging

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.