Testing:

A system with the following components was used to test the performance of the PowerColor X1650 XT 256MB AGP Video Card...

» IWILL ZMAXdp Dual Opteron Small Form Factor Barebones System
» 2x AMD Opteron 270 Dual Core 2.0 GHz processors
» 2GB (2x1024MB) Corsair 3-3-3-8 ECC 400 MHz Registered DDR memory
» Buslink DVDRW optical drive
» Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB SATA Hard Drive
» Viewsonic VA1912wb 19" widescreen LCD monitor (1440x900 resolution)
» Teamgreat Technology Corp 300W PSU (included with system)
» Windows XP Professional SP2 (current)

As a point of reference, the PowerColor X1650 XT was tested head to head with another 'fairly' modern AGP card, a 256MB XFX GeForce 7600GS. Although the specifications are not identical, this match up will show what kind of performance increase you can expect to accompany a $40 budget increase. Plus, my first introduction to the RV560 chip came from an article at the Inquirer labeling it as a rival to the 7600GS/GT.

Model	PowerColor Radeon X1650XT	XFX GeForce 7600GS
Interface	AGP 8X	AGP 8X
Core Clock Speed	600 MHz	400 MHz
Memory Interface	128 bit	128 bit
Memory	256MB GDDR3	256MB GDDR2
Memory Speed	700 MHz	533 MHz
Pixel Pipelines	16	12
Price	@ $165	@ $125

Other than having an AGP 8X interface and 256MB of memory, the PowerColor X1650 XT really does have quite an advantage (on paper); faster core clock, faster memory, faster memory technology, and so on.

The two cards were run through a series of synthetic benchmarks and real world gaming tests to compare the performance provided by each. The list below details all of the phases of testing that will be covered in greater detail as we proceed...

» 3DMark06
» AquaMark3
» FEAR: Extraction Point Game Demo
» Widescreen Gaming Demo:
   » Frontline: Fields of Thunder
   » Company of Heroes
   » Tomb Raider Legend
   » Far Cry

The two synthetic benchmarks are old standards that allow for a quick and easy assessment of your system's gaming muscle. The real world gaming tests involved running demo versions of each game, and scripting 120 seconds worth of action so that an application called FRAPS could log the average frame rate of each session. Each session was run three times per game on each video card, and an average of the scores was then recorded for the final result.

The FEAR: Extraction point testing is listed separately from the other games as it did not support widescreen game play. It was run at a standard 4:3 resolution of 1152x864, while the four other games are grouped together since each supported widescreen game play and were run at a resolution of 1440x900.

3DMark06:

3DMark06 is the latest in Futuremark's series of video benchmarks. It is a serious test for even some of the strongest video cards, and provides a good deal of stress as it compiles its final rating of the card under test. The results, presented in unitless "Marks", are shown below and provide the first hint that the GeForce 7600GS will be no match for the X1650XT. Settings for 3DMark06 were: 1280x800, No AA, and optimal filtering. (higher is better).