ATI announced the X1600XT back in October with the rest of the X1000 series lineup. It was a disappointing paper launch and took a while before any of the X1000 series cards were available. Always overshadowed by ATI?s high-end the X1600XT rarely saw much attention from online media. However, with mass availability of X1600XT cards ATI is working hard to get the word across about their mid-range graphics card. The question is how well it stacks up to its direct competitor the 6600GT or even the last generation high end 6800GT. Keep reading as we put the X1600XT through everything from gaming to HQV Benchmark DVD tests?is it the perfect mid-range gaming, home theater PC, and/or workstation solution?
X1600XT
X1800XL
X1900
6600GT
6800GT
6800GS
Vertex shaders
5
8
8
3
5
5
Pixel shaders
12
16
48
8
16
12
Texture units
4
16
16
8
16
12
Compared to the behemoth X1900 the X1600XT specifications seem to trail behind. However since ATI is competing against NVIDIA?s 256MB 6600GT the specifications are in ATI?s favor. On paper the X1600XT?s 12 pixel shaders and 5 vertex shaders look more promising than the 8 pixel shaders and 3 vertex shaders found on the 6600GT. However the 6600GT has twice the amount of texture units than the X1600XT which should make things interesting.
Our X1600XT sample was equipped with dual DVI ports?with one being a dual-link port for those uber high resolution displays. X1600XT cards are equipped with 256Mb of GDDR3 memory typically clocked at 1.4 GHz while the core clock is typically around 600 MHz. Price-wise the X1600XT varies from $155 to around $196. At the bottom of the spectrum cards are clocked at 590 MHz/1380 MHz core/clock and equipped with one VGA and one DVI while the upper spectrum cards have dual DVI with one dual-link port and quiet cooling. No matter which X1600XT you purchase they all have component, S-Video, and composite video outputs.
3DMark06 x1600xt review
Starting out the X1600XT does pretty well and trounces the 6600GT be a large margin. Our 6600GT refused to complete any tests above 1600x1200 and simply crashed most likely due to low memory because we were using a 6600GT 128MB. While the 6800GT performance drops greatly when the resolution goes past 1600x1200 the X1600XT scales better. In the SM3.0/HDR tests the X1600 stays competitive with the 6800GT and once again dominates the 6600GT.
Games x1600xt review
In actual gaming tests the X1600XT beats out the 6600GT in X3: Reunion and F.E.A.R. and is more comparable to the 6800GT. However the same can?t be said in Quake 4 and Half Life 2: Lost Coast where the X1600XT falls greatly behind the 6600GT?although with 4xAA on in Quake 4 the two are neck and neck.
Workstation performance x1600xt review
Workstation application performance of the X1600XT is neck and neck with the X1900 and X1800XL cards since the X1600XT lacks optimizations for such applications.
Windows Media High Definition x1600xt review
Windows Media High Definition playback performance is neck and neck with the 6600GT and the higher end All-in-Wonder X1800XL and X1900 cards.
h.264 x1600xt review
Annoyingly the Cyberlink h.264 decoder needs to be reinstalled after every driver install so our AIW X1800XL performance numbers lack hardware acceleration which makes a good gauge of the performance improvements hardware acceleration brings. With 480p video the performance differences are very small?although the X1600XT uses around 2% less CPU cycles for decoding. Increasing the video resolution to 720p reveals larger performance differences with hardware acceleration?roughly 10% improvements compared to the 6600GT. 1080p is another story however. As the X1600XT is a lower end card the h.264 video decoding performance isn?t as good as the higher end X1900. Nonetheless the performance is nothing to scoff at yielding 6% lower CPU cycle usage than the 6600GT. Compared to the X1900 the X1600XT uses roughly 11% higher CPU cycles which is still impressive as CPU utilization is 15% lower than having no acceleration at all.
MPEG2 and DIVX High Definition x1600xt review
MPEG2 performance is very close among the cards as we?ve come to expect. DIVX High Definition performance shows a 5% performance difference between the X1600XT and 6600GT with the 6600GT utilizing lesser CPU cycles. This is quite strange as the X1600XT has hardware DIVX post processing. Nonetheless the performance is still quite good.
HQV Benchmark DVD and Power consumption x1600xt review
As expected with ATI?s AVIVO video technology the X1600XT plays back DVD?s with excellent image quality. Although NVIDIA?s 6600GT plays DVD?s just fine, the X1600XT can detect abnormal cadences and has noise reduction algorithms that improve picture quality?generating a cleaner, better looking image than the original DVD.
HQV
6800GT
6600GT
AIW X1900
X1600XT
Color bars
5
5
10
10
Jaggies 1
5
5
5
5
Jaggies 2
3
3
3
3
Flag
5
5
10
10
Detail
0
0
0
0
Noise Reduction
0
0
10
10
Noise Reduction w/Motion
0
0
10
10
Film Detail
10
10
10
10
2:2
0
0
5
5
2:2:2:4
0
0
5
5
2:3:3:2
0
0
5
5
3:2:3:2:2
5
5
5
5
5:5
0
0
5
5
6:4
0
0
5
5
8:7
0
0
5
5
3:2
5
5
5
5
Scrolling text
10
10
10
10
Credits
10
10
10
10
Total
58
58
118
118
Power consumption x1600xt review
Power consumption is comparable to the 6600GT although the X1600XT uses around 7 watts less power than the 6600GT at full load
overclocking X1600XT
There is only one tool we could find which successfully overclock the X1600XT and that was an internal ATI tool. With every other utility we found that the memory wasn’t detected correctly or the changes were not taking effect…even ATI’s CCC didn’t recognise the memory speed correctly we noticed.. So with a starting speed of 590/697 we began our overclocking of the X1600XT…
F.E.A.R. 1280x960 2aa 8af
Avg
Min
Max
6800GS
29
15
66
X1600XT
23
13
47
6800GS Overclocked
35
19
70
X1600XT Overclocked
26
13
51
The results from overclocking show some reasonable increases on the XT however the GS does benefit from a greater increase in performance…whilst neither card is completely smooth at this setting the GS does come closest.
Conclusion x1600xt review
Gaming performance on the X1600XT was pretty respectable. It had troubles keeping up with the 6600GT games built on older engines such as Q4 and HL2 however it does perform on par with the 6800GT in newer games such as F.E.A.R. and X3: Reunion. Workstation performance was pretty average. On the other hand the multimedia performance was superb especially with the hardware h.264 decoding acceleration. Results with the HQV Benchmark DVD were excellent as well?beating out the 6600GT by a very large margin. Overall the X1600XT isn?t the fastest gaming card there is out there. However if you need a card that can take on casual gaming, has dual-link DVI, and multimedia performance to boot, the X1600XT may be what you?re looking for. For those that want better gaming performance, an X1900 or 7800 would be a better solution.
Gaming performance aside the X1600XT is the first card to earn our HTPC Approved award for its multimedia performance, low power usage, compact size and overall performance needs for a home theater PC. So if you?re looking for a new graphics card that?ll accelerate h.264 video decoding and offer superb DVD video playback quality in a small enough package that?ll fit slim cases (with riser) without being too noisy than the X1600XT may be the card for you.
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