Review: Stuart "Veridian3" Davidson
Editor/Design: Allan "Zardon" Campbell

 

 

Conclusion

The 9600XT - Sapphire have delivered what we have come to expect of them. A solid card with an excellent bundle. There were no issues with the card throughout the review and based on the previous Sapphire products I have used the card would give you a long period of happy gaming.

The 5900XT - The card itself is a solid piece of kit. Point Of View have done well to add a cooler which is reasonably quiet along with a highly useful, and stylish, trim. The bundle provided is also good and we can have no complaints there.

For the last year or so Nvidia have had a tough time. The recently released market statistics showed them falling behind ATI in the share of the graphics market and they had lost the support of the enthusiast crowd. When we reviewed the last card that was meant to herald Nvidia’s return to form (the 5700U) we decided that it still wasn’t up to the standard of the 9600XT and that there was still no Nvidia card to compete fully with it in the mainstream market. This is no longer the case, the 5900XT is an excellent value for money card that really pushes the mainstream market boundaries. The performance leader between it and the 9600XT changes with each different test however there are some where the 5900XT really excels especially when overclocked. For the benchmark junkies out there I don’t think you can get a better bang for the buck card in 3dMark03 and this really is the TI4200 of its generation. This is the card that Nvidia, and the graphics industry have really needed. As far as image quality goes 2D is still better on the Radeon’s both in Desktop use and in applications such as video playback. In 3D things are quite comparable, when playing games there isn’t a lot to separate the cards.

So which should you buy? Well the 5900XT really seems to be the end for the 5700Ultra in the mainstream market so that leaves the 9600XT and the 5900XT. Looking at these two it really depends on your budget. Whichever you can afford is the honest answer, you wont be disappointed with either.

 

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