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ATI's new X1650 Pro GPU is the latest in a growing line of budget performance cards. It is intended for that mass of market demanding high quality graphics at a reasonable price. It would be expected that card manufacturers would catch wind and start producing these aforementioned "Budget Cards" because, honestly, not everyone wants $500 dollars worth of blistering graphics performance. And furthermore, not all can afford the steep pricing of the higher end cards. So, as to be expected, the graphics card market is responding to public outcry, and we will most likely be seeing a glut of these cheap performance cards hitting the store shelves in the coming months. But as always, price means nothing if performance and features are lacking. 

It doesn't look like there's much in the way of difference between the 1600 and the 1650 GPU core. The only real difference seems to be in the core and memory speeds, which are probably the result of moving from the 90 nm to the 80 nm fabrication process. Unfortunately, the 80 nm ATI chips won't be shipping, publicly at least, until mid October of this year. NVIDIA, on the other hand, is already producing and marketing 80 nm chips for the retail market segment. They have started small, with focus upon mobile processors for laptop computers. There was much houpla and excitement when NVIDIA broke into the 80 nm market, and you can read one of our recent news postings about that here.  Word has reached me that ATI does perform some 65 nm process fabrication. This smaller die size is, however, reserved for experimental procedures and beta products. ATI will be moving their entire GPU fabrication to 65 nm some time in 2007.

All and all though, the added kick to both the GPU and memory speeds is nice. That reduction from 90 to 80 nm most likely brought it about, as well as improved power consumption and heat output. Can anyone say better overclocking?

That missing texture unit is a bit bothersome, though. I'm not one to second-guess the ATI engineers, but maybe they had simply found that 5 texture units brought no significant performance increases. But whether or not these additions and subtractions make any real difference, we'll just have to wait and see.

As is often the case with my digital wanderings, I just happened to come across a number of other vendors offering their own unique version of the ATI X1650 Pro graphics card. Each vendor puts their own trademark spin on the 1650 Pro, offering packages that come with everything a perspective purchaser might want. Whether it be factory overclocking for improved GPU speeds or extravagant software bundles, there's a flavor for everyone.

• ASUS
• Club Graphics
• Connect 3D
• Gigabyte Technology
• HIS
• GeCube
• Palit
• Sapphire
• Tul

It is quite apparent that there are a number of ATI partners producing their own iterations of the X1650 Pro graphics card. Some of these manufacturers offer out-of-the-box overclocking, while some even employ fanless heat pipe design cooling methodologies. I'm more than certain we'll be seeing even more versions of this card coming to market. But for now, I think we'll just focus on the Sapphire X1650 Pro graphics card.