Sapphire Radeon X1300 XT OC Edition Review 9

Sapphire Radeon X1300 XT OC Edition Review

(9 Comments) »

Value and Conclusion

  • Expect the price of this card a bit above $100. For this price it's a great deal I must say.
  • Good performance
  • Good price
  • Stock overclocked
  • GDDR3 Memory
  • Crossfire capable
  • No temperature monitoring
  • No automatic/manual fan control
  • Memory is not cooled
When you think "X1300 XT" you would expect just a small performance increase compared to the X1300 Pro since the marketing names are so close. What ATI did however, is give you X1600 performance for X1300 price. The performance difference to the X1300 is pretty amazing, and the performance difference to the X1600 is so small that there is not really a reason to spend more money for the X1600.
Compared to NVIDIA's a bit less expensive 7300 GT, the card is definitely faster, the difference is big enough to be noticed not only in benchmark number but actual gameplay.
Sapphire made this product even more attractive by increasing the clocks a good amount, bringing the card even closer to X1600 performance. The card is Crossfire capable without any connector cable or dongle which may be a good upgrade path. Even with the factory overclock there is still some potential left for your own overclocking adventures. Overall the Sapphire X1300 XT Overclock Edition is a very solid product that I would buy any day when looking for a budget video card. Having Shader Model 3.0 and AVIVO support does make a difference compared to the X800 series, especially if you are looking into running Windows Vista [maybe not so] soon.
The only weak point I see is that the card's cooler does not perform so great. I really miss a temperature controlled fan there. This can be easily overcome by getting a cheap aftermarket cooler. Remember, the heat output is nowhere near the high-end cards' so almost any cooler should work great.
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Nov 29th, 2024 11:26 EST change timezone

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