Graphics board manufacturers are always quick to tout their latest and greatest board, but they're also starting to realize that not every gamer is willing to part with four or five Benjamins to bring home the newest monster board. This has led to a wide selection of "budget boards" that offer next-generation technology in a scaled-down format, along with a scaled-down price tag, that appeal more to mainstream gamers.

Such is ATI's new Radeon X1300 line. These cards range from $99 to $139, depending on the configuration, and have connections that work with new PCI Express slots as well as more traditional AGP motherboard slots. We took a look at the high-end budget card in the line, the X1300 Pro, and were quite pleased with its performance.

The X1300 Pro has 256MB of DDR video memory with a memory clock speed of 400MHz and a core clock speed of 600MHz. These numbers are quite impressive when compared with any boards except for the cutting-edge ones shipping from vendors today. Where the corners get cut is on the advanced features such as vertex and pixel shaders, so don't expect all the high-end special effects that are available with higher-end boards.

Nevertheless, the X1300 Pro's gaming performance was quite good, and we were able to get high frame rates in a variety of today's pixel-pushing games. Call of Duty 2 looked excellent, with great explosion and lighting effects. We did have to adjust some of the advanced graphics settings downward to get optimum performance, but that's to be expected for a budget board.

In addition, the X1300 Pro delivers sharp video playback with ATI's Avivo technology built into the board. We downloaded some high-definition movie trailers and were quite pleased with the brilliant resolution that the board rendered.

As previously mentioned, the X1300 Pro is available in both PCI Express and AGP formats, so there are boards that will fit in just about every system. The retail price for the X1300 Pro is $139, but we found several vendors that were selling it for less than $100, which is a great price for a graphics board featuring a lot of today's technology. If you don't need the fastest graphics board on the market--and the corresponding exorbitant price--the ATI Radeon X1300 Pro is an excellent alternative.

Pro:  Great price, good gaming performance.
Con:  No bundled games.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

ATI Technologies
1 Commerce Valley Drive East
Markham, Ontario
Canada L3T 7X6
905-882-2600
http://www.ati.com

Warranty
1 year limited