Adding a video card or upgrading to a higher-tier card can be one of the best ways to boost your PC's gaming performance. With a card like ATI's Radeon X1600 Pro, it can boost your video performance as well.

The X1600 series is ATI's current midrange line, offering excellent power but selling at lower price points than their top-end video cards. There's a lot of diversity among the X1600 boards. The AGP version is available with 256MB and 512MB of video memory, while the PCI version comes with 128MB, 256MB, and 512MB.

PCI Express is currently the fastest connection available for video cards, so if your computer has a PCI Express slot, you'll want to make sure and get one in that format. The video memory is 500MHz DDR2 memory with a 700MHz clock speed, and the core clock speed of the graphics processor is 500MHz. The more memory you can afford on your video card, the better your performance will be.

We tested the 256MB X1600 Pro, and it gave our games a nice facelift. Textures were sharper, frame rates ran higher, and the games simply looked more realistic. The anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering technologies built into the X1600 series make them well suited for gamers using flat-panel displays, as you can turn on all the graphical bells and whistles at 1,280X1,024 resolution, which is the standard for most 17-inch and 19-inch LCD monitors.

Video cards in ATI's X1600 series can also use their Avivo Video Converter software. Avivo lets you quickly and easily convert PC video files into a format that can be played back on your iPod, PSP, or other portable video device. This is a powerful tool for users with video conversion needs.

Installing the video card does require getting to know the inside of your PC, but it still takes less than 10 minutes. If you have a digital display, you can connect directly to your monitor from the video card. There's also a DVI-to-VGA converter for connecting to traditional displays.

Upgrading your video card can make an enormous difference in your gaming experience. With Avivo technology inside this ATI Radeon X1600 Pro video card, it can make a big difference in your video conversion and playback experience as well.

The X1600 series has MSRPs ranging from $99 to $249.

Pros: Great midrange performance, Avivo video converter
Cons: No bundled games

Warranty
1 year