Testing with the bundled Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness showed a fairly even match, although the 6800 GT was still slightly ahead. The Sapphire lagged behind considerably on the Halo test, with scores of 62.7fps and 46.9fps at 1,280 x 1,024 and 1,600 x 1,200 respectively, compared with 75.8fps and 59.9fps on the 6800 GT.

But turning to Far Cry, the Sapphire turned in some great numbers, that not only beat the 6800 GT reference board, but are also way ahead of the X800 Pro reference board I previously looked at. Of course, to be fair, the X800 Pro reference board was running on older drivers, and an older revision of Far Cry, which could explain the performance boost. But it definitely appears that the X800 Pro is less bothered by AF than the 6800 GT.

Even with only 12 pixel pipelines the Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro turned in some good numbers in the benchmarks, and if you go to Komplett you’ll get it at a reasonable price too. The impending release of the GeForce 6800 GT may spoil the party for the X800 Pro, but for now it’s the only, reasonably, affordable next generation graphics solution.