ATI Radeon X600XT Shootout - HIS vs. ABIT vs. GeCube

GeCube X600XT

- The Package

GeCube have used a similar box across the board for their new line of PCI Express graphics cards showing off the beautiful ATI Ruby on the front of the box. You can see at the top right of the box how much memory is included on the card as well as the fact that it is PCI Express.

The back of the box is quite basic when compared to the other cards giving you a run down on the features that the X600XT provides. You won't get too much information though the chances are if you're going into your favorite store to buy a PCI Express graphics card you do have a bit of an idea what you are after.

Apart from the DVI to VGA converter the only other cable that comes with in the package is the HDTV cable which gives you the ability to extract the picture to your TV in a more superior way - unfortunately we didn't have a HDTV to test with so we just have to take their word for it on this one.

Like the package from HIS, the GeCube package is also very healthy with a number of CDs being included. Apart from the manual we have our normal driver CD, Cyberlink's Power Director and PowerDVD as well as the popular Counter Strike: Condition Zero game which we also found in the HIS package.

- The Card

The card itself is quite nice looking and apart from the sticker on the cooler and the PCI Express slot at the bottom, it could be mistaken for a 9600XT. This cooler (with the older GeCube 9600XT) was extremely popular in the 9600XT line especially on the Extreme version as it gave superior cooling to any other 9600XT and made overclocking an absolute dream. The cooler was almost the size of a full blown 9800XT cooler which says good things.

The back of the card has a complete back plate to keep the heatsink attached evenly but also serves the purpose of cooling the memory. HIS was the only other company to offer cooling on the back of the card unlike ABIT who have simply chosen to include memory cooling on the front. GeCube have also clocked their card at a slightly higher 500MHz on the memory compared to the 475MHz on the ABIT and 478MHz on the HIS card. We will have to see how this impacts our stock run and when it comes to overclocking if GeCube can get a bit more out of their card then the competition.