Conclusion

ATI has slowly but surely taken over Nvidia's reign with their last two card releases and I don't think that anyone can argue that they deserve it. With the release of the X1900 GPU they once again moved ahead of the pack in a vast array of games compared to the latest Nvidia Chip, although maybe not as far ahead as we expected they might do. With Nvidia waiting around the corner with another fast GPU, who knows how long ATI can hold onto the crown this time round? But lets not take anything away from the X1900 XTX, its a fantastic card as it is right now. With more monthly driver releases coming from ATI, we can expect the performance to get better and better too thanks to the drivers getting tweaks for the new cards. The card also pushes NVidia over the edge when it comes to the new and upcoming fad - HDR, ATI's are the only cards on the market which allow gamers to play with both HDR and Anti-Aliasing switched on, the NVidia cards can't, and no new drivers will get around that problem.

As for Windows Vista performance, the drivers were had are obviously still in beta and we did run into a number of problems, but they were to be expected. It worked very well in our tests on Vista and looks to be one the best cards to go with if you are planning ahead. But remember, DirectX 10 cards are not going to be too far off as Vista will be shipping with DirectX 10 as part of the Operating System

Another plus with the X1900 series is just how good the picture quality and colour clarity is, always a good thing when working with photo editing programs and such like in Windows. One sore point currently is how the card will handle BluRay or HD-DVD discs - the cards have been advertised as working with HDCP, but from reports recently, they don't actually support it, which may well mean you won't be able to view movies through the cards via the DVI port.

Overall the X1900XTX is an excellent card with hefty pipelines that I can see a number of future titles making great use of, how long ATI will remain in front is anyone's guess, but competition is good, look how far we have come over the last few years. Yes the price is high, but once again you get what you pay for and the X1900 XTX will last you for sometime to come, those of us who always want to keep up with the best, go for it. It's a beast of a card.

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