Gigabyte Radeon X1300 Pro

      Before the dust had much of a chance to settle from Scott's X1900XT review, Gigabyte had another card in our hands. They wasted absolutely NO time getting this card to us. In fact, the card was still in a pre-production phase and didn't come bundled in its normal retail box. Instead, what we received was the card, only the card, and nothing else.

     With a product shot sent via email, we were given a sneak-peek to what the retail box will look like. So, without any further ado; here is the Gigabyte: GV-RX13P256DE-RH video card. It's a long model name, but it can be broken down. It's a video card based on the ATI X1300 Pro chipset, that will fit very nicely in a budget oriented machine. With the card now available from most retailers for about $85,the whole bundle will include;  the standard driver disc, users manual,  DVI to analog adapter, and an external HDTV adapter cable.

     Gigabyte's rendition of the X1300 Pro has all the makings for a great video platform in home-entertainment machines. The 4 Pixel pipelines and the 128-bit memory bus may make this a card a little conservative for high impact gaming. However, with the 256MB memory size running at 800Mhz riding on a 600Mhz core, there is plenty of power in reserve for seamless full-screen video. Being cooled with a 2-slot heat-pipe heatsink has it's pros and cons. Sure, you have to give up two slots for cooling -- but the advantage is there are no annoying fans spinning at super high speeds. Small fans spinning with high RPMs makes a very distinctive sound, and with a home entertainment PC, the goal is to make the machine as quiet as possible.