PowerColor ATI Extreme Edition X1550 256MB GDDR2 64-bit Graphics Card Review

Ratings: Ease of Use, Performance: 23/25, Look & Feel: 20/25, Features & Software 15/25, How much I enjoy 20/25
Total: 78/100

Purchasing a graphics card can be a daunting task as I well know, I have bought several and when I first looked at purchasing one I had no clue what all those numbers and letters were. Finding out what the current crop of graphics cards as well as any computer components can do and what all those specifications mean should not mean you need to take college courses. I like to review computer hardware and tell you what the things will actually do and what you can expect. Here goes with my latest review and a look at an affordable graphics card from PowerColor.

I recently reviewed a video card from a newer company called Zogis and found out they are a division or branch of PowerColor. I received a little gem of a graphics card from PowerColor to review, an ATI Extreme Edition X1550 256MB GDDR2 64-bit graphics card. Just to clarify something the PowerColor brand of Graphics cards are ATI and the Zogis is the Nvidia side of the chipset. This keeps things straight for the company I guess and makes perfect sense to me.

The ATI chipset of the graphics card industry is more toward the entertainment and television capabilities while the Nvidia graphics cards used to lean more toward the gaming arena. The chipset or graphics processor is the computer chip that processes the graphics information that goes to your monitor. This is not to say that either ATI or Nvidia is better for what they do or you should buy one type of graphics card over the other. I am just clarifying for my readers that ATI graphics chip based cards started out being more for the TV and video capture specialty area while the Nvidia chipsets were more for the gaming.