At around £75 (inc. VAT), the card is around £10 cheaper than Sapphire's GDDR4-based 2600 XT. Based on the differences in performance and price, the HIS 2600 XT IceQ Turbo GDDR3 looks like a bargain compared in isolation to the Sapphire HD 2600 XT GDDR4. However, when you throw the 8600 GT into the mix, for which a standard clocked card can be purchased for around £5 less than HIS's card, and the decision becomes a little trickier.

The Radeon X1950 Pro is a better buy at the moment because of the lack of compelling DX10 content available at the moment. However, that could change at the end of the week when potentially the biggest game of the year (which comes complete with DX10 support) is released. Waiting until then would be advisable in our opinion, but if you're dead set on buying a DirectX 10 card today, both the GeForce 8600 GT and Radeon HD 2600 XT should deliver respectable performance in upcoming DX10 titles. The question is though, whether that DX10 gaming experience will be better than the DX9 experience achievable on a Radeon X1950 Pro -- that is something we hope will become clearer over the next couple of weeks.