The Sapphire Hybrid X700 Pro is physically smaller than the X600XT, no doubt because it uses newer, smaller components than the X600XT. The X700 Pro graphics chip uses a smaller fabrication process of 0.11-micron compared to the 0.13-micron process of the X600XT, and the memory chips are the latest small, square BGA modules, rather than the huge old rectangles that were twice the size.

Just like the X600XT, the X700 Pro can trace its roots back to the Radeon 9800, and as you would expect this mid-range chip has eight pixel pipelines and a 128-bit memory controller, just like the GeForce 6600 and 6600GT. Perhaps that's what Sapphire meant when they called this graphics card the Hybrid.

As the origins of the X700 stretch back so far there's an issue to consider with regard to DirectX 9 support. The latest Nvidia chips support DirectX 9.0c with Shader Model 3, but at present ATi hardware supports DirectX 9.0b with Shader Model 2.

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This isn't a problem as such as we are unaware that any current games fully exploit DirectX 9.0c but it does leave a question mark hanging over ATi graphics chips as there is the chance that in future some games will look better on graphics cards that use Nvidia chips than they do on ATi, and let's face it, you're not spending £135 on a graphics card unless you're about to play games.

In 3DMark05 the Sapphire card held its own, scoring less than the Asus 6600GT and more than the Leadtek 6600, so performance was pretty much in step with price. It was a different story with Doom 3 where the X700 Pro was beaten by the 6600 and thoroughly trampled by the 6600GT.

This wasn't encouraging so we used Redline to overclock the Sapphire and were taken aback when it only allowed us to overclock the core and memory by a tiny 14MHz, which suggests that ATi ships the X700 Pro running close to its limits, and in this round of benchmarks the Sapphire was nearly beaten by the Leadtek 6600 in 3DMark05.

When you consider the mediocre performance of the X700 Pro it seems to be crying out for a hefty price cut, and soon.