Verdict: Good for a media PC, but forget gaming.

Much like Nvidia, ATi tends to humorously overhype its bottom-of-the-range cards. ATi describes the X1300 Pro as 'adrenalin for your PC' and we can only assume this means that, should you think of playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the card will secrete a hormone that tells your PC to run away as quickly as possible.

The X1300 Pro has a similarly weedy GPU to that of the GeForce 7300 GS. It's equipped with only four pixel processors, four texture processors and four ROPs, so the card clearly isn't going to set the world alight, or render such a massive explosion at a decent frame rate. Interestingly, the X1300 Pro is significantly quicker than the 7300 GS, thanks to its relatively high 600MHz GPU clock speed, and two extra ROPs over with the Nvidia card. This isn't saying much though. The fact that the X1300 Pro failed to manage a playable frame rate in any of our benchmarks tells its own story, and means thatthe card, much like the 7300 GS, should be considered only for media PCs.

The X1300 Pro offers the same H.264 decoding as that of the 7300 GS, and is therefore suited to displaying high-definition video with reduced CPU overhead. However, much like the 7300 GS, the X1300 Pro is incapable of providing or supporting dual-link DVI, which is required for super-high resolution displays.

As with the 7300 GS, the X1300 Pro is certified to run Vista's AeroGlass theme, so the X1300 Pro may well be a tempting purchase if you want Vista to be pretty and responsive in an office system. However, if you want to game on a shoestring budget, it's definitely worth spending an extra £20 and buying a GeForce 7600 GT, or waiting to see what else Nvidia and ATi throw up in the way of budget DirectX 10 cards later this year.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

• OCZ Core Series 30GB - Hard disks / storage
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - Hard disks / storage
• Asus EAH4870 TOP - Graphics cards
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro - Sound cards
• Multiwinia - Games
• Zotac GeForce GTX 260² - Graphics cards
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 - Graphics cards