The X700 is a relative newcomer to the PCI Express fold, and was released by ATI in response to NVIDIA's 6600 chipset. When comparing all the X700 cards that we received, we found each had its own pro's and con's, and this made them all decent propositions. But the MSI card came out on top due to a combination of good performance, a reasonable price tag, and a selection of fairly recent, and playable, games.

The MSI card bettered the ASUS and ABIT in all benchmarks, except 3DMark 2001, with particularly playable results in FarCry's Treehouse and Bunker levels of 36.99 and 38.11 respectively. This demonstrates the card is able to handle FarCry's indoor and outdoor environments equally well, which also showed through in our Half-Life 2 tests, where it achieved a very playable 110.68 fps in 1074 x 762, and 59.33 frames per second at 1600 x 1200. Traditionally, NVIDIA cards have had better OpenGL support, while ATI are tending towards stronger DirectX performance. This also came through in our Doom 3 tests, which showed the MSI struggling through the intensive OpenGL benchmarks relative to other tests.

Physically, the card stands out due to its spiralling copper heatsink and ATI-red printed circuit board. No boring reference coolers here, and no superfluous flashing lights either. The included games - Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, XIII, and MYST: URU -- were all released in the last year and should help to show off the card's abilities. Conspicuously, there are no Half-Life based offerings included, though.

Ultimately, as a mid-range card that's well suited for incremental upgrades, (particularly for those early adopters of X600 or X300 cards), the X700 is a compelling option. MSI's overall combination of features and performance, however, lets this rise above the X700 pack in the round up.