I’ve said it once and I will say it again. ATI will always manage to come out on top with their video cards. This is even more true with this latest review.

When we last left ATI’s and Nvidia’s highest-end graphics cards, ATI’s Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition beat out PNY’s Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra-based Verto card in two important areas. First, of course, is performance: the Radeon X800 XT provided superior performance in DirectX 9.0-based PC games. Secondly, as a single-slot card that worked with most standard 350-watt PC power supplies, ATI’s card was much easier to install than the Nvidia-based card, which took up two slots and required, by some estimates, up to a 480-watt power unit. The 3D performance picture has since gotten more complex due to Nvidia’s dual-graphics-card SLI technology, an innovation that ATI has yet to answer. Without an SLI graphics product, ATI’s new $550 Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition is the company’s most powerful card to date. If you’re not ready to scrap your current single-card PC for an SLI machine but you have some money to throw at a high-end card, the Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition (PE) is your best option–if you can find it for a reasonable price. [Read the rest]