Mid-range PCI-E Cards

The mid-range graphics cards are essentially meant for the budget conscious gamers. These cards fall in the price bracket of Rs 7,000 —10,000 with some exceptions. With prices varying from Rs 7,300 —11,000, even the mid-range PCI-E cards have an exception, the Asus Extreme N6600GT, priced much higher than the rest at Rs 17,360. This category has three cards based on the NVIDIA GeForce 6600 chipset, two based on NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT, two based on ATI Radeon X600XT and one on the ATI Radeon X700pro chipset. Asus Extreme AX 600XT, MSI RX600 XT-VTD128 were the only two cards in this category that support video capturing. Asus Extreme N6600GT and Leadtek WinFast PX6600 were the only mid-range card to come with SLI (Scalable Link Interface) support. This new feature that has come about because of the introduction of the PCI-E bus. Using SLI, two cards of the same model can be plugged into the same machine and run in parallel. This way the graphics-processing load is divided equally among the two cards to give better performance.

Leadtek WinFast PX6600 GT TDH 



Leadtek is the winner of the Mid-range category as well. This 128 MB card outperforms the competitors in the category by a huge margin. Priced at Rs 10,700 the Leadtek Winfast PX6600 GT TDH is based on the NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT chipset.

Leadtek card marginally beats the Asus Extreme N6600GT (the runner up) in 3D mark and Half Life in performance. Plus, both cards are at par in the Doom3 benchmark scores. The Leadtek card is much cheaper too. The card ships with Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia games, and bundles good software such as Cool Real Visual Bright Embedded, WinFast DVD, Muvee 3, Win Fast PVR and Win Fox 2.0. RQS# E22 or

SMS 130522 to 9811800601

Asus Extreme N6600GT 



Just as the entry-end category, both winners in this category are based on the same chipset as well (NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT).

As mentioned above, this 128 MB card is marginally lower than the winner in some of the benchmarks but loses out on the price. It comes with two games namely: Xpand Rally and Joint Operation and some software such as: Asus Medi@Show SE 2.0, WDM Capture Driver 2.11, Smartdoctor 4.60, Video Security Online 3.0.0.8, Asus GameFace Live 2.50. 

Despite excellent perfromance in benchmarks, at Rs 17,360, the card is quite expensive. RQS# E23 or SMS 130523 to 9811800601