Sapphire The Beast

Graphics cards don't necessarily have to be just about 3D games, as Sapphire's All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro shows. Based on ATI's 9600 Pro chipset, this card is perfect for users who also want TV and video capture on their PCs.

This doesn't mean games are out of the picture. The 9600 Pro chip is more than capable of running the latest games. In our tests it scored 12,244 in 3Dmark 2001, which is pretty fast.

At a 1,024 x 768 resolution in Unreal Tournament the card managed a frame rate of 81.3fps. Turning on 4x full-scene anti-aliasing (FSAA) dropped this figure to 62.4fps, which is still more than playable. It struggles slightly at higher resolutions with FSAA turned on but is a good card for occasional gamers.

Like all other All-In-Wonder products, the card comes with the hardware and software for capturing video. This starts with the built-in analogue TV tuner, effectively turning a PC into a television and hard disk video recorder.

Provided you have the PC hooked up to the Internet, the electronic programming guide is automatically updated. A remote control means all this can be controlled from a chair.

If live TV doesn't sound that appealing then the S-Video port can be used to record video from any analogue source, such as a camcorder. The box contains all the software to make the most out of these features.

The Beast is more expensive than a standard 9600 Pro but you get a lot of extra features, and is well suited to a small barebones system.

Contact: Sapphire
www.komplet.co.uk

Specifications:

• ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
• 128MB DDR Ram (325MHz)
• 400MHz core
• DirectX 9
• AGP 8x
• TV tuner
• S-Video
• Analogue VGA
• Dual 400MHz DACs
• Pinnacle 8 Video Editing