While all attention has been focused on the long awaited R520 from ATI, we managed to get hold of the next generation entry-level ATI card. The MSI Radeon X1300 PRO 256MB is based on the RV515 and promises to raise the bar on budget graphics. Without further ado, here's our preview of this card. MSI has followed its usual naming convention, with its Radeon X1300 PRO 256MB graphics card given the model name: RX1300PRO-TD256E. This can be rather cryptic to the casual reader, hence we will be using "MSI Radeon X1300 PRO 256MB" to reflect that card in this article instead. The card itself looks rather ordinary and not that much different from existing, budget Radeon cards. A small circular fan is sufficient to cool this card down, though admittedly there was not much heat generated thanks to the newly revised core that's using the latest process technology for GPUs. Core temperature was below fifty degrees and the fan was relatively quiet throughout the testing. The exposed memory chips from Infineon were barely warm to the touch when idling and was in the thirty plus degrees range when running benchmarks.

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