Sapphire launches HDMI X1600 Pro

Author: Wil Harris
Published: 28th June 2006

The Sapphire card has HDMI, SPDIF in and VGA on the back.

Sapphire has released a new low-profile Radeon X1600 Pro video card that sports a HDMI output on the back of the card.

The HDMI output enables a connection to the latest HDTVs, and also supports the HDCP content protection so that next-gen optical content can be played.

There's SPDIF in, so that your sound can run into the HDMI port and out to your A/V receiver (HDMI carries sound, as well as video).

The Sapphire card supports ATI's Avivo technology for video acceleration of standard and high definition content. The card itself runs at 500/800 and has 256MB RAM.

Interestingly, because HDMI only supports HD resolutions, you can only output 1280x720 and 1920x1080 over it. For standard desktop connections, there's a VGA port.

No word on pricing just yet. Will you be picking up a HDMI card to build a Media Center box? Let us know over in the forums.

We've got one of these cards in at the moment, so here's some spy shots for you.