The chaps over at TweakTown take a look at four mid-range graphics cards - two from AMD and two from nVidia. While all cards are mid-range, it's clear that they sit at different end of the scales - let's call them low-end mid-range and high-end mid-range. The Radeon X1650XT and GeForce 7600GT sits at the lower end of the mid-range scale and at the other end we have the GeForce 7900GS and the Radeon X1950PRO. While offering high-end type performance, the 7900GS and X1950PRO still in belong at the mid-range level due to their pricing.

GeForce 7900GS and Radeon X1950PRO - we have always said as an out of the box card, the Radeon X1950PRO is the better card as far as pure 3D performance goes. It is consistently faster thanks to the increased core speed, when compared to the GeForce 7900GS. Why nVidia haven't increased the default core is beyond us (as it loves overclocking, a lot!) but it's possible that it will take away from the more expensive GeForce 7950GT sales. The 512MB variant of the Radeon X1950PRO doesn't offer any real performance gains and sits closer to the GeForce 7950GT in terms of price. This particular card we recommend you stay far away from as the GeForce 7950GT manages to beat it in almost every benchmark and offers some overclocking, too.

So, Radeon X1650XT or GeForce 7600GT? GeForce 7600GT is the easy choice in the lower realm of the mid-range segment, without a doubt - it's cheaper and performance is pretty much neck and neck, throughout all of our benchmarks. Radeon X1950PRO or GeForce 7900GS? Don't want to overclock? The X1950PRO is the best option for the high-end mid-range segment - it is faster in almost everything out of the box but as we said, if you're going to overclock and try and get the best value for your money, we would be doing you an injustice to recommend anything other than the GeForce 7900GS from the green team.