The Radeon 9600 series is the mid range series. It competes, or rather competed with Nvidia's GeForce FX 5600. However the Radeon 9600 was such a better performer that Nvidia were forced into releasing the FX 5700 just to remain competitive in the mid range section of the market.

ATI cards work along the lines of the bigger the number then the faster the card. So the 9600 series is better than the budget 9200 series and slower than the premium 9800 series. Besides that, each graphics chip comes in several versions. There is the standard version, the faster Pro version, the cheaper and slower SE version and the fastest, extreme XT version.

This is the 9600 XT, and hence this is simply the fastest mid range graphics card there is. It also has 128 MB of dedicated video RAM which means that this card should be easily capable of running games from 2003 to 2005 but may struggle thereafter.

Sapphire are a well known and respected brand. This card provides great performance, and whilst this one may not include it, at one point this card was bundled with a voucher for a free copy of Half Life 2.

The card itself is still a great piece of equipment, but there is better out there, both in performance and in value for money.