ATI Radeon X1950 XTX review

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Introduction

When nVidia introduced the 7950GX2 this was quite a blow to their arch rival ATI. The card, while thought to be a "paper product", is currently widely available, faster than ATI's top range card, the X1900XTX, and to top it all off the price/performance ratio of the 7950GX2 is better than that of the ATI card. The two GPU's on the 7950GX2 do require a bit more power than a single chip card, but the fact remains that this card is cheaper and performs better than the X1900XTX. As always in this business, a suitable answer never takes long to come from either manufacturer. ATI today announces the X1950XTX, a new version of the X1900XTX with better performance and, most important, a lower price tag.

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX

R580 on the rebound

The X1950XTX is based on the R580, the same 3D chip that is used in the Radeon X1900 cards. This chip sports 8 vertex shader pipelines and 48 pixel shader pipelines. Obviously the X1950XTX is completely DirectX 9.0c compatible, but there are some features on this card that are not yet available on nVidia cards. One of the most important ones is the possibility to use HDR (High Definition Rendering) together with FSAA (Full Scene Anti Aliasing). More modern games are using HDR to enhance the lighting effects in the scenes, and FSAA is the technology to smooth out the jagged edges on 3D objects. When you purchase a high-end graphics card, you would want to use the possibility of FSAA all the time, also in modern games that make use of HDR.

The 3D chip itself has not changed, but there are some differences on the new X1950XTX card. The X1950XTX is the first card to use the new GDDR4 memory, the X1900 series and the 7900 series of nVidia all use the older GDDR3. The use of the memory is not surprising, as the chairman of the Jedec Group that has developed GDDR4 is actually on ATI's payroll. The biggest advantage of GDDR4 is the fact that it requires less power, and can be clocked much higher than GDDR3. The memory on the X1950XTX works on 1GHz (!), where the memory on the X1900XTX only works on 775MHz, the amount of memory on the X1950XTX is the same as its predecessor, 512MB.

The Cooler has been changed completely as well; the new one is not only a lot more powerful than the one on the X1900XTX, but also a lot les noisy. Apart from the improved performance, the looks have improved as well. The core of the X1950XTX works on the same speed as the one on the X1900XTX, at 650MHz.

Lastly the X1950XTX is fully compatible with HDCP as a standard, the older X1900XTX had the possibility for this, but for economical reason the extra chip required to make this possible has been left out with the X1900 card. The HDCP compatibility makes this card even more future proof.

The best news of all with this model is its modest price tag, nowadays the X1900XTX cards are still being sold for around £ 350 or more, but ATI has promised that the X1950XTX will get a price tag of only £ 299. This improves the price/performance ratio of the card massively. ATI has informed us that there will be now lower clocked XT version of the X1950, but there will be a CrossFire edition, which will be priced similar to the X1950XTX. When this CrossFire edition will be available has not been disclosed.

The table below shows all specifications of the new card, compared to the X1900XTX, the GeForce 7900GTX and the 7950GX2.

Algemeen
Merk	ATI	ATI	nVidia	nVidia
Productnaam	Radeon X1900 XTX	Radeon X1950 XTX	GeForce 7900 GTX	GeForce 7950 GX2
Productcode
Getest door	Bas Slof	Zahied Bholai	Zahied Bholai	Zahied Bholai
Datum test	23-01-2006	16-08-2006	17-03-2006	05-06-2006
Details	Details	Details	Details	Details
Specificaties
Chip-codenaam	R580	R580	G71	G71
Interface	PCI-Express x16	PCI-Express x16	PCI-Express x16	PCI-Express x16
Geheugen	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	1024 MB
Kloksnelheid - Chip	650 MHz	650 MHz	650 MHz	500 MHz
Kloksnelheid - Geheugen	775 MHz	1000 MHz	800 MHz	500 MHz
Geheugencontroller	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	512 bit
Type geheugen	GDDR3	GDDR4	GDDR3	GDDR3
DirectX versie	9.0c	9.0c	9.0c	9.0c
Vertex Shader versie	3.0	3.0	3.0	3.0
Pixel Shader versie	3.0	3.0	3.0	3.0
Vertex Shader pipelines	8	8	8	16
Pixel Shader pipelines	48	48	24	48
Pixel kleurprecisie	FP32	FP32	FP32	FP32
Extra Power-connector
Chip - Transistors	384 mln	384 mln	278 mln	556 mln
Chip - Productieprocédé	90 nm	90 nm	90 nm	90 nm
SLI-compatible