Radeon X1900XTX Round Up
PCI Express x16 graphics cardsChipset Radeon X1900XTX 512 MB, 256 bit
Three months have passed since ATI launched their Radeon X1900 series. At launch, most of their AIB partners announced their own respective products based on this new chip. Understandably, in a hurry to get the product out of the door, most partners opt to stick to the reference design, right down to the use of the slightly revised, yet notorious Radeon X1800 cooling solution. Three months down the road, we're finally seeing some variety between vendors, most notably the use of a higher clocked core / memory and / or third party cooling solutions.
However, for users outside the US and Europe, the only Radeon X1900 series that's available are only those with stock cooling and reference specification from ATI's partners. Furthermore, users in some regions and countries have not seen any ripple effect from ATI's price cut when the GeForce 7900 series came out. Prices for these cards are terribly high, and in some extreme cases can reach USD 600 - 700 per card for the Radeon X1900XTX Higher clocked cards with third party solutions are more likely to be sold higher.
Unfortunately, we are one of those users. So, you can probably can already guess the conclusion of this comparison. We have three cards to test in this article, the ASUS EAX1900XTX, Gigabyte Radeon X1900XTX and Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX. All these cards use reference boards with reference specifications. So, in short, they're all the same. Our conclusion is not that different from the early comparisons done when the Radeon X1900XTX was launched. Even testing for overclocking potential would be pointless, especially if all the vendors use the same core revision and memory chips.
So why write this article at all then? That's a valid question. Well, first of all, we did expect a higher clocked version to be out in three months, at least from several vendors that's available in this part of the world. Unfortunately, that's not the case. So we have to make this comparison with the cards that's available now. Hopefully we can get our hands on one in the next few weeks to see what kind of performance can you expect and update this article.
The second reason is more complicated. After testing Oblivion, we saw that current high end cards (both the GeForce 7900GTX and Radeon X1900XTX) have barely enough power to push high enough frame rates in that game. Sure Oblivion is a special case, but the game really put what these cards have to offer into perspective. These cards are only fast enough for the current generation of games. So, if the fastest card today have barely enough power (a single card, not SLI or Crossfire), why pay more? If there are no differences in performance (and cooling solution) between vendors, which card should you buy? Ultimately, that option is up to you. In this article, we try to look at the differences between these three cards and their bundles to see which one has the best overall product, not just the cards.
Overview
ASUS EAX1900XTX
650/775 MHz
ATI Radeon X1900XTX, 512 MB GDDR3Core Clock : 648 MHz
Memory Clock : 774 MHz (1548 MHz GDDR3)
Overall Score: 90 points
The ASUS EAX1900XTX is the card with the largest box in this round up.Most of the space inside the box is used by the packaging, mainly used to keep things stationary and does a pretty good job of it. Unfortunately, it looks like our samples have been making quite some rounds, so there's some accessories missing. So, we had to refer to ASUS's website documentation on the bundle. Besides the usual cable accessories (S-video, video input / output, HDTV and composite cables), you'll also find two DVI to analog dongles (a necessary bonus if you're going to use two analog displays) and a leather CD wallet. Unfortunately, there's no 6 pin ATX power cables for your recently purchased graphics cards, so you'll have to make sure your power supply has one or buy a third party solution. While this may not be a big deal to most of us with new power supplies, we can see how this may irk some users with older power supply. After all, with the price ASUS is asking for this card, you think they would've put something as small but still significant item like a power cable as a standard bundle.
The CD bundle is the usual fan fare: a driver CD, a manual CD and with two applications CD, a DVD playback software and Video editor / capture software to make use of the card's video input capabilities. For those who want to get down to business of enjoying their recent purchase, ASUS was kindly enough to supply two popular games: King Kong and Project Snowblind and several other games, in total about 5 games.
In the utilities CD, you'll find some of the usual ASUS utility fan fare, the GameFace Messenger, Game LiveShow and Video Security Online. If you install the extra ASUS Enhanced Driver, you'll also get Splendid, a color enhancing utility and ASUS On Screen Display, which enables you to quickly adjust your display properties (brightness, contrast etc) via an OSD display you can call through a hot key.
No doubt, the ASUS EAX1900XTX is the card with the most bundle in this round up. However, that amount of games and software becomes a moot point with the lack of power cables. Why put all that effort into a bundle when left out such a small but very important thing as a power cable? After all, you can't really play all these games or use all that utilities if you can't hook the card up with the power supply.
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