Radeon X1950 Pro Round Up
PCI Express x16 graphics cardsChipset Radeon X1950 Pro 256 MB, 256 bit
If you're looking to buy a graphics card now, you might be tempted to wait for the next generation of cards. From experience, next generation mainstream cards should at least offer the same level of performance as current high end cards of today. Hopefully, that still holds true today. But sometimes you may not have a choice on the matter. So, your best bet is to get a card that still have enough power to run the latest games and don't break your wallet.
The Radeon X1950 Pro has proven to be quite the performer from a price / performance point of view. It offers about the same level of performance as the GeForce 7900GT / 7950GT, with prices nearer to those found in GeForce 7900GS. Performance in the latest games like Oblivion and Need for Speed: Carbon is good enough - frame rates are generally playable at 1024 x 768 with AA and AF, with most graphical quality settings set to maximum. The only card NVIDIA have right now that is a direct threat to the Radeon X1950 Pro is the GeForce 8800GTS 320 MB and that card is priced much higher - your mileage may vary depending on where you live or which online store you buy your card from.
Today, we're going to take a look at three Radeon X1950 Pro cards on the market. They are the Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro, MSI RX1950 Pro T2D256E and Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro. The Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro comes with a slightly higher memory clock and all three vendors have different approaches. Read on to find out which card we think has the best value for your gaming dollar.
Overview
Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro, 256 MB GDDR3Core Clock : 573 MHz
Memory Clock : 688 MHz (1376 MHz GDDR3)
Overall Score: 87 points
We've been using the Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro for some time now, so we've spent more time with this card than the other two cards. The cooler is similar to other Gigabyte made, Zalman cooled cards. The fan / heat sink design, though a dual slot solution, doesn't take much space as other cooling solutions (like the MSI RX1950 Pro T2D256E or ATI's reference cooling solution). Placing it on the second x16 PCIe slot shouldn't interfere with any cables or connectors (at least not with our Gigabyte P965-DS3P). The addition of several copper fins and a copper base helps keep temperature lower than if an all aluminum heat sink was used.
Unfortunately, Gigabyte used a slightly different board design for their card and in the process fail to include hardware monitoring functions. From what we can tell, the fan does not scale with temperature nor does it spin up to full speed upon booting. Noise is minimal, only slightly noticeable over the noise from our Core 2 Duo processor stock cooling.. Although the Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro does not use any heat sink to cool its memory chips, the air flowing from the main fan is strong enough to keep them from getting warm or hot.
The card comes bundled with one game - Call of Juarez. While we don't mean any disrespect to the developers, we think Gigabyte should have chosen another game for the bundle. Why can't we get Supreme Commander that's bundled with those GeForce 8 and 7 instead? Oh well. In addition to a driver CD and manual, you'll also find an HDTV dongle, a 4 pin 12v ATX to 6 pin ATX cable / converter, two DVI to analog dongle and a flexible Crossfire internal bridge cable / connector.
A nice touch from Gigabyte is the inclusion of connector covers for both DVI ports and TV output port. Gigabyte didn't bundle any S-Video and composite cables, so be sure to pick them up somewhere else if you need them. You'll also have to find your own DVD playback software - Gigabyte doesn't include their usual Cyberlink's PowerDVD bundle with this card. In the driver CD, you'll find Gigabyte's own VTuner 3, which allows you to see and set core and memory clocks for the card.
Overall, we think the Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro is one fine card. Most of the much needed bundles are present, though we still think there's room for improvement. It may have a dual slot cooling solution, but it doesn't take as much space as other cooling solutions and less noisy too. Too bad we can't see how effective it is since there are no hardware monitoring functions with this card. We thought about mounting the Zalman heat sink on the MSI RX1950 Pro to see just how effective the cooling solution is, but we decided that would actually be more of a cooling solution test than actual thermal management capabilities of the card.
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