Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro, 256 MB GDDR3Core Clock : 580 MHz
Memory Clock : 702 MHz (1404 MHz GDDR3)
Overall Score: 85 points
If you're looking for a mainstream card that doesn't break your wallet, offer great performance in games and Windows Vista and still be able to fit in your HTPC, the Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro just might be it. As you can see, the card uses the Radeon X1950 Pro reference single slot cooling solution. One nitpick that comes to mind with this solution is the spin up noise at boot time. Thankfully the noise is nothing like the Radeon X1950 XTX - it's more like the startup noise of a GeForce 7800GT. Most of the heat sink is aluminum, but if you look closely you can see the heat sink uses a large copper base about the size of the Radeon X1950 Pro chip . For those interested in details, the Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro is based on the reference board design - it includes OVERDRIVE capabilities and thus, hardware monitoring. The memory chips are in contact with the heat sink, though not directly. Sapphire uses additional paddings to help heat transfer from the memory chips to the heat sink. We don't necessarily like this solution pretty much, but it should be able to help cool the chips if they do get that hot.
Open the box and you'll find the card, the must have accessories with CDs and manual inside. The Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro does not include a game bundle - you should be able to get the card at lower prices than competing products. Unfortunately, that also means no utilities and DVD playback software. The package is definitely targeted for the budget conscious gamer. One thing to note about the accessories - in addition to separately supplying composite and S-video cables, Sapphire also includes an S-video to composite converter. Although technically you can use both of them together if you're short on cables, we wouldn't recommend it. Completing the bundle are one ATX 12v to 6 pin ATX converter cable, two DVI to analog dongle and an HDTV cable.
One thing to note - our sample does not include a Crossfire internal bridge cable / connectors. We talked to our local Sapphire representative / distributor about this and he said that early versions of the card does not bundle the bridge. He promised us that the updated SKUs should include the bridge as a standard accessory. Users who already have bought the card without any Crossfire internal bridge cable should talk to their Sapphire local representative or distributor about getting one.
OK. How does the single slot cooled Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro compare to dual slot cooled cards like the Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro and MSI RX1950 Pro T2D256E? We fired up Quake 4 for about 15 minutes with time demos after time demos to warm up the card. Here is a screen dump of RivaTuner afterwards.
76° Celsius at full load, dropping to 54° Celsius on the desktop. That;s about 25° Celsius higher at full load and just 9° Celsius higher at idle than ambient temperatures.This is hotter than the MSI RX1950 Pro T2D256E. Interesting to note, fan speeds do seem to scale with temperatures - we saw a 10 percent increase in fan duty cycle during full load temperatures. 25° Celsius higher than ambient temperature is a bit high, but remember we're talking about single slot cooling here. We guess that's still acceptable.
What do we think about the Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro? We think the budget conscious gamer would appreciate this offering from Sapphire, but we can't help but think you might actually get more for your buck (lower operating temperatures, software bundles) with other cards.
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