HIS Radeon X1950XTX

Verdict: Cheaper and faster than you might think

ATi started it, and now ATi wants to finish it: the DirectX 9 era. All things must pass, and this particular era is now drawing to a close. Having introduced the first DirectX 9 GPU, the Radeon 9700 Pro, back in August 2002, ATi is keen to go out on a high note - unfortunately, Nvidia's GeForce 7950 GX2 is currently ruining this plan, so ATi is releasing a new extremely high-end GPU, the Radeon X1950XTX.

The card features a completely new cooler. Although we're reviewing a HIS version of the X1950XTX, the HSF you see here is the ATi reference cooler, although it's suspiciously similar in design to the IceQ 3 cooler that HIS uses on some of its X1000-series cards.

The X1950XTX's HSF is a heavy-duty piece of equipment. It's a huge howitzer of metal compared with the compact, pistol-shaped cooler that's fitted to the 7950 GX2. The X1950XTX's cooler features a massive copper base, which covers the GPU and the memory, and certainly contributes to the card's overall 850g weight. As with the IceQ 3, the copper heatsink comprises two halves, one covering the memory and one covering the GPU, to prevent heat from being transferred from one to the other. Like the HIS cooler, the X1950XTX's cooler has a heatpipe threaded through it, and is cooled by a large crossflow fan. This pushes air along the card, and exhausts hot air out of the back of the case.

The GPU underneath the cooler has the same architecture as the X1900XTX, with 48 pixel processors, 16 texture processors and render outputs, and eight vertex pipes. It also runs at the same 650MHz as its predecessor. Where the X1950XTX differs to its predecessor is in its memory, which is clocked at an astonishing 1GHz (2GHz effective). ATi has switched from GDDR3 to GDDR4 in order to hit this higher speed. GDDR4 isn't hugely different from its predecessor, but it has the advantage of using less power and is specifically designed to run at higher speeds. The insane frequency of the GDDR4 means that the X1950XTX has a huge amount of bandwidth: 64GB/sec, compared to 49.6GB/sec for the X1900XTX, and 38.4GB/sec for the 7950 GX2. This bandwidth will come in handy at higher resolutions, especially when there's anti-aliasing involved, because of the amount of data being moved.

When the X1950XTX is sitting idle in Windows, the cooler is quiet and well-behaved, inasmuch as the fan doesn't spin up and down. When you're gaming, though, it can make a real buzz. It's louder than the 7950 GX2, but not by much, and, since it happens only in games, it's acceptable, as you're likely to be using speakers or headphones. Overall, it's a far more pleasant companion than the extremely noisy X1900XTX. If you buy a X1950XTX, don't be surprised if you find your cat snuggled up behind your PC either - the cooler exhausts a constant stream of warm air out of the back of the case. The X1950XTX also soaks up a lot of electricity, with our test PC's power draw peaking at 300W under load, compared to 264W with a 7950 GX2 installed. That said, if you're buying this type of graphics card, a high-end PSU is par for the course.

PERFORMANCE

The cooler might have been redesigned, but this didn't prevent the X1950XTX from giving us a huge headache during the review process. We subjected it to a much wider range of game tests than we usually use, but deciding between this card and the 7950 GX2 is extremely difficult. Is the X1950XTX the fastest graphics card in the world? Or is it the 7950 GX2? It depends, as ever, on which games you play. The 7950 GX2 is the clear winner in F.E.A.R., which, given that the free game, F.E.A.R. Combat, has just been released, is certainly useful. At 1,920 x 1,200 with 4x AA and 16x AF, a standard 7950 GX2 averages a stunning 59fps, never dropping below 42fps. The X1950XTX, in contrast, couldn't run the game smoothly at these settings and managed a choppy minimum of 23fps.

Tomb Raider: Legend was the opposite, however, with the 7950 GX2 unable to power the game smoothly at 1,680 x 1,050, even without AA. Need for Speed: Most Wanted was effectively a tie, both cards having enough power to provide smooth frame rates at even the most demanding settings. Prey favours the 7950 GX2, although even with all the options on, plus 4x AA and 16x AF, frame rates with the X1950XTX didn't dip below 27fps, and the game was fine to play. Considering that there are no other options to turn on, the extra speed of the 7950 GX2 is handy, but not exactly crucial.

For this review, Call of Duty 2 was promoted from the subs bench to bolster our squad of benchmarks. Regardless of which AA options we chose, neither card had any trouble with the game, although the X1950XTX's average at 1,920 x 1,200 was higher than that of the 7950 GX2, indicating that the extra bandwidth from GDDR4 comes in handy.

The Elder Scolls IV: Oblivion is the most graphically demanding PC game ever released, so it should be an ideal benchmark. However, it can be an absolute nightmare - the randomly generated wildlife means that the game can differ wildly in each benchmark run, and frame rates vary massively, depending on the environment you're in. We settled on two areas that proved to be quite predictable. For our indoors test, we played through a fight in the Arena, and for our outdoors test, we rode out on the coast road near Kvatch. Although the X1950XTX is capable of running Oblivion with HDR and AA, we opted not to use this in order to get comparable results between it and the 7950 GX2. We began by setting all of the graphical option and detail sliders to maximum, and using HDR lighting. Since the game wasn't playable wandering around the countryside using these options, we reset the sliders to default. Even so, as the game is CPU-limited, neither card could pull ahead of the other. Indoors, at 1,920 x 1,200, the 7950 GX2 was around 10fps faster than the X1950XTX. That said, the X1950XTX's minimum of 35fps is well above what you need to play the game smoothly.

We tried overclocking the X1950XTX using the ATi driver, and had little luck. Although we could set the GPU to run at 670MHz and the memory at 1.04GHz (2.08GHz effective), at these speeds, it only managed three loops of 3DMark06 before locking up.

CONCLUSION

The increased memory bandwidth offered by GDDR4 unlocks a lot of potential in the X1950XTX GPU, so it fares much better against the dual-GPU GeForce 7950 GX2 than we initially thought it would. Differences between the two are slight, and don't really emerge until you increase the resolution to 1,920 x 1,200, and a screen that's capable of this will cost around £700, a far bigger investment than the card itself, which costs £316.08. The price is extremely competitive, and it's difficult to see how ATi will make any money on these cards. Still, since I don't own any ATi shares, I'm not going to let this trouble me. It's an absolute bargain - or it would be, if DirectX 10 wasn't a few months down the road. With DirectX 10 GPUs imminent, this card is destined to be short-lived, so, unless you're desperate for a graphics card right now, if you're interested in the very high-end GPUs, you're better off waiting for ATi's R600 and Nvidia's G80.

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