DH Review: ATI X1950XTX

***Zardon*** · Aug 23, 2006, 04:24 AM

Read the review here
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ATI's latest refresh is upon us, and we have an indepth analysis ready for your enjoyment, we know what hardcore gamers want at Driver Heaven!

We have tested ATI's latest with a good cross section of games ranging from current first person shooters such as PREY to Microsoft's upcoming Flight Simulator X and we also pit the board against current ATI and Nvidia hardware to see if its worth an upgrade. We also have information on mixed crossfire configurations, CPU scaling (with a vapochill cooled extreme edition conroe running at 4ghz), as well as game tests running at resolutions up to 2560x1600 on a 30 inch Dell screen. We look at how the card handles against competing boards with optimisations off/HQ enabled. We also overclock the card to see what headroom you can expect.

Erroneus · Aug 23, 2006, 05:25 AM

Woav, what a suprise to see a review so early, nice job DH!

Excellent card and the right move from ATI to make a new version of x1900xt with a proper cooler and a lower price, making it more competitive against 7950gx2.

This could actually be good choice between 7900gt and 7950gx2 if you look at the value.

Lelisevis · Aug 23, 2006, 05:35 AM

Brilliant article as usual. Covered most genres of games unlike some sites who stick to FPS only.
For Mr average user like myself it's an increasingly difficult time to be in the market for a GPU upgrade. This graphics card appears to be nothing more than a testing ground for GDDR4 with a nicer cooler, surely the money invested in this revision would have been better spent on the next generation core which looks to be only months away.

One other question this has raised is just who do the game designers put the fully maxed option in for? Looking at the results that came from it even with the meatiest hardware it's be pretty much unplayable.

Partizan · Aug 23, 2006, 06:25 AM

Great article again by the DriverHeaven reviewers. Both design and the contents are awesome! Respect.

***Veridian3*** · Aug 23, 2006, 06:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lelisevis

Brilliant article as usual. Covered most genres of games unlike some sites who stick to FPS only.
For Mr average user like myself it's an increasingly difficult time to be in the market for a GPU upgrade. This graphics card appears to be nothing more than a testing ground for GDDR4 with a nicer cooler, surely the money invested in this revision would have been better spent on the next generation core which looks to be only months away.

One other question this has raised is just who do the game designers put the fully maxed option in for? Looking at the results that came from it even with the meatiest hardware it's be pretty much unplayable.

I wouldnt say this card is a "testing ground" for GDDR4. That memory type has been around for a while behind closed doors and Samsung have much higher spec chips (up to 3.2Ghz) running already. Certainly its the first graphics card for the masses however the chips themselves should be very stable.

On the max front, all of the options are enabled in the control panel of each driver rather than the games themselves. For end users like yourself you would really be best advised to drop the resolution then enable these settings... having a dual card setup makes 1280x1024 playable at maxed settings in most titles.

**Vikingod** · Aug 23, 2006, 08:14 AM

Very nice review guys, hats off.

ViRuS2k · Aug 23, 2006, 09:18 AM

I dont know why i just bought this X1950XT-X now lol

Canseling my ORDER ASAP and buying a X1900XTX again.. 1-3frames
i dont know who feels more gutted, me for selling my X1900XTX for this X1950XTX or ATI for selling this pile of shite lol

either way no way im paying over £100 for just 3-4 frames bump lol

evrt63 · Aug 23, 2006, 09:31 AM

great review! love the min, avg, and max fps numbers.

***Zardon*** · Aug 23, 2006, 09:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ViRuS2k

me for selling my X1900XTX for this X1950XTX or ATI for selling this pile of shite lol

Well thats a little harsh, the X1950XTX was never meant to be a new revoluntary product, its basically a faster, quieter X1900 card with GDDR4 memory and the stepping stone for a new range. We give it the top award for a variety of reasons detailed in the review, but consider this time last year the card would have been brought out at £400, not £300 which ATI are asking now.

ViRuS2k · Aug 23, 2006, 10:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zardon

Well thats a little harsh, the X1950XTX was never meant to be a new revoluntary product, its basically a faster, quieter X1900 card with GDDR4 memory and the stepping stone for a new range. We give it the top award for a variety of reasons detailed in the review, but consider this time last year the card would have been brought out at £400, not £300 which ATI are asking now.

yeah guess your right m8 but i was expecting more i guess..

guess ati released these cards as you said a steping stone towards the GDDR4 R600 DX10 Cards

i ended up buying the ICEQ3 X1900XT and will overclock it to X1900XT-X and then some more then i will practicly have a X1950XTX for £100 less that what the X1950 would cost me.

tornadog · Aug 23, 2006, 10:48 AM

excellent review, very detailed and well worded. That said, it kinda justifies my conviction its not the card to upgrade to. I think Dx10 cards are the way to go.....Bring on Vista!!!!

Judas · Aug 23, 2006, 10:55 AM

Nice card, i'm more interested in the Crossfire front though, hopefully ATI has completely solved the crashes/hangs/artifacts/jitters and all the previous issues in a wide range of games with the new one, and hopefully they'll provide a slider for setting/forcing AFR and then setting the type of forced tiling/scissors modes.

I'm impressed with the memory overclock though.

***Zardon*** · Aug 23, 2006, 11:05 AM

we will have a full crossfire review in the near future. we wanted to put that in a seperate article and also get final retail boards.

Judas · Aug 23, 2006, 11:24 AM

yeah a final retail product would be best imo.

I've been waiting for these cards OR for the next gen before i decide to RMA the current cards i've got that are littered with issues that i've been told by a ATI support rep that only way to fix it will be to RMA and they'll send the new revisions.

However i plan instead to just send in the 2 cards and pay the difference for the newer line if possible.

2560x1600 resolution is steller, but quite a few games suffer some performance issues (dropping below 30fps) with Crossfire, and i'm not reffering to newer games, i'm reffering to a few of the older games.

Serious Sam 2 is amazing though at that resolution with HDR

dipstick · Aug 23, 2006, 12:15 PM

Nice review although some GX2 numbers seem a little low(probably due to all the driver bugs) The card is sweet for what it is meant to be and it comes at a good price. Just being quieter than the X1900 makes it a better buy

swimtech · Aug 23, 2006, 12:26 PM

Great review - information dense in both substance and style.

Something I've been meaning to ask for awhile - How does the playability of the game "feel" with a card that benches out like the cards did in Half Life 2 - where the ATI cards have appreciably better minimum frame rates, about the same average, and appreciably lower maximum frame rates than the NVidia cards. It's impossible to understand the difference in "feel" from the numbers alone.

Having played games for quite a while at the lowest edge of playability, the minimum frame rate would seem to me to be a very important number - especially in a fast action FPS, whereas a max frame rate above, say 80, would be more or less moot.

Again, I'm asking for your subjective impression of "feel", given the conditions above. I appreciate your perspective...

Judas · Aug 23, 2006, 12:53 PM

imo,

in the case of frame rate, Maximum frame rate means nothing if the low or average are terrible to begin with, sure looking at the sky gives you 999fps, but when you are looking around at actually something you need to, and get 5fps, yeah... understandbly useless.

From what i've experienced, If the minimum frame rate is above 30-37.5fps, your sitting pretty and laughing, anything below that starts to get a little unpredictable.

And in terms of feel, when the low and high frame rates are all over the place, this is when you notice it the most and the feel is that it's speeding up and slowing down and smooth as silk one minute and the next it's a slideshow. A more stable set of frame rate results always produces a nice clearer, clean, smooth feeling.

A game playing at min 30fps average 35 and tops 50 will look more smooth generally then a game running 20fps/40fps/80fps

SFOSOK · Aug 23, 2006, 01:38 PM

Looks like I'm not buying this.

kinetic · Aug 23, 2006, 01:48 PM

Why is CCC reporting the card as having DDR3? Maybe it doesn't recognise DDR4.

***Veridian3*** · Aug 23, 2006, 02:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kinetic

Why is CCC reporting the card as having DDR3? Maybe it doesn't recognise DDR4.

Early version of the driver, the later version of 6.8 recognises the card as having GDDR4...screenshot was already filed away before that was released.

kinetic · Aug 23, 2006, 02:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Veridian3

Early version of the driver, the later version of 6.8 recognises the card as having GDDR4...screenshot was already filed away before that was released.

Ah ok, thanks. Great review BTW.

***Veridian3*** · Aug 23, 2006, 02:16 PM

with regard to min/max/avg FPS, anything above 25fps minimum provides completely s