ATI Radeon X1950 Announced

Iria

Source: DailyTech
___________
This week ATI sent an advisory out to its OEM partners announcing the details of the new Radeon X1950 and X1900 graphic cards. Both of these new cards are based on the same R580 core, but with some fundamental differences.

R580, the 48 pixel-shader processor version of the R520 (Radeon X1800), was announced this past January. R580 features a robust memory controller capable of utilizing several different types of memory, including GDDR4 which was not even available when the Radeon X1900 was first announced. Since then Hynix and Samsung have both jumped on the GDDR4 train with revenue shipments beginning several weeks ago. The new GDDR4 variants of R580-based Radeons are now called Radeon X1950. Radeon X1950 will retain all of the features of the Radeon X1900, and really only have the added benefit of a new cooler, GDDR4 memory and different frequency clocks.

Tipstaff

"Radeon X1950 at launch will come in two flavors: a high clock "XTX" version, and a CrossFire version. Both cards feature 512MB GDDR4, and the only major difference between the two is that the CrossFire X1950 houses the composite engine and input interfaces for CrossFire."

I take it that this means the Crossfire X1950 uses the PCIE bus for Crossfire just like the X1300/X1600XT? So, no master/slave card, or external cables for this puppy?

Erroneus

Well you still need a CF master card, the "need" for CF cards goes away at the r600 series. Will they run through the PCIE bus and doesn't have a need for external cables, dunno but i doubt it.

A new cooler, well that was about freaking time. I'm stunned that ATI could release such a noisy product as x1900 was, didn't they see what happend to the FX5800 series.

temeteus82

ATi should use AC's coollers as stock

mkk

Might still be quite noisy if as expected the power efficiency has not been substantially improved. The heatsink appears to be of a cheaper Arctic Cooling variant.

OmegaRED

Not impressive...if ATI wants people to buy a new card it should at least be DX10 capable.

Erroneus

Ehm it's not like you add dx10 with a simple update, that would requre a totally new card, which r600 is.

BiGBrOwNPimpsta

only fools are going to upgrade from their other x1000 cards to this, on top of that all this is is another x1900 with gddr4 and higher clock speeds. at least nvidia created a dual core card and that was revolutionary i say

SFOSOK

I don't know how many people will buy this. They should have released it sooner

pr0digal jenius

"Samsung announced its GDDR4 is already capable of 3.2GHz"

jesus tapdancing christ that's ridiculous