A while back we reviewed the Power Color X1950 Pro Extreme card at Driver Heaven, which proved to be a very good performing mid-sector card with quiet and efficient cooling.

Now the time has come to its Sapphire counter part The Sapphire Ultimate X1950 Pro. We will see if this card lives up to the “ultimate” moniker.

The Card:

Features
• Silent! Zalman copper heatpipe solution (max 25dB; 2400rpm)
• Pre-overclocked 580e/1600m (versus standard X1950 Pro card: 580e/1400m)
• Memory heatpads for optimal overclocking
• Bundled with new game: Just Cause
Specifications
• RADEON™ X1950PRO core (580MHz)
• 256MB GDDR3 onboard memory (1600MHz)
• 12 Pixel pipelines
• 36 Pixel shader processors
• PCI Express x16
• Pixel Shader Version 3.0
• Dual DVI
• TV-Out

Sapphire has chosen to go with the proven efficient Zalman VF900CU heat pipe cooler to cool the 580MHz core. As you can see the card also has a blue PCB that in my opinion looks really attractive against the copper heat sinks.

The GDDR 3 ram chips that run at the rather high stock speed of 800 MHz (1600MHz DDR) have blue aluminium heat sinks attached to them to keep them cool.

Here you can see the standard dual-DVI outputs along with the High Definition capable TV-out connector.

And a shot of the cards back side with the Zalman mounting thumbscrews.

New to the X1950Pro is that if you chose to run a dual card setup, the external dongle and the master card are no longer needed. Just connect the cards together internally using the crossfire connections seen in this picture.