X1950 XTX REVIEW X1950XTX VS X1900XTX CROSSFIRE SLI 7900GTX AND 7950GX2 PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK
Posted:2006-09-04 By video card review Number of View:27298
X1950 XTX REVIEW X1950XTX VS X1900XTX CROSSFIRE SLI 7900GTX AND 7950GX2 PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK By :video card review Posted:2006-09-04 xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source the unexpected repurchase of ATI by AMD have made great noise.; the Canadian firm renews today its offer of high-end graphics chips   launching the Radeon X1950 XTX.;this   not the only news from ATI , since few weeks later this firm should also update its medium  range with the arrival of Radeon X1300 XT and Radeon X1650.; While waiting for the arrival of the new references from the medium  range  , we are interested today in Radeon X1950 XTX. logically Succeeding the Radeon X1900 launched January , x1900 xtx to x1950xtx  from   is R580 to R580+ In the heart of this new Radeon X1950 XTX, there is the  R580+ chip, which are  strictly identical to R580 animating the current Radeon X1900. ATI  did not bring any change to the specifications of the graphics chip.This one  preserves a "burst" architecture where the concept of pixel pipeline does not have the same clock  with the chip as in the case of GeForce .Without returning in  details, let us recall , that R580+ chip of Radeon X1950 has 48 pipelines  pixels shader, it  only on 16 texture units  . The Vertexes units are 8 whereas the ROP, these units in end of pipeline charged to carry out right before posting certain operations like antialiasing, or  the   blending (mixture), are 16.Technically, the R580+ chip counts about 384 million transistors and  made in 90 Nm.Its operating frequency  remains the same just like the Radeon X1950 XTX  650 MHz  in the gpu , the only exception is the memory where the new Radeon X1950 XTX use gddr 4 memory type. this table  enable  to compare the characteristics of the last high end range of video cards: GeForce 7900 GTX GeForce 7950 GX2 Radeon X1900 XTX Radeon X1950 XTX Interface PCI-Express 16x PCI-Express 16x PCI-Express 16x PCI-Express 16x process 0,09 µ 0,09 µ 0,09 µ 0,09 µ Transistors ~278 Millions ~278 Millions ~380 Millions ~380 Millions Ramdac 2 x 400 MHz 2 x 400 MHz 2 x 400 MHz 2 x 400 MHz T & L DirectX 9.0c DirectX 9.0c DirectX 9.0c DirectX 9.0c Pixel Pipelines 24 24 48 48 Vertex Pipelines 8 8 8 8 onboard memory 512 Mo 512 Mo 512 Mo 512 Mo memory Interface 256 bits 256 bits 256 bits 256 bits memory brand-widh 51,2 Go/s 38,4 Go/s 49,6 Go/s 64 Go/s GPU frequency 650 MHz 500 MHz 650 MHz 650 MHz Memory frequency 800 MHz 600 MHz 775 MHz 1000 MHz Radeon X1950XTX  on the GDDR4 When ATI presented last October the awaited R520, the firm mentioned already that its controller support 256 bits bus widh and it was able to function not only with GDDR3, but also with GDDR4. Several months after, the GDDR4 leaves finally the laboratories and ATI is the first to integrate it on  video cards.The principal advantage of this news memory comes from the high frequencies which  can reach give higher  band-width from the the memory  and increases consequently their processing capacity.To reach  higher frequencies, chips GDDR4 are able to exchange 8 bits of data by cycle  clock when chips GDDR3 exchange only the maximum of 4 .Result, the chips memories of Radeon X1950 XTX turn to 1 GHz, that is   225 MHz higher than the Radeon X1900 XTX.  chips GDDR3 of GeForce 7950 GX2 operate at 600 MHz… ATI posts with its new Radeon X1950 XTX a band-width impressive theoretical memory of 64 Gig/s  against 51Gig/s  for GeForce 7900 GTX from NVIDIA and 38,4 Gig/s  for each GPU of GeForce 7950 GX2.;   Chips GDDR4 have another advantage:the lower power consumption.Their default voltage is  fixed at 1,5 Volt and  saving  about 30 % compared to the GDDR3. ATI Radeon X1950 XTX the card Design question, the Radeon X1950 take again the red PCB of current Radeon X1900.With  connector PCI-Express  16x, the card have a small difference on the level of their power cicuit .This one does not include any more  six MOSFETs against seven for the Radeon X1900. But this is only one detail vs the large news introduced by Radeon the X1950 on the level of the cooling system  . ATI  had the intelligent idea to equip its new card with a system of cooling signed Arctic Cooling, in fact an ATI Silencer.;And miracle, it goes!Radeon X1950 XTX does not make any more  noise , Naturally, the fan speed  is variable .If the X1950 XTX is noisier in 3d than the GeForce 7900 GTX it remains  quiet compared to the old X1900 XTX!;Question heating, the graphics chip easily reaches 75 C in full load. the graphics chip being covered with a heavy  block of copper  connected by  heat-pipe to a second radiator covering at the same time the memories chips .;Disadvantage of the system:;the card is heavy, very heavy, with a weight  of about 800 grm. On the technical level, the card Radeon X1950 XTX has a graphics chip operating at 650 MHz and  512 MB of memory GDDR4 working at 1 GHz.;They are Samsung chips with access time  of 0,9 NS.Its power supply always depends on a connector PCI-Express  and compared to Radeon X1900 XTX, the new arrival consumes about  the same power with 280 Watts  in full load. it should be known that the card Radeon X1950 XTX have two Dual-DVI,  chip Rage Theater  and the first time  support HDCP! finally the presence of a connector miniDIN for the analogical video inputs/outputs .; for power consumption, we checked the peak of overall power consumption of our machines s under 3DMark 06 in 2560x1600. As u can note  in the table below the Radeon X1950 XTX consumes slightly less than its  predecessor but as much as GeForce 7950 GX2 which   have two nvidia graphics chips.; x1950 xtx crossfire capability Just like NVIDIA, which opened sli technologie, ATI develop  multi-VPU solutions.The goal being always the same :to combine the power of two video card to reach higher performances level.At NVIDIA its  called SLI, whereas at ATI we speaks about CrossFire.After a false start with Radeon X850, CrossFire was improved  on the driver level.ATI   declined   medium  range video card, Radeon X1300 and X1600 and depreved them from crossfire support.Just like the SLI, CrossFire require a compatible motherboard and in addition to the models equipped with  chipset ATI CrossFire, motherboards containing chipsets INTEL i955x and i975x also take avantage from this technology . With the arrival of Radeon X1950 XTX, it should be noted that ATI standardizes the specifications of its CrossFire .Thus, the CrossFire edition of our X1950 XTX posts the same characteristics as the card alone with identical frequencies . ATI should soon integrate power requirement necessary to CrossFire operation in its graphics chips, the CrossFire version of Radeon X1950 XTX does not benefit yet from this refinement. image Quality x1950 xtx vs 7900gtx With its news Radeon X1950 XTX, ATI preserves goof image quality.That  is with the modes of antialiasing Super AA 8x and 14x available in CrossFire , ATI   recall that it offers the best visual quality.Remember, when NVIDIA launched its GeForce 7800 GT various problems  with  textures were updated in particular with   Battlefield 2 and Half-Life 2.;One year after, the driver from NVIDIA always  has defect in the adjustment "Quality" to the textures filtering  , adjustment which certainly makes  possible to gain in performances, but which degraded visual quality . By using the adjustment "higher Quality", the problem was fixed.The good news is that at ATI this kind of problem does not exist  … the few captures showin  above, show the difference between is texture   returned with antialiasing 4x, we cannot say that the modes Super AA 8x and 16x which quite simply seems to be not palyable under Half-Life 2, the image being identical a that 4x mode. To test the performances of Radeon X1950 XTX   and CrossFire  Radeon X1950 XTX we used the configuration witch detail appears below:     ;* Motherboard Asus P5w-dh Deluxe,     ;* Processor INTEL Core 2 Extreme X6800,     ;* 2x1 Go Corsair Twin2X 6400C3,     ;* Hard disk Western DIGITAL Raptor 150 GIG Provided with Windows XP Professionnel Service Pack 2 and with the last drivers and BIOS available to the date of the test, this configuration enabled us to test not only new video card from ATI but also the CrossFire  Radeon X1900 XT.We will oppose all those card   to other from NVIDIA in  the following configuration:     ;* Motherboard Asus P5N32 SLI SE Deluxe,     ;* Processor INTEL Core 2 Extreme X6800,     ;* 2x1 G Corsair Twin2X 6400C3,     ;* Hard disk Western DIGITAL Raptor 150 GIG On this platform we tested GeForce 7900 GTX, and the SLI of GeForce 7900 GTX and GeForce 7950 GX2 from Sparkle.for the graphic driver we use the CATALYST 6.8 Beta as well as ForceWare 91.33 Beta.;At ATI we activate filtering AF  quality and at NVIDIA we use the mode  filtering "Better Quality".The test was by mesurin the frame rate using fraps 3DMark 06 we start with 3DMark 06.Here the CrossFire configurations hold the top , in front of the SLI  GeForce 7900 GTX and GeForce 7950 GX2.Our new Radeon X1950 XTX is posted like  4% faster than its predecessor and it just loose over the GeForce 7950 GX2. Half-Life 2 Lost Coast - HDR Splinter Cell Chaos Theory - v1.05 Half-Life 2 and Splinter Cell make both the beautiful benifit with the solutions multiVPU which  signed ATI or NVIDIA.With Half-Life the 2 SLI  GeForce 7900 GTX are leading, whereas with Splinter Cell the first place take the CrossFire  Radeon X1950 XTX. In these two tests, GeForce 7950 GX2 does better than Radeon X1950 XTX.This last   shows 2% better performance than the Radeon X1900 XTX, and  equal performance with GeForce 7900 GTX under Half-Life 2.With Splinter Cell, Radeon X1950 XTX show  a small advantage on its NVIDIA competitor . Quake 4 - v1.2 Call Of Duty 2 - v1.3 Quake 4 and Call Of Duty 2 show the victory of the  SLI  GeForce 7900  GTX. . under Quake 4  the graphics chips are  limited by the CPU Under these two titles Radeon X1950 XTX show  more some significant advantage on its predecessor with a profit of 3% and 9% in Quake 4 .the GeForce 7950 GX2 vs Radeon X1950 XTX is  unsignificant under Quake 4 but  show some nice score under Call Of Duty 2.On other hand the Radeon X1950 XTX  beats the GeForce 7900 GTX by 19%   under Quake 4 and 34% in Call Of Duty 2 in 2048x1536. in Call Of Duty 2 the Radeon X1950 XTX show  higher performances than CrossFire  Radeon X1900 XTX.;   CrossFire  is not used under Call Of Duty 2  , performances obtained with two card is equal to those oon card!when we put two X1950 XTX there was increases in the results by 3% in 2048x1536 over the X1950 XTX alone…Under Quake 4 on the other hand CrossFire has more interest,  passing from a card to  two, we gains some 11%   in 2048x1536 whereas solution SLI from NVIDIA show  more significant profit of 45%.;   F.E.A.R. 1.06 Under F.E.A.R.the SLI  GeForce 7900 GTX and GeForce 7950 GX2 have the lead.The congifurations CrossFire finish in third and fourth position .The advantage of Radeon X1950 XTX reaches 8% vs X1900 XTX in 2048x1536 but that still not enough to make the game playable with such resolution setting  . return in CrossFire, while passing from X1950 XTX to two we gains 61% of performances.;There   is a considerable profit but the SLI GeForce 7900 GTX show improvement by 93% witch near the 100% for ideal operation. Oblivion v1.1 - HDR Tested with FRAPS, we activate the HDR . card from ATI show the best result under this game and only the SLI of GeForce 7900 GTX makes  possible to NVIDIA to equalize Radeon X1900 XTX. with heavy shaders, Oblivion does not show any significant difference in performances between X1950 and X1900 XTX. and this is Normal the two graphics card run  at the same gpu frequency and have the same architecture, the high band-width memory with the x1950xtx is not advantageous here. note that here the Radeon X1950 XTX is in 2048x1536 50% faster than the GeForce 7900 GTX!!Curiously the GeForce 7950 GX2 is on the same performance level as the GeForce 7900 GTX this sweem like bad optimization for nvidia driver… Tomb Raider Legend v1.2 - Next Gen For Lara Croft no  hello without  SLI. Our various graphics chips seem to be limited by the processors, and CrossFire does not function here .The profit of performances between Radeon X1950 XTX and X1900 XTX is here none  whereas GeForce 7900 GTX makes equal performance with chips ATI Curiously again the GeForce 7950 GX2 does not do better than the GeForce 7900 GTX and we cannot determine the reason of it. Need For Speed Most Wanted - HDR - v1.3 Need For Speed seems to  love  the CrossFire configurations.with  it s of  Radeon X1900 XTX CrossFire  or Radeon X1950 XTX, ATI takes the lead   in front of the SLI  GeForce 7900 GTX..On the other hand the Radeon X1950 XTX does not do better than the GeForce 7900 GTX.in this game;the GeForce 7950 GX2 show  higher performances by 19%. F. E. A. R. v1.06 - FSAA 4x & AF 8x return to F.E.A.R. this time with  active texture  filtering functions .The game turns here to the advantage of ATI  where the CrossFire  Radeon X1950 XTX finishes first, right in front of the SLI  GeForce 7900 GTX.;the Radeon X1950 XTX cannot stay against the GeForce 7950 GX2 but here it show  23% higher performances than theGeForce 7900 GTX .for R580+ vs R580, the profit is about 5% in 2048x1536.; Call Of Duty 2 - v1.3 - Filtrage anisotrope et FSAA 4x activing the texture filtering  under Call Of Duty 2 makes  possible to ATI card to catch nvidia card .Radeon X1950 XTX is largely better than the GeForce 7900 GTX and the7950 GX2, with an advantage which can reach up to 32%.;Radeon X1950 XTX vs Radeon X1900 XTX appears to be 9% more powerful.The   GeForce 7900 GTX SLI preserves  the advantage over the crossfire ATI solutions Half Life 2 Lost Coast - HDR - FSAA 4x & AF 8x   antialiasing and anisotropic filtering make  possible for Radeon X1950 XTX to precede   the GeForce 7900 GTX, but can not reach the 7950gx2 performance level .The profit x1950xtx vs Radeon X1900 XTX is very modest with  4%.At the head appear the solutions from multiVPU and here CrossFire has truly an interest.;With two Radeon X1950 XTX  we got the performances of the SLI  GeForce 7900 GTX.Note that CrossFire  X1950 XTX delivers  12% higher performances than CrossFire  X1900 XTX in 2048x1536.; Conclusion ATI Radeon X1950 XTX to get or not Arrived at the end of this article, we would say that   the Radeon X1950 XTX dont offers real profits  vs its predecessor Radeon X1900 XTX.The gpu frequency is the same for borth card, the memory bandwidth  is higher and offered by the GDDR4 but this is not enough to give the new radeon the required performance boost .Radeon X1950 XTX is  like an evolution, more than like a revolution.;u should   known that ATI announces this card with public price of 399 euros including all taxes. it is Difficult  not   recommend such card the image quality from ATI  still   at the head .NVIDIA  should fix their  problems with texture  filtering …   NVIDIA video card has   much higher prices:count 450 euros minimum for the GeForce 7900 GTX and 530 euros for GeForce 7950 GX2. ATI soon  will come  in the particular Radeon X1950 Pro, or Radeon X1900 XT 256 MB, witch deponding from the price should be a must get card!; finally I would say in the side of nvidia u will get lower power requirement and higher price.with ati u will get better image quality and lower price.for performance it realy depond on game ati win in some case and nvidia in other xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source we would be happy to answer for your question . if you have suggestion or comment regarding this review our support would be glad to help just join our forum and ask u will get the best answer to discuss check our forum section :-) RATE THIS REVIEW 1 2 3 4 5    / 5   View Stat

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