First Review of X1950XTX

[Polish3d]

Sweet, this makes me even happier about my upcoming conroe which I'll pair with my XTX which happens to have good clocking memory at 900mhz or 890 when its hot

 

[cptstern]

I have the conclusion, in case someone wants it.

Just when we had thought that the battle for high-end graphics supremacy has reached an unofficial ceasefire with NVIDIA seemingly winning over the enthusiasts with both performance (the 'SLI-in-a-card' GeForce 7950 GX2) and mostly better value, ATI has revived its challenge with a late rally. While work continues from both sides on their respective next generation processors, the competition has intensified with ATI plans to release new products aimed squarely at NVIDIA's best performers.

At the high-end segment, expect the Radeon X1950 XTX to be reinforced with the Radeon X1950 Pro as they take on the GeForce 7900 GTX and the GeForce 7900 GT. The mid-range Radeon X1650 series goes for the jugular of the GeForce 7600 GT. Already, there's talk in the grapevine that NVIDIA has plans to preempt ATI's roadmap with a possible cut-down version of the GeForce 7900 GT, to be called predictably, the GeForce 7900 GS. Price cuts for the GeForce 7600 GT are also said to be forthcoming. The next few months promise to be exciting for enthusiasts, as new products will need to be ranked and judged with their peers. Not to mention the potential price cuts.

The new kid is fast, but the best of all is its US$399 price tag.

Like we thought, a mere increase in memory clock speeds, DDR4 or not, doesn't really help the Radeon X1950 XTX too much in performance. As the overclocked HIS Radeon X1900 XTX showed, the best Radeon X1900 XTX can pose a serious threat to this new product. At the moment, it seems like present owners of a Radeon X1900 XTX can forget about making a minor upgrade to the X1950 XTX, as there is no significant performance advantage from doing so. We only saw a minor, incremental improvement for the preliminary benchmarks that were run. Only if you are keen on playing all your games in full glory, with HDR and anti-aliasing, can we imagine the faster memory clocks paying off.

Of course, given the excellent cooler, one could probably overclock the core to the level of the HIS Radeon X1900 XTX IceQ3 and then perhaps we could find a more convincing score. There is also the consideration to take that the improved memory performance and bandwidth will probably be much more of a boost when the Radeon X1950 XTX is used in a CrossFire configuration and with ATI pushing their triple card setup for GPU physics, it is too early to write off the benefits of GDDR4.

The good news is that just like AMD, ATI seems to be competing on price now, with a surprising US$399 price tag announced for this new card. With NVIDIA's dual GPU GeForce 7950 GX2 hardly threatened by the newcomer performance-wise, the Radeon X1950 XTX may yet have the last laugh with its highly competitive pricing. Going by present retail prices, this new card will have the lowest price among the high-end contenders with the exception of the lesser Radeon X1900 XT. That's music to the ears of enthusiasts.

 

[BassBomb]

i noticed in shamino's review he said the cooler at nominal fan speed got 60 idle 80 load.... which begs to question, is that alot better than the original cooler? i know its quiter but is it much cooler

 

[Praxis1452]

Is it just me or is that ram sink sexy? haha.

Also X1950XTX is going to compete with the G80. The bets X1900XTX should be paired against the best X1950XTX and it all depends on how far the mem's gonna clock =D.

I'm pretty sure shamino ran everything on max quality.

 

[skittzle]

The review is flawed somehow. In all the benches that I have read about the 7950gx2, it outdoes the x1900xtx with ease at high resolutions. This VR review has the x1900xtx smoking the 7950 on most of the games. Something doesn't add up here. I will wait till Anand or [Hard] has their review up.

 

[Polish3d]

Unless they changed the settings so both Nvidia and ATI are running in high quality. That along with a driver release boosting performance makes it quite plausible IMO. On my 7800gtx, the performance improved as time went on, the drivers for the 79/7800gtx series are much older than those of the x1900 series so perhaps as drivers get better for the x1900 series the performance will close more and more assuming nvidia's squeezed most hardware gains out of the drivers for their cards.

 

[Sunday Ironfoot]

They compared the X1900XTX with the X1950XTX clock for clock and found that the X1950 was slower. However, they state the core speed on the X1900XTX is 650Mhz...now I'm pretty sure it's 675Mhz not 650 (gonna look it up), hence the disparity.

Edit: Sorry my bad, I'm just talking out of my ****, it IS 650 it turns out!

 

[Kromis]

Originally posted by: aznrice54
When is this coming again?

Everyone is saying somewhere between August 23-27

 

[Sc4freak]

Originally posted by: skittzle
The review is flawed somehow. In all the benches that I have read about the 7950gx2, it outdoes the x1900xtx with ease at high resolutions. This VR review has the x1900xtx smoking the 7950 on most of the games. Something doesn't add up here. I will wait till Anand or [Hard] has their review up.

That sounds about right if they used Nvidia's "High Quality" driver setting, which disables AF, Trilinear etc. optimisations. The "High quality" setting makes it look more like ATI's IQ, but at a serious performance hit.

 

[ronnn]

This is strange as I've always considered vrzone an nvidia pr site. Generally they were pumping the x1800's as having 32 pipes and so on. I tend to see this review as bs to rain on the actual launch. Also must admit to being disapointed that there was not a shrink to 80mm.

 

[dguy6789]

Highly impressive. I wonder if it will really be available for it's retail price.

 

[imported_spank]

Originally posted by: Sc4freak
That sounds about right if they used Nvidia's "High Quality" driver setting, which disables AF, Trilinear etc. optimisations. The "High quality" setting makes it look more like ATI's IQ, but at a serious performance hit.

the did use high quality settings.

"I ran all 3d cards at best image quality settings on the driver level, since those buying these cards care a lot about eye candy."

 

[Praxis1452]

Originally posted by: spank

Originally posted by: Sc4freak
That sounds about right if they used Nvidia's "High Quality" driver setting, which disables AF, Trilinear etc. optimisations. The "High quality" setting makes it look more like ATI's IQ, but at a serious performance hit.

the did use high quality settings.

"I ran all 3d cards at best image quality settings on the driver level, since those buying these cards care a lot about eye candy."

THAT's what I said in my post above... hah

 

[Praxis1452]

I knew I'll be putting my credibility on the line if I published the review with the figures I got, and I went on to rerun some of the tests 3 times. Settings were checked, multi-gpu on, image best quality, 4xaa 16xaf, no aa 16xaf, rest I left at stock settings.

I will rerun the GX2 now, in particular FEAR again. And if I still get the same numbers I'll reformat it.

For the X1950XTX I can only rerun it again when I get the card since I've had to return it to my contact for the time being.

Shamino...

 

[Ika]

This page looks interesting. X1900XTX beats it at the same clocks... but hot damn, this card is fast!

Has the X1900XTX always been on par with the 7950GX2? I don't ever recall it being that way... hm.

 

[Praxis1452]

he took the article down. Think he's getting different results.

 

[tuteja1986]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself

Originally posted by: gersson
WTF each review has a completely conclusion. One says the GX2 is till slightly better, the other that the x1950 is slightly better...

::throws hands up::

I'll wait for anand to settle it

Ill say it again...

Did anyone notice Shamino is using Core 2 Extreme x6800 and hardware zone is using only FX-55 which is single core? Thats why shamino gets such awesome scores and hardwarezone doesnt... which means the card is starved for cpu power as well...

Wait for firing squad , XBit lab and Rage 3d review. Anandtech VGA review are for noob

 

[redbox]

cptstern

A nice well written post from a new member; welcome. While much of what you said I can see coming true I get the feeling you have not read the vr-zone review of the x1950xtx. It is now the only idependent review we have as the one offered by hardwarezone has been taken down. In vr-zone's review they have the 1950 beating the 7950 at every game they tested. Not only that but picking one hyper x1900 (the HIS iceQ3) and saying that performance is indicative of all x1900's is a little missleading. Not to mention HIS has the worst customer support of any card manufacture. Because this is a whole new card it will be available from all the ATI board partners not just HIS. From what we see in this review the extra mem freq helps alot in some cases.

Key: From top down
x1950xtx
7950GX2
x1900xtx

@ 1600x1200 16xaf no aa -------@1600x1200 16xaf 4xaa
oblivion-----------------------44--41
---------------------------------43--39
---------------------------------42--36

serious sam 2--------------78--61
---------------------------------57--51
---------------------------------71--53

Half Life 2: lost coast-----75--56
---------------------------------63--49
---------------------------------72--52

Call of Duty 2---------------50--37
---------------------------------39--34
---------------------------------34--29

Fear---------------------------40--33
---------------------------------34--26
---------------------------------32--24

Quake 4---------------------77--39
---------------------------------64--34
---------------------------------58--36

Now I don't know about any one else but all of those numbers look low to me with that resolution. Look at Fear those numbers are horrorable on all the cards tested. Anandtech's 7950 review had better numbers than those when they ran the cards at 2048x1536 with 4xaa! I am almost starting to think these numbers are minumim fps can anyone clearify?

 

[Tsuwamono]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Too bad they went with the goofy red cooler instead of the cooler looking silver one... Results are decent, and pretty much what I expected. If this card goes for $450, then it might be a winner.

Card is 399$

AND the hardwarezone results tell us one thing - CONROE FTW! Just look at the abysmal performance difference seen when using a x6800 and the very small gain when using an FX-55?

Dont bring that Intel fanboy crap here.. this is a discussion about GPUs..

 

[Crescent13]

Originally posted by: Tsuwamono

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Too bad they went with the goofy red cooler instead of the cooler looking silver one... Results are decent, and pretty much what I expected. If this card goes for $450, then it might be a winner.

Card is 399$

AND the hardwarezone results tell us one thing - CONROE FTW! Just look at the abysmal performance difference seen when using a x6800 and the very small gain when using an FX-55?

Dont bring that Intel fanboy crap here.. this is a discussion about GPUs..

Um dude it's not fanboy crap, we all know how much faster conroe is than the AMD stuff. I used to hate Intel, but they've turned it around, I think ShadowOfMyself is right it's a CPU limitation.

 

[Ackmed]

Originally posted by: Praxis1452
he took the article down. Think he's getting different results.

Doubtful. What likely happened, is that they were told to take it down.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Crescent13

Originally posted by: Tsuwamono

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Too bad they went with the goofy red cooler instead of the cooler looking silver one... Results are decent, and pretty much what I expected. If this card goes for $450, then it might be a winner.

Card is 399$

AND the hardwarezone results tell us one thing - CONROE FTW! Just look at the abysmal performance difference seen when using a x6800 and the very small gain when using an FX-55?

Dont bring that Intel fanboy crap here.. this is a discussion about GPUs..

Um dude it's not fanboy crap, we all know how much faster conroe is than the AMD stuff. I used to hate Intel, but they've turned it around, I think ShadowOfMyself is right it's a CPU limitation.

This is a video forum not a CPU forum though.

 

[Zenoth]

What a beast ...

I wonder what R600 will be capable of in DirectX 9 and Windows Vista/XP.

Either way ... I'm stuck with my R520 XL ... I wish I had the money for one of those "enthusiast" GPUs.

Long live AT...ooops, I mean AMD ! Or ... erm, AMi ! Whatever.

 

[Ackmed]

Another link; http://resources.vr-zone.com.sg/Shamino/1950/

About the differences in frames, part of it is because vr-zone uses HQ, not Q for NV's driver settings. As it should be. NV takes a pretty large hit when bumping up the IQ to where ATi's defaults to.

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: Vallybally
Darn it, I guess my Antec TrueBlue 480 may not be able to handle it...

Nah, your PSU will just barely be able to handle the X1950XT. Just make sure you pick up another PSU for the rest of the components in your computer case, such as but not limited to, cpu, optical drives, hd's, etc.