MaximumPC 2006 12

A

TI has built a better dual-videocard

mousetrap—and it’s cheap! In spite

of our enthusiasm, however, we

can’t give the Radeon X1950 Pro a higher

rating because we’re so close to the debut

of Direct3D 10—which this card doesn’t

support. We’ve dinged Nvidia’s latest

cards on the same grounds.

We’ve had many reasons to like

CrossFire: Its “super antialiasing” is a ter-

rific solution that doesn’t have to be shut

off while performing high dynamic-range

lighting, for one. Unfortunately for ATI,

those benefits have been eclipsed by a

kludgey cabling system and noisy cooling

apparatus. Such drawbacks disappear

with the X1950 Pro.

CrossFire has always depended on

a master/slave relationship because the

compositing circuitry that weaves the

images from the two cards into a coherent

whole was located on a separate chip on

the CrossFire master card. That circuitry

is now integrated into the X1950 Pro GPU,

much like it is with Nvidia’s parts. To build

a CrossFire rig, you simply need two

X1950 Pro’s—the master/slave arrange-

ment is gone.

The new GPU also does away with

the bulky external cable. Each card has

two edge connectors to accommodate a

pair of internal ribbon cables. Why two?

Each connection is capable of transferring

12 bits of graphics data, which enables

two X1950 Pro cards running in CrossFire

to deliver up to 2560x2048 resolution at

60Hz (Nvidia’s 7-series GPUs max out at

2560x1600). It’s unlikely you’ll be gaming

at such a high resolution, based on the

benchmark performance we obtained at

1920x1200, but plenty of non-real-time

animation applications will benefit from it.

The card supports HDCP, too, so you

can play back Hollywood movies on a

Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive. If you’re more

interested in making movies, ATI’s refer-

ence design includes video-in as well as

video-out. Most cards based on Nvidia’s

7900 GS support HDCP, but none support

VIVO. ATI won’t require third-party manu-

facturers to include either feature, so make

sure you know what you’re getting if you

want HDCP and VIVO.

The GPU on the reference-design card

we received was clocked at 574MHz,

and its 256MB of memory was running at

682MHz. The single-slot card is long—a

full nine inches. A contiguous copper heat-

sink stretches across the entire surface of

one side, with a fan at the far end. Unlike

the X1950 XTX, warm air is exhausted

through the fan’s hub, instead of being

evacuated outside the case.

We benchmarked the card at it default

speeds and then, as we’ve been doing

for a while, unlocked it and used ATI’s

Catalyst Overdrive utility to automatically

overclock its GPU and memory: The card

crashed. The drivers are supposed to

automatically reset the GPU and memory

to their most stable overclocking values

on reboot, but our benchmarks locked

up when we tried running them. Manually

restoring the GPU and memory to their

default clock settings didn’t help, either.

We interpret this to mean that either the

non-WHQL drivers we were given are

sloppy or there’s just not much headroom

for overclocking on this hardware (or both).

Whatever the case may be, we wound up

uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers to

restore system stability.

At its default clock speeds, the X1950

Pro proved to be slower than the more

expensive EVGA Signature Series GeForce

7900 GS (reviewed on page 76 of this

issue) in two key benchmarks: Quake 4 and

FEAR. But it was considerably faster at the

first of Futuremark’s two Shader Model 3.0/

high dynamic-range lighting games.

If you can’t wait for Direct3D 10 parts,

and games are the only reason you’re

buying a new videocard, we recommend

something with Nvidia’s 7900 GS in this

price range. But we rate ATI’s X1950 Pro a

notch higher because its support for ultra-

high resolution and its VIVO feature render

it a better all-around value.

—Michael Brown

reviewsTes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized

74 MAXIMUMPC decem,ber 2006

ATI Radeon

X1950 Pro

Finally, a dongle-free CrossFire!

aTi has

finally come

up with a

crossFire

solution we

can recom-

mend with-

out hesita-

tion: You

connect a

pair of X1950

Pros inside

the case.

$200, http://www.ati.com

ati radeon x1950 pro

laTe BlooMers

CrossFire connection finally

moves inside; VIVO and

HDCP; super-high resolution.

soiled BlooMers^8

Slow single-card game

performance at high resolution.

3DMARK06 GAME 1 13.0 10.0 24.6 18.2

3DMARK06 GAME 2 14.2 14.5 27.9 32.3

QUAKE 4 41.7 44.0 78.2 81.6

COMPANY OF HEROES 22.1 24.5 37.8 25.0

FEAR 24.0 27.0 36.0 53.0

X1950 e-geForce X 1950 Pro e-geForce

Pro 7900 gs in crossFire 7900 gs in sli

Best scores are bolded. Videocard benchmarks obtained with A8R32-MVP Deluxe and Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboards, respectively using the native resolution of a 23-inch ViewSonic VP2330wb display (1920x1200). 3DMark06 HDR Games: Tested with antialiasing turned off and anisotropic filtering set to

8x. Quake 4: Tested with 4x AA and 8x aniso. Company of Heroes: Tested with AA off and all other values set to high. FEAR: AA off, 8x aniso, soft shadows on.

benchMarks