Introduction

Today we are proud to share with you our findings on ATI?s latest GPU, the X1950XTX. With the help of Powercolor we were able to test this video card in today?s latest games to see how it improves on the previous generation.



Our friends over at MVKTech have a in-detail preview of the Powercolor X1950XTX with technical information and preliminary performance benchmarks; we used the same card in our tests here focusing on performance in games, power usage, overclocking, noise and cooling.



The X1950 main upgrade compared to the X1900 series specification wise is the increased memory bandwidth, as the memory chips are now running at 1000 Mhz (x2 DDR: 2000 Mhz - 2 Ghz). To achieve this speed ATI is using GDDR4 memory chips, these are blistering fast but don?t need extreme cooling to run at these speeds. Speaking about cooling, the new reference heatsink on this video card is quite a step up from the previous one. It?s larger, redder and looks to provide a better noise/performance ratio than any other high end ATI VGA card has had before.



Quick Spec Comparo


Speficication table (product name ? core ? GPU/MEM clocks ? pixel shader/vertex shader/ROP)

X1950XTX

The most striking difference is without a doubt the reference cooler, which promises low GPU temperatures without sounding like a blow-dryer. The PCB layout has not changed much as you can see in the photos below:

Prey (Demo)

Prey has been in the making for 10 years (or more ?) and bring us portal gameplay pleasure. It?s powered by the Doom 3 graphics engine, but adds a lot of graphical enhancements to really tax the latest hardware in some of the more action packed scenes in the game. The demo of Prey allows you to play through some of the first levels, we tested the performance starting from when our hero runs through his first portal and finishing that current level.

Using FRAPS to track frame rate we hit the in-game 60 FPS limit easily in the lower resolutions, but once details are increased these high end cards show their muscle.




At 1280x1024 these high end cards have no trouble keeping frames high up; the 7950GX2 is slightly trailing the ATI cards, enabling anti aliasing seems to hurt performance more for NVIDIA in this game. The difference between the X1900XT and X1950XTX is none-existent.




ATI is dominating here, we redid the tests on the 7950GX2 several times here, but the outcome remained the same. When enabling 4xAA/16xAF at 1600x1200 the NVIDIA card drops below 30fps min. fps, but average frame rate is still well within playable region.

The ATI cards can hardly be separated, only at the highest detail levels we see the X1950XTX able to pull ahead.

On to the next game, FEAR. >>>>

FEAR

A creepy atmosphere, challenging enemy AI and high quality graphics make FEAR an immersive experience. We used FRAPS to monitor frame rate as we played through a section of the game.




The tables are turned, the dual GPU solution from NVIDIA has a very noticeable lead in average FPS. But even with 4xAA enabled the frame rate remains above 60FPS, with the X1950XTX again having only the slightest of leads on its older brother.




At higher resolutions the game remains playable with all VGA cards, the 7950GX2 still has a nice lead with neither ATI card coming close.

On to the next games, Call of Duty 2 and Battlefield 2. >>>>>>

Call Of Duty 2

Call of Duty 2 can be very taxing on even the newest hardware, we ran through the ?Bergstein? map and monitored frame rate using FRAPS.




The 7950 GX2 dual graphic card is taking the lead here. There is a small performance difference between the X1900XTX and the X1950XTX.




At the highest quality setting at 1600x1200 the 7950GX2 dominates, the average frame rate is at a sturdy 60FPS while the X1950XTX has to suffice with 41, which translates into a ~31% drop.

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Battlefield 2

The next game is Battlefield 2. Using the Guru3D?s demo and benchmark script we could keep repeating the same run over and over. Add Fraps running in the background and you get following results at 1600x1200:




The cards are quite evenly matched here looking at the average frame rate, only with AA/AF enabled the 7950GX2 is able to take the lead with 91 vs 84 min. fps; not quite earth shocking.

While AA/AF can be quite taxing for modern VGA cards, there is something better still, HDR. High Dynamic Range lighting tries to recreate realistic lightening in-game, we test performance in Far Cry and Oblivion on the next page ->

Before we get to the benchmark numbers it?s useful to know that the ATI hardware is capable of rendering games with AA and HDR enabled, they have their own patched ?chuck? drivers out which will be integrated into an upcoming Catalyst driver release. With NVIDIA hardware (7 series) on the other hand you can not have AA and HDR enabled at the same time. When you try it in Far Cry you end up with a funny looking screen where you can only see the ocean. In Oblivion enabling AA through the driver control panel simply has no effect.

While we would have loved to include HDR+AA performance numbers for the ATI cards, we simply can?t do this at this point in time as the ATI ?chuck? driver did not recognize the X1950XTX card. We noticed too late that Far Cry?s developers have released an early beta patch (1.4) which allows HDR+AA on ATI cards.

Far Cry

Using FRAPS and level ?Boat? we got these performance numbers:




While Far Cry?s gameplay engine can show some spectacular graphics on your screen, it fails to really tax the ATI graphics cards, increase the resolution did not effect performance much either. On the NVIDIA card however we did notice a drop in performance and here the 7950GX2 is trailing the X1950XTX and X1900XTX.

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Oblivion

We took a long stroll in the woods of the virtual world of Oblivion and at 1600x1200 with HDR and 16xAF enabled it?s quite a sight to behold. In-game detail settings were set to high on most things (we tuned down trees/gras/objects to 50-60%). FRAPS logged these frame rates:




For the first time in our benchmark session we see the X1950XTX taking a nice lead over its older brother, up to 15%! But it?s not enough to beat the 7950GX2 which is now only slightly ahead in average frame rate, but behind in min. FPS.

Now that we know the strong and weak performance points of the X1950XTX let?s take a closer look at that fancy cooling ->

The new ATI cooler



The new heatsink is huge compared to the older one, it reminds us of the first Arctic Cooling Silencer series; ATI has improved on this design by adding a heat pipe which removes heat quickly from the core to the upper heatsink and by separating the memory cooling from the rest of the design.



The practical result of this new cooling design is a better performance/noise ratio. We measured the noise level in our test room where ambient was ~40.1dBA. The meter (SmartSensor SL4001A) was placed at ~100cm away from the front of the case.

Using Rivatuner we were able to change the fan speed manually on the ATI X1900XTX and NVIDIA 7950GX2, the X1950XTX did not get detected correctly however and we could only record noise levels in 2D mode and at 100% fan speed (which happens during the boot up cycle of the system before it spins down to 2D speeds.)



The 100% fan speed is a worse case scenario as this nearly never happens, most of the time the fan will run near ~50% speed as this is easier on the ears. The X1950XTX is able to claim the ?quietest high end VGA card with stock cooling? title here. A 4dBA drop at 100% fan speed compared to the old design, in 2D mode it?s close to impossible to hear over ambient.

Overclocking

The X1950XTX is blistering fast out of the box, but we enthusiasts tend to always want to have more. The GPU is running at the same speed as the X1900XTX, 650Mhz, but the memory is no longer the same, upgraded to GDDR4 it runs at 1000Mhz! Eager to see how much we could squeeze out of this early Powercolor X1950XTX sample we started our favorite ATI overclock utilities, but alas, they failed to recognize this brand new card. We tried ATI Tool, ATI Tray Tools and Powerstip, but in the end had to resort to ATI?s own Catalyst Control Center.

With it we could get the core running stable at 670Mhz (+3%) and memory at 1030Mhz (+3%), not quite the improvement we were hoping for, but this is early hardware and overclocking is never guaranteed and with the lack of voltage control (which ATI Tool provides) lower results were expectable. Yet in the end it?s impossible to deduct overclocking potential from a whole series of VGA cards going by a single unit, so we resort to online forums and user reviews to read 1st hand experiences. HWBot is a free website which collects overclocking data and displays it as easy to read charts. Here?s one for X1900XTX:



~737Mhz on the core seems to be more than reachable on X1900XTX if we take an average of this chart. Keep an eye out for the X1950XTX chart in the future at HWBot.org here.

Back to the X1950XTX, can you notice a 3% overclock on GPU/MEMORY? Only in synthetic benchmarks, our Futuremark results:




The 7950GX2 is really dominating here, but as we've seen, in real games the results might differ, a lot.

Let?s wrap things up on the next page where we check out power consumption ->

Power Usage

We stressed the video cards using Real-Time High Dynamic Range Image-Based Lighting tool (link). Using a power meter at the wall outlet we could measure the total system power consumption:



The X1950XTX is only slightly more efficient under stressed conditions compared to the X1900XTX. The dual GPU 7950GX2 was expected to be more of a power hog but turns out to use only slightly more than ATI?s cards.

Conclusive thoughts

After two days of using the Powercolor X1950XTX we are left with some mixed feelings, the gaming tests couldn?t really convince us that this card is so much better than the X1900XTX, only in one game did we really see a difference, Oblivion. ATI wanted this to be a NVIDIA 7950GX2 killer, but sadly it is not.

Priced at ~$449/$399 it?s very close to the 7950GX2 in price and it will become a worthy alternative for those who don?t have a motherboard capable of accepting the NVIDIA card.

So while the performance didn?t quite stun us, its new cooling certainly did. It?s bigger, better and very quiet; during the game sessions it was hardly noticeable, which is quite a change for the good. Power consumption has dropped a bit also, which makes cooling the card a tiny bit easier, but it still remains quite the consumer.

Overclocking with the early sample didn?t turn up impressive numbers; due to the lack of proper 3rd party software support we couldn?t really explore this card?s limits. Hopefully in the coming weeks that support will be added to give us something to play with.

So is the coming of the X1950XTX a bad thing? Certainly not, with the introduction of this new high end card, the previous series (X1900) will drop in price, and ATI has confirmed that both series will co-exist for some time to come. Suddenly the X1900XT has fallen into the mid/high range price range at and (expected) $279 retail price and without a doubt makes it one of the best price/performance products out there.


PRO
Impressive silent stock cooling
Brings down price of X1900 series

CON
Not the expected performance increase, hardly faster than X1900XTX
No NVIDIA 7950GX2 Killer

We would like to thank Raymen from Powercolor for lending us the X1950XTX for test.

Questions/Comments: forum thread