New Radeon X1950 Pro Benchmarked

ThinSkin writes "ATI has today announced its mid-range Radeon X1950 Pro, which introduces a new CrossFire dual-card technology with fewer headaches. ExtremeTech has a full review of the X1950 Pro, including benchmarks against a GeForce 7900 GS in both single-card and dual-card configurations. According to the review, the single-card X1950 is a better performer versus the GeForce; however, in CrossFire mode, the X1950 doesn't quite have the punch to overtake the GeForce in SLI."

another review

[brunascle]

Hot Hardware had another review [hothardware.com] today.

The summary

[eebra82]

As a single card, the X1950 Pro is a real winner. It's a single slot card with plenty of DX9 shading power and performance, easily besting the GeForce 7900 GS in practically all our benchmarks--typically by 15% to 25%. If you're only interested in buying a single $200 graphics card, the X1950 Pro is the way to go. Note also, that it will support the GPU-accelerated Folding@Home project.

It's actually a superb choice according to all web sites that have had this card benchmarked, but it also makes me wonde

Re:

[chrismcdirty]

Likely because Microsoft says DX10 is not being backported to Windows XP.

Re:

[eebra82]

That's partially incorrect. Microsoft is actually releasing DirectX 9.L, which will have features of DirectX 10 and also allow DX10 games under Windows XP. How advanced 9.L will be is not public info yet.

Re:

[ChatHuant]

Microsoft is actually releasing DirectX 9.L, which will have features of DirectX 10 and also allow DX10 games under Windows XP.

Seems not to be the case [theinquirer.net]

Re:

[PFI_Optix]

Because DX10 is a year away for most of us (the non-early adopters) and not everyone wants to spend the money on an OS upgrade AND a vidcard replacement at the same time. For people who replace their vidcards every 18 months or so (like me) it's a good way to get around ugrading everything at once.

And another review

[EconolineCrush]

Over at Tech Report [techreport.com]

DX9

[Ant P.]

What about OpenGL 2.x fragment program performance?

Re:

[PrescriptionWarning]

What about Triple combobulated phrasing pass-through? (i think its like HyperThreading)

Any linux benchmarks?

[LWATCDR]

ATIs Linux drivers have been less that stellar in the past. Just wondering how this card works under Linux.

Re:

[Ant P.]

Not quite, there's always the VESA/VGA driver.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want to know is, why would some one spend $500 on a videocard for Linux? Unless it's a dual-boot...It seems like a waste...

Doom 3, Quake 4, upcoming Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and UT2007, using Blender, doing video editing (Cinerella), developing opengl applications...

Now why anyone would spend $500 on an ATI videocard for Linux.. I have no idea..

Re:

[cashman73]

I just set up a new Dell system with Red Hat Linux and an ATI X1800 Pro graphics card last week. ATI's linux support is actually improving. They now actually have pretty easy to install drivers [ati.com] for both xfree86 and xorg, which work reasonably well. I think I still personally prefer Nvidia cards, though,...

Unfortunately, Red Hat's SATA drive support is still in the dark ages,... ;-)

x1900xt/x friggin awesome...

[CaptainNerdCave]

if the r580 chip is so excellent in the 1900, i imagine that faster ram would make everything perform 15-20% better. i will try to get my roommate to install my x1900xt in his machine (uses linux when possible) so he can offer up some benchmarks. ati has made a bundle of linux drivers available, so i would think everything should work out nicely, ???

i didn't install the catalyst control center because it just took up too much space... which is what atitool is for.

Overtake SLI?

[PhunWithPhysics]

"According to the review, the single-card X1950 is a better performer versus the GeForce; however, in CrossFire mode, the X1950 doesn't quite have the punch to overtake the GeForce in SLI."

According to the actual game benchmarks, the score is even. That tone makes it sound like the GeForce SLI was the one in the lead. The Fear benchmark went towards ATi, the next two games were even depending on resolution and the last game went to nVidia.

Re:

[NekoXP]

The reviewer is obviously getting his panties in a twist over numbers. Numbers, numbers, more numbers, or the review will suck!

He misses the fact that a CrossFire X1950 Pro outperforms a GeForce SLI G80 because he is too focussed on the INCREASE in speed for this configuration. If the SLI card performs at 90% improvement, but the ATI card only gives an 80% improvement, he has discounted SLI as "better" even though the CrossFire configuration gave a higher framerate overall.

It just goes to show, most website

Power consumption comparison?

[Dr. Spork]

So far I haven't seen an article which compares how many watts of power are drawn by this card when idling and under load. This has become a very important feature for me, so much so that for the fist time ever, I bought an nVidia card over ATi. The last generation of ATi cards were terrible power hogs, and nVidia was head and shoulders ahead in that category. I assume the gap has closed, but I'd like to see how much.