Rage3D ATI Radeon X1950 Review
By Mark "Ratchet" Thorne - ratchet@rage3d.com
September 9th, 2006
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Introduction

Radeon X1950 XTX and X1950 Crossfire Edition
Radeon X1950 XTX and X1950 Crossfire Edition
Radeon X1900 XTX and X1950 XTX
Radeon X1900 XTX and X1950 XTX
Radeon X1900 XT 256MB
Radeon X1900 XT 256MB
A couple of weeks ago ATI lifted the cover on the X1950 family of graphics cards. Specifically, covers were lifted on two new SKUs; the X1950 XTX and the X1950 Crossfire Edition. The differences between them are found in the compositing engine found on the Crossfire card, required to enable ATI’s multi-GPU Crossfire technology.

Both the XTX and the Crossfire Edition are virtually identical in their outward appearance, specs, and performance characteristics, but what will be surprising to many is that the XTX and Crossfire cards are being introduced at exact same relatively affordable $449 price point, making the decision on whether or not to get a Crossfire card come down to simple availability. It’s a bit surprising to have the prices confirmed thus, taking into account the extra hardware and whatnot that’s needed for the Crossfire cards, but if you want to sell Crossfire (which includes Crossfire motherboards, of course), making the decision to upgrade to a Crossfire graphics card a no-brainer is certainly one way to do it. If you can find one, you might as well get the Crossfire card.

Powering these two new SKUs is a new graphics core from ATI known to most as the R580+. Very much like the R580 before it, the “plus” brings in a few tweaks to the memory controller which lets ATI be the first on the block with a graphics card that feature high-speed GDDR4 memory modules. That, and a new, more efficient and much quieter cooler, are what the new X1950s are all about.

While the new X1950s shouldn’t be of much concern to those of you already enjoying your R580 based X1900s, they do offer some very welcome improvements to the cooler and a glimpse into the near future of high-end graphics cards.

Hitching a ride on the X1950 announcement were three other SKUs. First is the X1900 XT 256MB, a very attractive $279 mid-range card with high-end specs designed to compete with NVIDIA’s 7900 GT. We’ve included the X1900 XT 256MB in today’s performance charts, but unfortunately couldn’t get our hands on a 7900 GT for comparison. Second is the X1650 Pro, a new card which should outpace the X1600 XT but at a much more reasonable $99 price-point. Finally, the X1300 XT, which comes in at $89 and is, in reality, a re-branded X1600 Pro. While we won’t feature the X1650 Pro and the X1300 XT in this article, we will run them through their paces in the near future.

With the new cards ATI will start phasing out the older cards and start simplifying their top-to-bottom lineup, something which should be happily greeted by many folks. Once all is said and done it should look something like this:

ATI's New Lineup?
Enthusiast X1950 XTX $449
X1900 XT 256MB $279
Performance X1900 GT $249
Mainstream X1650 Pro $99
X1300 XTX $89
Value X1300 Pro $79
X1300 256MB $59
X1300 64-bit $49

You’ll notice a gap between the $99 X1650 Pro and the $249 X1900 GT. This will probably be filled by the X1650 XT and the X1950 Pro. By all the rumours floating around these cards should be announced sometime this month or next.

Test Setup

Resolutions

Image Quality Settings

Games Benchmarks (click for settings)

Test Systems ATI NVIDIA
Motherboard
( chipset )		 MSI K9A Platinum
(ATI RD580/SB600) 		Foxconn C51XEM2AA
(NForce 590 SLI)
CPU AMD Athlon FX-62 @ 2.8GHz
Graphics Card

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX
ATI Radeon X1950 Crossfire
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256 MB
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX
ATI Radeon X1900 Crossfire
ATI Radeon X1900 XT
ATI Radeon X1800 XT
HIS Radeon X1900 GT x2*

NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2
BFG 7900 GTX OC x2
Driver Version 8.282 (Catalyst 6.8 Beta)
Catalyst 6.8 WHQL*		 Forceware 91.33 Beta
Memory
( Timings )		 2GB (2x1024MB) SuperTalent PC2-6400 DDR2 @ 800MHZ
( 4-4-3-8 2T)
Hard Disk Western Digital Caviar WD2500KS SE16 250GB
Sound Onboard
Network Onboard
PSU PC Power & Cooling 1KW Turbo-Cool Quad-SLI
OS Windows XP Pro SP2
* ATI's Catalyst 6.8 WHQL drive release was used for the X1900 GT and X1900 GT Crossfire tests due to the cards not being recognized by the 8.282 beta set.

Card Specifications ATI X1950 XTX ATI X1950 Crossfire ATI X1900 XT 256MB ATI X1900 XTX ATI X1900 XT HIS X1900 GT ATI X1800 XT NVIDIA 7950 GX2 BFG 7900 GTX OC
Core R580+ R580+ R580 R580 R580 R580 R520 G71*2 G71
Silicon Process 90nm 90nm 90nm 90nm 90nm 90nm 90nm 90nm 90nm
Transistor Count
(millions)		 384 384 384 384 384 384 321 556
(278*2)		 278
Core Speed MHz 650 650 625 650 625 575 625 500 670
Memory Speed MHz (Effective) 1,000
(2.0GHz)		 1,000
(2.0GHz)		 725
(1.55GHz)		 775
(1.55GHz)		 725
(1.50GHz)		 600
(1.2GHz)		 750
(1.50GHz)		 600
(1.2GHz)		 820
(1.64GHz)
Memory Size 512 MB 512 MB 256 MB 512 MB 512 MB 256 MB 512 MB 1,024 MB
(512 MB*2)		 512 MB
Bus Standard PEG x16 PEG x16 PEG x16 PEG x16 PEG x16 PEG x16 PEG 16x PEG 16x PEG 16x
Bus Width 256bit 256bit 256bit 256bit 256bit 256bit 256bit 512bit
(256bit*2)		 256bit
ROPs 16 16 16 16 16 12 16 32
(16*2)		 16
Pixel Shaders 48 48 48 48 48 36 16 48
(24*2)		 24
Vertex Shaders 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 16
(8*2)		 8
Peak Memory Bandwidth
(GB/s)		 64.0 64.0 46.4 49.6 46.4 38.4 48.0 76.8 (38.4*2) 51.2
Pixel Fillrate
(million pixels/sec)		 10,400 10,400 10,000 10,400 10,000 6,900 10,000 16,000
(8,000*2)		 10,400
Texel Fillrate
(million texels/sec)		 10,400 10,400 10,000 10,400 10,000 6,900 10,000 24,000
(12,000*2)		 15,600
API Compliancy DX 9.0c DX 9.0c DX 9.0c DX 9.0c DX 9.0c DX 9.0c DX 9.0c DX 9.0c DX 9.0c

The Windows XP desktop was set to 1280x960 with a 32bit color depth and 85Hz refresh rate for all tests. Refresh rate locks for 3D graphics modes, as supported by both NVIDIA and ATI graphics control panels, was not enabled. V-Sync was forced off via the graphics card control panel as well. For the NVIDIA cards "High Image Quality" was enabled. All other graphics card control panel settings for the ATI cards were left to their default settings.

Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropy were applied in the game engine where the options existed. For games that did not support those options natively, the graphics card control panel was used.

Custom batch files were used when possible for automated benchmarking, which are available upon request. When manual benchmarking was necessary Fraps was used.

Benchmarking was done with Windows set to the "Adjust for best performance" profile and all unnecessary Windows services and hardware devices were disabled. The latest drivers for each necessary hardware component were installed prior to testing and kept consistent throughout.

Sound and networking interfaces were enabled for all tests.

Windows XP was installed fresh on two seperate but identical hard-drives prior to testing (one for the ATI system, one for the NVIDIA system).

GDDR4

Not often willing to risk the complexities of introducing several new, unproven technologies all at once, ATI often phases in new advancements one product at a time. This allows them to get a handle on design principals and intricacies before without having to worry about an entirely new product at the same time. That is often the case when they transition from one manufacturing process to a smaller one, for example, as they did when they transitioned from 130nm on the RV360 GPU to 110nm with the RV370 GPU, then later made a more complex transition going from the then high-end 130nm R423 to the 110nm R430.

With the X1950 they’ve again taken the opportunity to make a similar transition from on technology to another, but this time it’s from GDDR3 memory to GDDR4.

GDDR4 is the successor to GDDR3 that both ATI and NVIDIA have been using on most of their graphics cards over the last year or so. ATI actually lead the development of GDDR4 within JEDEC and provided important IP that enabled the new standard, and the primary design goals were high speed and low power.

To prove the point, ATI has set the X1950 memory clocks to a blistering 1.0GHz, which has an effective rate of 2.0GHz DDR. That’s the highest rated memory ever used on a consumer graphics card (by a significant margin), and gives the X1950 XTX a raw bandwidth of 64GB/s. Even with that level of performance ATI claims that the X1950 draws no more power than the X1900 XTX before it.


The modules on the X1950 are Samsung K4U52324QE-BC09, rated at .91ns or 1.1GHz (2.2GHz effective). These are actually the slowest GDDR4 modules that Samsung currently have; the fastest modules they produce go up to 1.4GHz (2.8GHz effective).

With GDDR4 successfully deployed on the X1950, ATI has given themselves some valuable experience with the new memory technology which will undoubtedly come in handy when designing more complex graphics cards in the future.

The New Cooler

One of the biggest complaints about the previous X1900 and X1800 was the loud cooling fan. Under normal 2D operations it wasn’t too bad, but in 3D games or applications the fan would almost immediately spin-up, and after a short while would reach unacceptably loud levels. Not only was it loud, but it was a loud whirr that would annoy even the most forgiving of users.

Thankfully ATI has effectively solved the cooling problem with a brand new cooler that is quiet and doesn’t get all that loud in even the most extreme cases.


As you can see, the fan position on the cooler has been moved from the front of the card to the rear so that instead of pulling air through the heatsink fins, as was with the old X1900 cooler, it now pushes it through.

The heatsink itself has also been improved over the previous copper/aluminum design to a pure copper design with a single heatpipe extending out from the GPU area up to the cooling fins. The heatsink is larger and the fins are thinner and closer together as well, which should help with cooling. The new cooler however adds considerably more weight to the overall card when compared with the old.



Unlike the X1900 cooling solution, the X1950 has a separate cooler for the memory modules. Also copper, the memory cooler doesn’t connect to the GPU cooling unit in any way and is purely a passive cooler.


While it’s been confirmed that Arctic Cooling does not make the new cooler for ATI, as past rumors have suggested, it does indeed bear a striking resemblance to their Silencer line of VGA coolers and operates on the same design principal of drawing air from inside the computer case, forcing it through an array of fins housed inside a plastic shroud, then on out the back of the case through a metal grill. It’s a simple idea and has proven to work very well.

To test the effectiveness of ATI’s cooler, we loaded up 3DMark06 and looped it for a couple of hours. We then did the same for the X1900 XTX to get a comparison point, and for a 7900 GTX to see how it stacks up against the competitions cooler. Here are our results:


As you can see the new cooler offers a significant performance improvement over the old X1900 cooler.

Benchmarks (I)

Prey



Half-Life 2: Episode One



F.E.A.R.



Battlefield 2

Benchmarks (II)

Quake 4



Half-Life 2: Lost Coast



Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory



Far Cry

Conclusion

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Performance with the X1950 is not all that impressive compared to the X1900 XTX, there are no new features to speak of, and the noise problems with the cooler were easily solved with a third-party cooler (assuming you didn’t mind voiding your warranty). What makes the X1950 attractive, though, is the price. Ok, $449 is still a hell of a kick in the teeth for most people, but considering that the X1900 XTX was introduced at $649 and that NVIDIA’s current flagship 7950 GX2 is still around $550 on the street, $449 doesn’t look too bad at all. It’s not unrealistic to think that the cards will drop even lower not too long after they start showing up at e-tailers either.

It’s also nice to see the X1950 Crossfire Edition priced on par with the X1950 XTX, something that I was frankly a bit surprised to see considering the extra hardware and whatnot required to make a Crossfire master card. If selling Crossfire to the masses is ATI’s goal, that’s certainly one consumer-friendly way to go about it. All that we have to be concerned about it availability, which could easily drive prices well above ATI’s asking price. We’ll have to keep an eye on that when the cards start becoming available in the coming weeks.

Even though the X1950 is priced really nicely for a high-end card, recommending it as an upgrade if you already have an X1900 XT or XTX would be ridiculous, at best, considering the slight performance advantage and lack of any new features whatsoever. However, should you have something slower, or even should you be looking to jump to the other side of the high-end graphics fence, then certainly the X1950 is the way to go.

Maybe the X1950 is a bit disappointing to some of you fine folks, and I guess it would be if you were anticipating grand performance leaps or snappy new features, but stop for a second and think about what was offered here: a better cooler and faster memory. Maybe I missed it, but as far as I can tell ATI didn’t promise any new features or significantly better performance. Hell, they didn’t even give the core a new codename; they just added a silly little “+” to the end. That alone should have provided most people with some ideas on what to expect from the X1950. The price alone is worth some hype if you ask me, but then again your X1900 will serve you well, even in the face of games like Crysis and Unreal Tournament 2007, so there’s no need to feel obligated to upgrade. Should you have something slower though you now have an upgrade choice that doesn’t involve a cooling unit that will make you want to stomp a mud hole in the next ATI employee you cross paths with.

Personally, I’m most impressed with the X1900 XT 256MB. Yeah I know, I didn’t have a 7900 GT to compare with so maybe my POV is off, and yeah the 7950 GT is really close now too which should make things really interesting, but damn that’s nice performance from a $279 card don’t you think? It has all the same features as the X1950, enough pop to let you play today’s most demanding games, and the price won’t make you feel too guilty about sticking it on eBay when the time comes to upgrade to the true next-generation of graphics cards. Good stuff if you ask me.

Competition kicks ass.