Gigabyte X1950 XTX 512MB

Gigabyte X1950 XTX is based on ATI's R580+ architecture and forms part of

ATI's flagship cards. The only difference between Gigabyte X 1950 XTX and ATI

Radeon X1950 CrossFire (reviewed Feb 2007, p127) is that the latter uses a

special composite engine for multi GPU setup. Gigabyte X1950 XTX uses a GDDR4

memory which delivers more memory bandwidth improving performance even at

maximum setting. It has a memory clock speed of 594 MHz and a core clock speed

of 506 MHz. It has support for HDTV, VIVO and HDCP. This card is CrossFire ready

and can be teamed up with ATI's X1950 CrossFire to give enriching gaming

experience. It is Vista ready but doesn't support Direct X 10 Games.

The card scored 6021 in 3D Mark06 at 1024x768 resolution. But as we increased

the resolution to 1280x1024, the score dipped to 5373; nearly half of what we

got from NVIDIA's 8800 GTX. It scored a huge 12040 3D Marks in 3DMark05 which

quite expectedly dropped to 10370, as we increased the resolution to 1280x1024.

These scores are at par with ATI Radeon X1950 CrossFire. It gave satisfactory

results in all gaming tests. In FEAR, at max setting {i.e. Anti-Aliasing (AA) 4x

and Anisotropic Filtering 16x} it gave a maximum of 62 fps at 1024x768

resolution, which is very low when compared to ATI Radeon X1950 CrossFire, that

gave a mammoth 235 fps. Interestingly even when we increased the resolution to

1280x960, the maximum frame per second was the same. In Prey, at max setting it

gave a score of 80.1 fps at 1024x768 resolution and 62.5 fps at 1280x1024

resolution. This is very much in line with what we got in ATI Radeon X1950

CrossFire. Amongst all games, it performed the best in Doom 3, where it gave a

score of 190.3 fps at ultra high quality and Anti-Aliasing (AA) 16x, at 1024X768

resolution. Even after increasing the resolution the frame rate didn't drop by

much.

However, at 30K, the price is on the higher side. Even the X1950 Crossfire

comes at 29K. Moreover, it only supports Direct X 9.c Games, and with NVIDIA's

8800 GTX available for few extra bucks, this is not the best option. It can at

best be used in CrossFire with ATI Radeon X1950 CrossFire, for a truly

astonishing gaming experience.

Bottom Line: Direct X 10 supported Cards are already available at

around 35K, hence this is not the best option at this price.