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.