TUL Radeon X1900GT takes on Gainward's 7900 GT

WE GOT HOLD of one of the first Radeon X1900 GT cards available on the market and had a fiddle.

ATI just introduced this card based on its R580 core, but with fewer pipes and with adjusted clock speeds. The R580 core is clocked at 575MHz and the card has 256MB of GDDR 3 memory clocked at 1200MHz.

The card features 36 Pixel Shaders and eight vertex Shaders. It is limited to twelve pipelines and it can support Avivo, works in Crossfire but you do need a master card to make it work. It launched at €299 price mark, a reasonable price to fight Nvidia's Geforce 7900 GT.

TUL, a company that carries the Power Color brand made a really nice box (very handy that, Fudo - Ed) for its Radeon X1900 GT card. The package includes a driver CD, Power DVD six program collection, the user manual, two DVI dongles, six pin power cable, S video cable, composite cable, Video in and video out cable and a HD out cable.

We decided to compare this card up against Gainward's 7900 GT card. This is officially called the Gainward BLISS GeForce 7900 GT, 256MB GDDR3. It is clocked to Nvidia's default 450MHz core and 1320MHz memory. It uses GDDR 3 memory with a 256-bit memory bus. It has 24 pixel-pipelines and sounds like a lot of card for $/€299.

The card comes with Power DVD 5, Gainward's acceleration tool and drive CD, quick start manual and free-to-choose, select-your-game voucher. It comes with two DVI dongles, a power cable and HDTV cable.

The Radeon X1900 GT is ATI's answer to Nvidia's 7900 GT as ATI is running out of X1800 XT cards and wants to phase those out but will keep the R520 chips alive as it will have to use them for X1800 GTO cards.

Benchmarketing
We used:
PowerColor Radeon X1900 GT, 256MB GDDR3
Gainward BLISS Geforce 7900 GT, 256MB GDDR3
Athlon FX 57 2800 MHz 90 nanometre San Diego core 2800 MHz
Asus A8N32 Deluxe Nforce 4 SLI X16 motherboard
2x1024 MB Corsair XMS-3500LL PRO memory
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Akasa AK128 EVO Athlon 64 cooler
OCZ Power Stream 600W

Doom 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	100.3	85.5	66.4	42.2
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	103.5	100.6	90.9	68.8
?	?	?	?	?
Doom 3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	79.0	58.2	42.9	27.6
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	95.2	74.1	55.7	35.6
?	?	?	?	?
Far Cry	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	82.58	81.56	82.63	65.56
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	82.25	80.95	82.61	73.45
?	?	?	?	?
Far Cry High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	82.20	77.35	61.63	21.53
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	81.59	78.23	59.55	36.70
?	?	?	?	?
Half Life 2	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	74.79	73.47	72.91	70.75
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	71.52	70.41	69.96	68.80
?	?	?	?	?
Half Life2 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	72.57	68.30	62.33	46.88
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	70.93	70.37	67.44	52.48
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	137.0	129.2	112.2	76.7
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	143.1	138.5	128.6	100.1
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	125.3	107.2	85.6	57.0
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	133.7	116.9	95.0	64.6
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	89	71	51	33
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	104	79	57	38
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	63	47	31	18
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	66	47	32	20
?	?	?	?	?
Battlefield 2	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	92.21	88.25	74.88	52.04
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	95.47	94.71	87.55	65.31
?	?	?	?	?
Battlefield 2 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	91.77	80.19	67.20	45.64
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	92.41	73.19	55.01	35.24
?	?	?	?	?
Serious Sam 2	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	117.2	107.0	83.9	56.6
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	119.4	115.4	93.6	65.6
?	?	?	?	?
Serious Sam 2 + HDR	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	100.0	74.6	53.1	36.9
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	107.8	81.7	56.9	38.8
?	?	?	?	?
Serious Sam 2 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	86.2	65.0	49.5	26.3
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	109.3	87.3	61.6	41.5
?	?	?	?	?
Serious Sam 2 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X + HDR	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	54.0	30.1	16.3	NO Play
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Nature
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	14680	115.3	87.2	96.1
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	16975	135.2	113.2	97.4
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	3020.1	6610.3	57.5	138.8
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	4295.3	10444.7	45.7	360.2
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	3DMark 05	Game1	Game2	Game3
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	9454	43.0	26.8	47.0
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	7869	33.8	24.1	38.3
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS /VS complex
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	3246.2	6833.9	285.4	110.3/54.7
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	5175.9	10675.0	303.3	61.2/47.0
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 06	3DMark 06	?	?
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	4079	?	?
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	4089	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
SM2.0 Test	Score	GT1	GT2
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	1693	12.815	15.400
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	1801	14.454	15.560
?	?	?	?	?
HDR/SM3.0 Test	Score	HDR1	HDR2
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	1874	17.984	19.502
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	1784	15.992	16.694
?	?	?	?	?
CPU Test	Score	CPU1	CPU2
Power Color X1900GT 575/1200 MHz	1100	0.346	0.559
Gainward 7900GT 450/1320 MHz	1094	0.344	0.556

The Gainward 7900GT dominates in Doom 3. It can get up to 25 frames faster. It is also significantly faster in Doom 3 4X FSAA and 8X Aniso as well and is beating the X1900 GT big time. The scores are tight in Far Cry, as the cards are almost identical, the TUL X1900GT runs just a half frame faster. The Nvidia card manages to run faster at the highest resolution.

Power Color's X1900GT is slightly faster in Half Life 2. It runs on average three frames per second faster, nothing dramatic. It is faster in 10x7 with FSAA and Aniso on as well but the 7900 GT is taking a lead that increases with resolution.

Gainward's 7900 GT is faster in every single scenario in Quake 4 and it can get up to 23 frames faster. It is also faster in Quake 4 with FSAA 4X and Aniso 8X and runs from eight to ten frames faster.

In F.E.A.R, Gainward's 7900 GT is significantly faster than the TUL X1900 GT. It runs five to fifteen frames faster but the TUL X1900 GT can keep up with FSAA and Aniso on. It is either tight, or up to three measly frames slower. The ATI Radeon X1900 GT loses in Battlefield 2 as well. Nvidia is from three to thirteen frames faster but, yet again, ATI looks much better with the FSAA and Aniso on. It is slower by a frame at 10x7 but wins seven by twelve frames in all the other resolutions.

We started to use Serious Sam 2 as a test as it has very nice HDR parts of the benchmark. In our newcomer Serious Sam 2 test, the Nvidia 7900 GT duffs up ATI in every single scenario. It runs faster in all resolutions with FSAA, without FSAA, with HDR, with 4X Antialiasing and 8X and can be up to twenty frames faster, sometimes it is more than 40 per cent faster.

ATI still wins in High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X + HDR as the Nvidian simply cannot do it. You will get decent playability at 10x7 and 12x10 but not at higher resolutions. If you want higher resolution you really need something even faster than this.

The Radeon X1900 GT loses in 3Dmark03 by 2300 marks, but it wins in 3Dmark05 by 1580 marks. 3Dmark 06 is really tight but Nvidia wins by 10 marks only.

It is interesting to note that the TUL Radeon X1900 GT wins by 90 points in Shader model 3.0 and High Definition Rendering (HDR) test but it is losing in Shader model 2.0 test.

In short
Based on what we've seen TUL's Radeon X1900 GT is a good card but it simply cannot keep up with Gainward's 7900 GT card. The Nvidia-powered card simply runs faster and twelve pipes of R580 chip at 585MHz just cannot keep up with it.

TUL's Radeon X1900 GT has a good price and Avivo as its advantage but as a gaming card it will only run faster if you turn the effects on, and then only in few of the games. The rest will run faster on the Gainward and some of them really significantly faster. The X1900 GT does have the advantage of being able to render with FSAA and HDR on, as you should use those two things together.

If you looking to spend around $/€300 on a card and you want the top performance in all scenarios, the Geforce 7900 GT is the better choice. Nvidia did a great job with the 7900 GT card and offers a card faster than 7800 GTX for the $/€299 price mark and ATI simply needs more pipes to compete with it.

If you decide to buy a TUL Radeon X1900 GT you should turn the FSAA and Aniso on and possibly even HDR and then will the card pay off. It will be interesting to see what will ATI do now. ?

Reviewed and tested by Sanjin Rados and Fuad Abazovic