Power Color X1950PRO beats 7900 GS except in OpenGL

ATI FINALLY finished up the development of the RV570 chip and drivers. This is the one that you'll find under the hood of the X1950 PRO card. RV570 is a redesigned chip with 36 shaders inside, twelve real pipelines and a 256 bit memory interface and a new Crossfire connector.

You could consider it as a cut down version of the R580 chip. It is ATI's first real 80 nanometre chip that has been delayed since June/July. It is finally out after this big delay and it is about to take off. It is in production and cards launched today should be in shops as we speak. The version we tested works at 600MHz core and 1400MHz memory. It uses 256 bit DDR3 memory.

The cards will be priced around $229, but we believe ATI will drop the price rather soon to below $200 where it belongs and it is set to fight 7900 GS cards. Just before filing this article we saw that 25 MB cards cost around €200 but we haven't found a single one available. Well give them a day to refresh the database.

PowerColor decided to use the Arctic cooler on its card. It also decided to put 512 MB on the card. It made it silent and was cooling it very efficiently and the card should be pretty overclockable a lot. We are talking about a rather chunky cooler but who cares as long as we cool the card right. The cooler is massive, very tall and very thick. It will take two PCIe slots. Well - as long as it's quiet - and it is, we are fine with that.

The card is equipped with dual DVIs and an Avivo connector. There are two new Crossfire connectors on top of the card. Those two are dual rail connectors branded as CrossFire Bridge Interconnect and it enables to do a read and write at the same time. It should be much faster than the previous Crossfire connectors but we didn't have two cards to try it. The new bridge improved performance and for the first time it doesn't require Crossfire master card to work. The bridge has a 24 bit (2 x 12 bit) connection and supports speeds of up to 350MHz. you just need to plug these two cards in Crossfire motherboard and they will.

The retail package includes HDTV cable, two DVIs S-Video cable, Component cable, six pin PCIe power cable and a Video in and Video out cable. The card is naturally VIVO compatible and you can record and export your video via this connector. Let's not forget the manual. The card supports HDCP, Anti aliasing with HDR, Shader model 3.0, Avivo, H.264 playback and is vista ready.

Benchmarketing
We used :
Foxconn C51XE M2aa Nforce 590 SLI motherboard
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz Athlon FX 62 2800 MHz 90 nanometre Windsor core
2x1024 MB DDR2 Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3 memory
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Thermaltake Mini Typhoon Athlon 64/X2/FX cooler and Intel CPU's
Silverstone Strider ST60F, 600W ATX 2.0 SATA

Doom 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	128.7	115.4	95.1	65.5
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	127.0	106.7	80.7	51.7
?	?	?	?	?
Doom 3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	106.5	76.3	56.4	36.4
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	98.4	70.8	51.2	32.5
?	?	?	?	?
Far Cry High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	95.32	84.71	61.38	39.86
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	95.10	94.16	93.47	78.14
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	165.9	152.9	129.3	90.7
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	143.4	137.6	123.7	89.6
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	149.7	121.8	93.7	62.7
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	135.5	119.0	98.2	66.3
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	99	73	52	34
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	113	87	61	37
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	67	48	33	21
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	79	57	39	24
?	?	?	?	?
Serious Sam 2	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	152.2	120.4	87.6	60.7
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	153.6	143.2	113.0	76.3
?	?	?	?	?
Serious Sam HDR	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	113.5	81.4	56.6	38.2
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	130.2	96.7	81.6	54.6
?	?	?
Serious Sam High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	115.9	86.2	62.0	43.9
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	115.0	89.2	71.6	48.2
?	?	?	?	?
Serious Sam High Quality HDR + FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	not supported	not supported	not supported	not supported
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	75.1	56.1	35.2	17.6
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Game3
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	17024	129.7	109.3	95.6
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	16761	129.5	97.6	109.8
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	4297.5	8573.1	43.5	227.4
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	3910.4	6936.6	62.0	189.0
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	3DMark 05	Game1	Game2	Game2
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	7691	34.5	22.8	36.9
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	10724	48.6	29.8	54.5
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS/VS complex
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	5049.7	8555.4	261.5	60.8/44.7
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	4433.9	7089.7	342.2	136.5/56.8
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 06	3DMark 06	?	?
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	4290	?	?	?
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	5169	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
SM2.0 Test	Score	GT1	GT2
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	1667	13.457	14.322	?
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	1962	15.030	17.673
?	?	?	?	?
HDR/SM3.0 Test	Score	HDR1	HDR2
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	1663	14.631	18.628	?
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	2144	20.574	22.330
?	?	?	?	?
CPU Test	Score	CPU1	CPU2
Geforce 7900 GS 450/1320 MHz	2080	0.664	1.043	?
PowerColor X1950PRO 600 / 1400 MHz	2154	0.680	1.092

We compared two cards one from Nvidia Geforce 7900 GS at its reference clock of 450/1320MHz as it sits in the same price range and the PowerColor card.

In Doom 3 7900 GS ends up a bit faster at 10x7 but the performance difference increase at higher resolutions. Geforce cards can handle OpenGL a bit better as Nvidia wins my 15 frames at 16x12 and is some eighteen percent faster. When you turn the effects on Nvidia ends up four to eight frames faster than ATI's new mainstream card. On average Nvidia's card is ten percent faster.

Yet again in Quake 4 Nvidia wins. It starts with massive twenty two and a half frames difference at 10x7, fifteen at 12x10 but it drops six frames at 16x12 and only a single frame at 20x15.

FSAA 4X and 78X Aniso makes PowerColor X1950PRO looks better. Nvidia wins at 10x7 by fourteen frames but already at 12x10 the difference drops at less than three frames range. For the first time in Open GL testing PowerColor X1950PRO wins by five frames at 16x12 and by four frames at 20x15.

We tested Far Cry High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X and figurate out that the cards are tight at 10x12 but at 12x10 PowerColor is ten frames faster, at 16x12 it's a massive thirty two frames faster and thirty eight frames faster at 20x15. At last two resolutions PowerColor is fifty two and a massive ninety-six percent faster. At 12x10 PowerColor Radeon X1900PRO is eleven percent faster.

Yet again Power Color dominates in FEAR. Already at 10x7 it is fourteen frames or fourteen per cent faster, at 12x10 it is again fourteen frames faster or nineteen percent faster, at 16x12 it is nine frames or seventeen percent faster and finally at 20x15 it is three frames or nine percent.

The difference is even bigger when you turn the effects on. At 10x7 PowerColor is twelve frames or seventeen percent faster, nine frames or nineteen percent at 12x10, six frames or eighteen percent at 16x12 and finally three frames or fourteen percent faster at 20x15.

In Serious Sam 2 PowerColor still dominates by as little as a single frame at 10x7 to twenty three at 12x10, twenty six point five at 16x12 and sixteen at 20x15. On the last three resolutions PowerColor Radeon X1950PRO is close to thirty percent faster.

There is a significant difference in the same game with HDR enabled but Serious Sam 2 with 4X FSAA and 8X aniso is just slightly faster on ATI's card. Geforce series 7 doesn't support FSAA and HDR therefore ATI clearly wins this one. Geforce wins in 3Dmark 03 by less than 300 points but it loses in 05 by as much as 3000. PowerColor is 880 points faster in 3Dmark06.

In Short
For once ATI did a good job in the mainstream. It managed to beat Nvidia at its own game. This is the card to recommend in the sub €/$200 space. 7900 GS is a good card and it shows its strength in Doom 3, Quake 4 and Serious Sam HDR with effects on but it loses in other games.

PowerColor did a good job making a silent card that runs rather cold that will run fast most of the games you can buy today. Having a 256 bit DDR controller and a mainstream 80 nanometre part is the way to go and you can see the benefits of it in games with the effects on. It is a mainstream card that I can recommend, the only caveat being that DirectX 10 is just around the corner and this card or any Nvidia's mainstream can not do that. ?

Reviewed and tested by Sanjin Rados and Fuad Abazovic