ATI Radeon x1950 Pro Preview

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by Greg King on October 17, 2006 in Graphics & Displays

Dongle-free Crossfire anyone? ATI has just announced their x1950 Pro cards which fall directly behind the XTX versions. Some benefits include a digital voltage regulator and a single slot cooler! Learn more inside..

Page 2 – 3D Mark, Far Cry, Oblivion


Now for our test machine, also provided by All American Computers.

  • Intel E6700 Core 2 Duo @ 2.66 GHz
  • Intel Bad Axe motherboard
  • Corsair DDR2 @ 5-5-5-15
  • Enermax Galaxy 1000W PSU

Not a bad setup if you ask me. Now, on with the testing.

We know the test setup, but what will we bench? We have to include the usual 3D Mark ’05 and ’06 benchmarks but that’s not what I am interested in, I want to game. The games that I will be using will be:

Battlefield 2
Oblivion
Far Cry
Rise of Legends

These are a collection of my latest vices. My escape for everyday life if you will. All but Far Cry are new, but with Far Cry still being as beautiful as it is, I am including it in the review as well.

3D Mark 05

The 3D Mark suite is the resident benchmarking software for any and all GPU reviews. While it does have its flaws, it gives you a good idea on how the video card will compare to others. In this case, I will be running the bench in single card and CrossFire mode as well.

Single Card: 10295
CrossFire: 15300

3D Mark ’06

Single Card: 4992
CrossFire: 8341

Just for comparison, I ran a pair of x1950 XTXs in CrossFire to see just how the x1950 Pro stacks up. In ’05, the XTXs raked up a 16482 and in ’06, the Pros pulled a 10490. As you can see, they are not as powerful but stack up nicely against the much more powerful x1950 XTX when run in CrossFire.

Far Cry

Far Cry has been out for a couple of years now and in the time it has been out, it has won many awards for it’s game play as well as it’s gorgeous graphics. At the time, the game brought the then current video cards to their knees. As card became more powerful in the time since its launch, the game has held up well against the latest cards. Using FRAPS to record the high, low and average frames per second, I ran the x1950 Pro through the game in single card mode, as well as in CrossFire.

With the minimum frames raising 5 FPS, the Crossfire enabled rig performs slightly better than its single card counterpart.

Oblivion

Oblivion needs no introduction. Being proclaimed as one of the greatest RPGs of all time, Oblivions is known for its in-depth game play as much as it is for its unbelievable scenery. It’s a beast of a game but well worth. Let’s see how the x1950 Pro handles it when ran at the highest quality settings.

In single card mode, the game hiccups a bit at 1280 x 1024 but when a second card is added, the minimum frame rate is greatly improved.

Battlefield 2

Battlefield 2 is an incredibly power hungry game. With the next episode in the Battlefield universe, the juggernaut doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon. Did it slow down the x1950 Pro? Let’s see. The game was run at 1280×1024 with all setting set to high.

As you can see, the game played well with the minimum frames per second raising a bit when used in CrossFire.

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