Introduction

The Sapphire X1950 GT is directly based on the Radeon X1900 GT Series. Like the X1950 Pro and X1900 GT it uses AMD's RV570 GPU, which is produced in a 80 nm process with 330M transistors.

Here's how the specs of these three cards compare:


As you can see the only change compared to the X1900 GT is that the core clock is lower. So the X1900 GT is faster than the X1950 GT, yet the X1950 has the "faster" marketing name, but the lower price.

The X1950 Pro's major advantage is that it has 512 MB of GDDR3 memory, which costs you about $50 extra. As we will see in the benchmarks there is a clear difference between 256 MB and 512 MB. However, $50 in this price segment are like 30%-40% of the card's price. For many users the performance increase does not justify the increased cost.

This card is mainly targeted at budget aware users, who want to play today's games without compromising too much image quality.

Complete Specifications

Features

• 36 pixel shader processors
• 8 vertex shader processors
• Up to 256-bit 8 channel GDDR3 memory interface
• Native PCI Express® x16 bus interface
• Plug-and-play (native) CrossFire™

Shader Technology

• Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware.
• Shader Model 3.0 vertex and pixel shader support:
• Full speed 32-bit floating point processing
• High dynamic range rendering with floating point blending and anti-aliasing support
• High performance dynamic branching and flow control
• Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® 2.0

Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering

• 2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes:
• Sparse multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable sample patterns, and centroid sampling
• New Adaptive Anti-Aliasing mode
• Temporal Anti-Aliasing
• Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1) at all resolutions, up to and including widescreen HDTV
• 2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes:
• Up to 128-tap texture filtering
• Adaptive algorithm with performance and quality options
• Improved rendering with higher subpixel precision and LOD computation levels
• New rotational high quality rendering mode

3Dc+™ — Advanced Texture Compression

• High quality 4:1 compression for normal maps and luminance maps
• Works with any single-channel or two-channel data format

Ring Bus Memory Controller

• Programmable arbitration logic maximizes memory efficiency, software upgradeable
• New fully associative texture, color, and Z cache design
• Hierarchical Z-Buffer with Early Z Test
• Lossless Z-Buffer Compression (up to 48:1)
• Fast Z-Buffer Clear
• Z Cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering
• Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, up to and including widescreen HDTV

Avivo™ Video and Display Engine

• New advanced video capabilities, including high fidelity gamma, color correction and scaling
• Dual independent display controllers that support true 30 bits per pixel throughout the display pipe
• Full symmetry on both heads
• Each display interface supports display resolutions beyond 2560x1600
• Advanced DVI capabilities, including 10-bit, 16-bit HDR output
• YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays
• Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
• MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration:
• DXVA support
• Hardware motion compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion
• All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
• Adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing and frame rate conversion (temporal filtering)

CrossFire™

• Multi-GPU technology
• Four modes of operation:
• Alternate frame rendering for maximum performance
• Supertiling for optimal load-balancing
• Scissoring for compatibility
• Super AA for maximum image quality
• Native CrossFire support simplifies setup by requiring no dedicated slave or master hardware
• 24-bit CrossFire connection enables high resolutions and refresh rates
• Supports the broadest range of platforms for both Intel and AMD