Introduction

Today we have on our testbench ATI's brand-new Radeon X1950 XTX which is based on the "R580+" according to ATI.

The major new features of this card compared to the X1900 XTX are:

• GDDR4 memory which is running at a whopping 1 GHz / 2 GHz DDR.
• Improved cooling solution which allows quieter operation and better overclocking
• Very competitive price of $449 / € 399 at launch.

What has not changed:

• GPU Core clock. 650 MHz
• Video Memory. 512 MB
• Pipeline / Shader count. 16 / 48.
• GPU Process size. 90nm.
• Still Crossfire Master card required to run CF.

Complete Specifications

Features

• 384 million transistors on 90nm fabrication process
• Up to 48 pixel shader processors
• 8 vertex shader processors
• Up to 256-bit 8-channel GDDR4 memory interface
• Native PCI Express x16 bus interface

Ring Bus Memory Controller

• Up to 512-bit internal ring bus for memory reads
• Fully associative texture, color, and Z/stencil cache designs
• Hierarchical Z-buffer with Early Z test
• Lossless Z Compression (up to 48:1)
• Fast Z-Buffer Clear
• Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, including widescreen HDTV resolutions
• Ultra-Threaded Shader Engine
• Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware
• Full speed 128-bit floating point processing for all shader operations
• Up to 512 simultaneous pixel threads
• Dedicated branch execution units for high performance dynamic branching and flow control
• Dedicated texture address units for improved efficiency
• 3Dc+ texture compression
• Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® 2.0

Advanced Image Quality Features

• 64-bit floating point HDR rendering supported throughout the pipeline
• Includes support for blending and multi-sample anti-aliasing
• 32-bit integer HDR (10:10:10:2) format supported throughout the pipeline
• Includes support for blending and multi-sample anti-aliasing
• 2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes
• Multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable sparse sample patterns, and centroid sampling
• New Adaptive Anti-Aliasing feature with Performance and Quality modes
• Temporal Anti-Aliasing mode
• Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1) at all resolutions, including widescreen HDTV resolutions
• 2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes
• Up to 128-tap texture filtering
• Adaptive algorithm with Performance and Quality options
• High resolution texture support (up to 4k x 4k)

Avivo™ Video and Display Platform

• High performance programmable video processor
• Accelerated MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264 decoding and transcoding
• DXVA support
• De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
• Motion compensation, IDCT, DCT and color space conversion
• Vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing
• 3:2 pulldown (frame rate conversion)
• Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
• HDR tone mapping acceleration
• Maps any input format to 10 bit per channel output
• Flexible display support
• Dual integrated dual-link DVI transmitters
• Dual integrated 10 bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
• 16 bit per channel floating point HDR and 10 bit per channel DVI output
• Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion (10 bits per color)
• Complete, independent color controls and video overlays for each display
• High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all outputs
• Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays
• Xilleon™ TV encoder for high quality analog output
• YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays
• Spatial/temporal dithering enables 10-bit color quality on 8-bit and 6-bit displays
• Fast, glitch-free mode switching
• VGA mode support on all outputs
• Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions and refresh rates
• Compatible with ATI TV/Video encoder products, including Theater 550

CrossFire™

• Multi-GPU technology
• Four modes of operation:
• Alternate Frame Rendering (maximum performance)
• Supertiling (optimal load-balancing)
• Scissor (compatibility)
• Super AA 8x/10x/12x/14x (maximum image quality)

Let's take a look at the Radeon X1950 XTX card.

The Card

When you first see the card the first thing you notice is the new huge heatsink which is made from transparent red plastic. It's good to see ATI stay with their system of exhausting hot air outside of the case.


Like all high-end cards, two DVI connectors are installed on the card. If you need to connect an analog display, a DVI adapter is inside the box. Both DVI ports are dual-link so you can use them with huge high-resolution displays.


When taking a look from the side you get a first glance at the full copper heatsink/heatpipe assembly. As we will see later it is quite sophisticated.


Near the back you have a big fan which reminds me of Arctic Cooling somehow. The PCI-E power connector is in the usual spot. It is easy to plug in and remove the connector even with the big fan assembly.


On the backside nothing has changed. Overall the underlying PCB design is very close to the X1900 XTX.