I've been down on ATi for a couple of years now, but these Crossfire changes might be just what I've waited for to see multi-card setups as useful to someone who doesn't want to spend over $500 at a time for their video card setup.

I bought a 7800GT (which I'm very happy with) with the intention of perhaps purchasing a second one 6 months later (this was a year ago next month) for around $200-250 to roughly double my high-res performance. The problem with this plan is that Nvidia ceased production on the 7800GT so fast that it wasn't and isn't available in any volume in a time frame that would have let that work. Sure, they brought out the 7900GT, but that won't work with a 7800GT in SLI, so the prospect of a multi-card setup for me was made very, very unattractive by the high prices and low availability of the 7800GT.

It looks like Crossfire won't suffer from this problem, since I would guess, say, an X1950 will be able to work with whatever their next mid-range card will be using the bridge connectors. Sure, you might have some pipelines disabled when doing this with a newer card, but I'm willing to bet you'll still see a substantial boost over either one by themselves.

Now, if ATi would just get to serious work on their Linux drivers, they would really, really have something going again. I hope AMD will have a positive impact on their software development in this regard.

I wonder which partner is going to bold enough to come out with a passively cooled version? Or is that even possible? :roll:

Yet another paper-release from ATi. Following the pattern securely established with the X1800 series. No sign of the X1950 Pro on Newegg, even among their "Out-of-Stock " list, where it would appear if Newegg had already exhausted their first shipment. Just the X1950XTX and the old X1950 "Crossfire Edition" are present in the X1950 category.

BTW, on a related subject, beware of buying the X1900GT. ATi has allegedly changed the clock speed from 575MHz to 512MHz and has attempted to compensate by increasing the memory speed -- without changing the Product Nomenclature! Before the X1900GT and other products using the R580 GPU are obsoleted, ATi seems to be trying to quietly use up a stock of R580 chips that could not be binned at 575MHz -- a profit -maximizing move by ATi, no doubt. The R580 is a very large die and expensive to fabricate and test. For more details on the subject and comments on this move by ATi, see page 2 of today's Anandtech (otherwise very favorable) report on the X1950 Pro:-

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2858

Those DVI ports have full support for HDCP in order to protect you from the movie industry.

Err, wait. Other way 'round.

Hehehe.

ATI changed the specs on us again?

1950 was to be clocked higher than 1900gt.. Now the core clock is same and just memory clocked higher and doesn't overclock worth a damn even on a smaller die... :(

Nothing a raised voltage on the core couldn't cure...

I think this is little 2 late... If it came out like year ago this would have been a good buy... Not anymore..

So when will we see a comparison of X19xx folding skill? Points in 24-48 hours or something as an additional benchmark?

Hmm, looks like the hardwarezone.com article is a little better informed about some of the technology in this card, and what it's used for:

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=3&id=2090

See the section on the bridge connection in particular. I was suprised; normally, TR reviews don't have so many guesses in them -- TR is always known for having the definitive answers, reviews, etc. But I think I liked the hardwarezone review a little better -- interesting that Powercolor's version uses a quiet aftermarket cooler from the get-go (AC Accelero 2), I'd like to see this pitted against the quiet single-slot version here in TR's review.

The 7900GTO may be the best deal to ever hit the market, it would be nice to see one of those cards in your review.

:oO 7900GS tend to be super o/cable and that should be factored in too; commonly 450mhz to a whopping 600mhz or more is a big increase (> 30%). The X1950Pro seems to be already clocked near its maximum potential, not surprising since the X1900XTX & X1950XT offer only 50mhz more clockspeed @650mhz. This is only a good thing if you don't like to o/c in order to keep your warranty.

;o) The X1900XT_256MB gives a fair bit more perf for a little more cash but so do the 7900GTO and 7950GT too. I don't think DX10 is a huge factor as early cards will surely be $500+ monsters and it's likely to be March-April 2007 (ie about 6 months) before we see any $200 DX10 cards.

Who needs specific 7900GTO benchmarks? At stock we know it's faster than a 7950GT, and depending on oc can be identical to a 7900GTX. It's not all that hard to mentally place it on the charts.

I was looking forward to reading about this card, a good mid-range ATi card with HDCP - for future use in an HTCP when it's no longer decent enough for games - would have been perfect. But I have to say I'm a bit underwhelmed, maybe my expectations got me too hyped up. Yes it's on par with the 7900gs although it's 'only' on par with it, but the x1900xt 256MB option crops up not to mention the spectacular enthusiast bargain 7900GTO anomoly. But there's the catch for me - I've seen only one HDCP-enabled x1900xt 256MB, an Asus model which automatically means expensive anyway and for some stupidass reason it has a max resolution of only 2048x1536. I haven't seen any HDCP 7900GTOs. So it looks like my hopes for this card have been pretty well dashed.

Is it possible ATi's wierd pipeline:shader mixture doesn't downscale well? Because honestly just being 'on par' with the 7900gs doesn't cut it, they really need to beat it to gain market and mind-share.

I'll tell you what ATi ought to do to get back the hearts of enthusiasts - make their cards unlockable or BIOS-flashable to enable more pipelines like the x800-series days. I understand why they can't do this on certain models that are made with GPU cores that don't have the sub-units in the first place but the x1900xt 256MB proves it's not purely an issue of the production cost of the GPU either. This would drive tremendous mid-range sales to enthusiasts and not hurt the average BestBuy-type market.

Thanks for the review, *sigh* too bad it's only 'just competitive.'

Conclusion page:

If forced choose between the Radeon X1950 Pro and the GeForce 7900...

Just letting you know. Great review as always.

Diggity digg:

http://digg.com/hardware/Radeon_X1950_Pro_CrossFire_goes_native

Nice review Scott. I'd read these things just for the comments you make!

Keep up the good work!

The new coolers look pretty groovy.Nice performance and IQ.
Sure looks a good thing at that price.....they'll sell heaps I expect.

Nice review. Nice balanced conclusion and recommendations. It's quite a relief to see ATI do something proper at the midrange.

Those cards look pretty. It's just too bad one has to turn one's case upside down to appreciate it.

And as you already mentioned - too bad this only comes to us now, just before the release of DX10.

Sadly, with a 2 year old and a 1 month old, a thesis to finish and a full-time job, I'm thinking I might never get to buy another gaming card again. I guesss that's OK by me though.

Excellent as always. Though if you had to choose btw an X1950 Pro and a 7900 GS, only to be distracted by an X1900 XT 256MB, I would further distract you by mentioning the 7900 GTO :D

Nice review, Scott!

If it wasn't for the display limitations of Crossfire (it's like SLi in that regard, single display only, right?) and the impending G80 release, at price of only ~170 Euros according to some shops, I might just have considered changing my current X1800 XT for a dual-RV570 Crossfire rig.

And the F@H results are.....????

j/k

Good review...

but

Anyhow, as you'd expect, the X9150 Pro drops into a PCI Express x16 slot and has a six-pin auxiliary power connector to keep the GPU cranking.

TYPO :P