With the impending release of ATI's R600, the X19xx series is on its last legs. While Asus will most likely dip into the high-end market with the R600, (not to mention having already released a G80 card, the EN8800GTX/HTDP/768MB) they decided first to unleash 3 cards that are a little bit more cost effective. We've already reviewed two other Asus cards - the EN 7950GT and EN 7900GS, and both were respectable performers for today's games. The subject of this review is yet another midrange card - the Asus Radeon EAX X1950 Pro.
Remember this? The RV570 GPU shown above is used in the EAX X1950 Pro and is essentially a remastering of the RV520 from back in the day. The "Pro" is different from X1950 XT and XTX variants in a couple ways. First, the die is fabricated using a 80nm process which would explain its minimal cooling design, and secondly the GPU uses less texture units and pixel shaders then the higher end cards. Where the XT and XTX use 16:48:8 (Texture Units:Pixel Shaders:Vertex Shaders), the EAX X1950 Pro has 12:36:8.
The EAX X1950 Pro will be Asus' latest entry into the $200 market. Asus already has a card of the Nvidia variety in the $200 price range, the Asus EN 7900GS (the Asus EN 7950GT is also selling for a little less than a $300). So in order for Asus to actually sell some EAX X1950 Pros, their card had better impress beyond similarily priced cards in this already bloated market of mid to high range graphics boards
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