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Asus EAX X1950 Pro Review - PAGE 2
Michael Nguyen - Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
Physical Impressions and Features
The EAX 1950Pro is highly representative of its ATI brethen with a few choice tweaks by Asus. Asus decided not to go with the reference design set out by ATI and designed its own unique cooler. The new white cooler is rather large and is covered by metal mesh that is reminiscent of a speaker cover. The fan used for the cooler also has a familar look, similar to the reference fans used on Nvidia's 7950GT cards. Inserted through the top-end of the cooler is a heatpipe, which is twisted and reinserted as closely as it can get to the core. The fins of the heatsink are made from aluminium which accounts for its considerable lightweight standing. However, there is a copper plate underneath which the cores' integrated heat spreader is in contact with. Asus' cooler isn't a conventional design - which is a good thing. The cooler preforms well enough and looks good while doing it too.
 
Another tweak Asus made with the EAX1950Pro are the core and RAM speeds. A habit growing on Asus seems to be overclocking their cards out of the box, and in the case of their EN7950GT, trying to outdo their competing manufacturers. With the EAX 1950Pro, the overclocking is a bit conversative, but still manages to top out at 580MHz core and 700MHz RAM speeds. Asus also decided on using 256MB of Samsung GDDR3 RAM. Stock ATI specs for a X1950 Pro are 575MHz core and 690MHz RAM speeds, so the overclocking done by Asus could have probably been achieved by any home user.
A couple other odds and ends about the EAX1950Pro are that the size of the card and look of the card without the heatsink on is exactly that of the ATI Radeon X1950XTX. The PCB chosen by Asus is the same as the gushing red ATI has been using since the dawn of time. The card features two DVI ports and one S-video connector which is certifiably standard nowadays. However, Asus went the extra mile by including HDCP support so you'll be able to experience Window Vista's true HD content with the appropriate setup (with a HDCP monitor).
The last new feature is the SLI-esque internal CrossFire connectors. Located on the top left corner of the card, the new 12 bit connectors are meant for easy CrossFire action. The bridges needed to connect two cards however may or may not be included with the package you buy, which I'll talk more about in the next section.
 
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