"...one reminder to people who really want the X1950 XTX: don't buy it. Pick up the X1950 CrossFire instead. For the same price and performance you get a much more versatile solution. If you really need both DVI outputs, the CrossFire dongle supports that as well, so all you're doing is adding a small amount of cable clutter. Basically, there's little point in not getting the CrossFire card -- assuming prices stay equal, of course."
"ATI has proven they are a leader and not a follower with the X1950 XTX. ATI has released the worlds first consumer 3D graphics card with GDDR4 memory clocked at the highest ever stock speed that chews through games when it comes to high definition gaming. Memory bandwidth looks to one again be the defining factor in 3D performance. With a re-designed heatsink/fan unit, faster memory, and lowered price, the ATI Radeon X1950 XTX and CrossFire Edition are both serious 3D gaming video cards for the [H]ardcore that offer some value over NVIDIAs more expensive 7950 GX2. ATIs CrossFire dual GPU gaming platform looks to have just grown up."
"If they arrive on-time and can be purchased at, or below, MSRP, ATI's line-up looks great heading into the holiday buying season. If they don't show at retail on time, or if the cards are considerably more expensive than MSRP, however, NVIDIA's offering becomes all the more attractive."
"The new ATI X1950 XTX is an evolutionary step in GPU technology, not a revolutionary one. But that doesn't mean anything when it comes to gaming performance, and these X1950 XTXs are able to put their money where their mouth is by taking on the NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 cards with surprisingly good success. They are not dominating the single graphics card market but they are easily on par with their competition."
"Even though the X1950 is priced really nicely for a high-end card, recommending it as an upgrade if you already have an X1900 XT or XTX would be ridiculous, at best, considering the slight performance advantage and lack of any new features whatsoever. However, should you have something slower, or even should you be looking to jump to the other side of the high-end graphics fence, then certainly the X1950 is the way to go... Personally, Im most impressed with the X1900 XT 256MB."
"I'm not sure I can say definitively that the Radeon X1950 XTX is faster than the GeForce 7900 GTXthat depends on the situation. You will have to live with higher power consumption if you choose the Radeon, but ATI has worked to mitigate the worst effects of that fact with its new cooler. The X1950 XTX also has a few feature advantages in its corner, including the ability to handle floating-point texture filtering for high-dynamic-range rendering in concert with antialiasing and a superior default algorithm for anisotropic filtering. That's a pretty good combination."
"...the gap between the GeForce 7950 GX2 and the Radeon X1950 XTX is not dramatic in the vast majority of cases provided that both use high-quality texture filtering. We were also very surprised with the fact that high-quality trilinear filtering radically lowered performance in such benchmarks as Serious Sam 2 , Tomb Raider: Legend , Titan Quest , 3DMark06 and some other."
rated: --
published: Sep 30 2006
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"If the recommended price translates into street pricing for consumers when it becomes widely available in early September, Radeon X1950 XTX (at the time of writing) undercuts both GeForce 7900 GTX and GeForce 7950 GX2. Comparison to the former would certainly leave Radeon X1950 XTX ahead of GeForce 7900 GTX overall at high resolution in the majority of games, and depending on game title sometimes faster than 7950 GX2 and all with a single chip, for less money. And, of course, ATI retain the sometimes significant overall image quality advantages they've had over NVIDIA since the Radeon X1K range debuted in 2005, which should be a significant consideration for any serious gamer buying into the very high-end space X1950 XTX occupies."
"The X1950XTX might not be the most impressive or interesting product if you already got a X1900XTX. As a refresh product it is mean to appeal to those who do not buy the first card in a generation. As such it is a very nice card with an appealing price. The new cooler works very well and hopefully means quieter systems even when running the cards in Crossfire mode."
"For anyone who doesn't own an X1900XT or 7900GTX the X1950XTX is a card well worth considering. It delivers low noise with great performance and a very thorough set of features although it is by no means a massive performance jump over anything currently available in stores."
"If you plan on running at extremely high resolutions, possibly with a dual-card setup, the memory bandwidth boost of the Radeon X1950 XTX might be worth it. We like the improved cooling system, but this is really a pretty minor update to the X1900 XTX."
"I do think the X1950 is really impressive. It's battling here and there with the more expensive GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB and for 399 .. that's just staggering. I can only imagine what two of these cards will do in Crossfire as it really is impressive performance."
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4.25/5.0
