Introduction

Since NVIDIA released the GeForce 7 Series, ATI and their Radeon X1000-based video cards have had some difficulty matching up in the mainstream graphics market. First it was the Radeon X1600 Pro and XT line of cards, none of which could touch the features or performance of the GeForce 7600 GT, and then later on, the Radeon X1650 XT came much closer, but still fell a bit short. ATI has taken a different angle with this latest mainstream challenger, and instead of improving an existing design, the company has chosen to "filter down" a high-end model using a slightly less robust graphics core. The result is the RV570, which powers the Radeon X1950 Pro, and is looking to give the GeForce 7900 GS some headaches in this very important sub-$200 market.

The Radeon X1950 Pro

The Radeon X1950 Pro is built around the same basic architecture as the Radeon X1900 GT, but this card upgrades to the smaller, faster 80nm RV570 graphics core. This is of the same generation as the 80nm RV560 that powers the Radeon X1650 XT, and it supports HDCP and "native" CrossFire using internal connectors. The RV570 features 12 pixel pipelines, 12 texture units, 8 vertex shaders, and 12 ROPs. This may seem rather sedate for a card that sits on the high-end of the mainstream scale, but of course, the Radeon X1950 Pro includes 3 pixel shaders per pipeline, for a total of 36, which can really make a performance difference, especially in SM3.0 games. The Radeon X1950 Pro features 256MB of onboard GDDR3 memory using a 256MB link to the internal ring bus controller.

The clock speeds of the Radeon X1950 Pro are a noticeable improvement compared to current Radeon X1900 GT boards, and at default speeds, the RV570 runs at 575 MHz, while the 256MB of GDDR3 memory is clocked at 1.38 GHz. This provides theoretical fill rates of 6.9 GPixels/s, 6.9 GTexels/s (standard) and 20.7 GTexels/s (shaded). This last figure helps illustrate just how powerful this type of design can be, given a game or application that really stresses its pixel shading abilities. The 1.38 GHz memory clock and its 256-bit link translate into 44.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth, more than the GeForce 7900 GT and about on par with a GeForce 7950 GT. The Radeon X1950 Pro also includes support for AVIVO, up to 6X AA & 16X AF modes, 3Dc+ texture compression, and native support for CrossFire multi-GPU technology.

The ASUS EAX1950PRO 256MB Card

As is common with ASUS video cards, the base design of the EAX1950PRO 256MB is slightly different compared to the ATI reference boards. The actual PCB and its hardware components are very similar to ATI's standard card, with the major change being a totally overhauled cooling system. The heatsink-fan on the ATI-branded Radeon X1950 Pro covers virtually the entire card, while the ASUS design leaves a large gap between the cooler and the backplate. Of course, the ASUS-branded heatsink-fan on the EAX1950PRO 256MB is a bit thicker than ATI uses, so there is a trade-off. The card is still a single-clot design, and it just means that adjacent PCIe or PCI cards will have a slightly tighter fit.

In most other ways, the ASUS EAX1950PRO 256MB is a standard Radeon X1950 Pro video card. It features standard connectivity options through two dual-link DVI connectors and an S-Video/HDTV-out port, and offers resolutions up to 2048x1536. TV output is handled through the S-Video port, while HD output is supported through a bundled breakout cable. While not really overclocked in a true sense, the card's clock speeds have been increased slightly to 581 MHz core and 1.4 GHz memory.

The EAX1950PRO 256MB retail package has a selection of hardware and software, including the card itself, a standard PCI Express power cable, a VGA-DVI adapter, one HDTV composite breakout cable, a SpeedSetUP Guide, a user manual CD, a driver/utility CD, and a CD wallet. The CrossFire edition also adds in dual CrossFire bridge interconnect cables to the above bundle. ASUS also offers a selection of gaming utilities like GameLiveShow, GameFace Messenger, and GameReplay.

To give a better idea of the architecture of the various mainstream and high-end cards we see competing directly against the ASUS EAX1950PRO 256MB, here is a small chart outlining the key architectural features of each GPU:

The next chart provides the base clock speed, bandwidth and performance specifications that go along with the above chart, and helps paint a better picture of the individual cards and their capabilities.

Of course, the best performance metric is real-world testing, and to that end, we've assembled a wide range of game benchmarks in the next section.