Graphics Cards Guide

Introduction

Introduction

The Radeon X1950 series has probably been one of ATI's more successful product lines for the last six months. Spearheaded by ATI's flagship graphics card, the Radeon X1950 XTX, we have gradually seen the series expand, with ATI adding the Radeon X1950 PRO and the Radeon X1950 XT. Now, it seems that there is one last SKU left in this series for ATI has introduced (and added to the suffix overload) the Radeon X1950 GT.

Based on a variant of the 80nm RV570 core found on the Radeon X1950 PRO, the Radeon X1950 GT uses a core dubbed RV570LE. But going by the specifications, there is little to distinguish between them. Both cores come with 12 rendering pipelines and 8 vertex engines and the same 36 pixel shaders. Other key features found on the Radeon X1950 PRO, like native CrossFire and HDCP support are also present on the new Radeon X1950 GT.

The main difference lies in the slower clock speeds on the Radeon X1950 GT, with a core at 500MHz instead of 575MHz on the PRO and 1200MHz DDR compared to 1380MHz DDR. There is also no Rage Theater ASIC for the Radeon X1950 GT, though even some models of Radeon X1950 PRO have left that out to reduce cost. In fact, probably the best way to describe this card would be that it is an underclocked Radeon X1950 PRO. Performance would naturally be lower than the Radeon X1950 PRO but it should also have a cheaper price tag. The question most enthusiasts would be dying to ask is whether it can be overclocked to the speeds of a Radeon X1950 PRO. That is something that we would like to know for ourselves and here to answer these queries, we have the Sapphire Radeon X1950 GT 256MB.