Introduction
PowerColor Radeon X1900 XT 512MB, SAPPHIRE Radeon X1900 XT & X1900 XTX 512MBWe saw the introduction of ATI's Radeon X1900-series of GPUs just a short time ago. Offering, potentially, 3x the pixel-shading ability of the soon-to-be-retired Radeon X1800 XT, the Radeon X1900 XT/XTX cards will undoubtedly do well in games that make copious use of advanced lighting and surface effects that give us realistic-looking images.
Equally as importantly, we think, was ATI's declaration that retail cards would be available on launch date. All too often, new SKU iterations have been greeted with initial enthusiasm from the press, yet retail samples have been some way off. In this case, thankfully, ATI and its AIB partners have kept up their side of the bargain.
PowerColor and SAPPHIRE have been a couple of the first partners to launch a full retail ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB cards, and we've had a chance to evaluate them. Read on to see what we thought.