Gaming results and HEXUS.bang4buck
Radeon X1950 Pro and GeForce 7900 GS show their high-end pedigree in Far Cry, leaving the marginally cheaper Radeon X1650XT well behind at both resolutions. The Sapphire X1950 Pro ULTIMATE is around 4 per cent faster than the reference model at 1600x1200 0xAA 8xAF.
All cards produce fluid framerates in the venerable Quake 4.
Considering that Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is a GPU-bound game at high-ish I.Q. settings, there's little performance benefit from the extra 6.4GB/s memory bandwidth afforded by the faster RAM on the X1950 Pro ULTIMATE.
Turning on the I.Q. hurt by enabling HDR doesn't help to further separate the performances of both Sapphire X1950 Pro cards, but they remain the fastest.
So yes, the Sapphire X1950 Pro ULTIMATE is faster than regular X1950 Pro, but the gain, when evaluated at resolutions and image quality the interested reader will probably be running their display at, is so small as not to be noticed visually.
Overclocking
We used the excellent ATITool tweaking software and were able to push the card's frequencies up from the default 580/1593MHz to 641.25/1701MHz without compromising stability. As a guide to how the overclocked speeds increase performance, the Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory 1600x1200 HDR test result rose from the average 48.41FPS, shown in the graph above, to 52.91FPS. To give you some idea of how this fits into the bigger scheme of graphics cards' performance, an ATI Radeon X1950 XTX scores 68.4FPS and the GeForce 8800 GTX an average of 98.74FPS.HEXUS.bang4buck
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang per buck, we've aggregated the average 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF framerates for the three games (excluding HDR results) and listed the cards' price. There are more provisos than I care to shake a stick at. We could have chosen three different games, the cards' prices could have been derived from other sources than SCAN.co.uk and pricing is such that it can fluctuate daily. However, to reiterate, the graph below highlights a metric that should only be used as a yardstick for evaluating comparative performance with price factored in. Other architectural or incidental benefits are not covered, obviously.| Card | Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro ULTIMATE 256MiB | Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro 256MiB | HIS Radeon X1650 XT IceQ 256MiB | XFX GeForce 7900 GS Extreme Edition 256MiB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aggregate marks at 1280x1024 | 261.24 | 253.91 | 177.57 | 251.42 |
| Price (as at 01/12/06) | £144.11 | £129.94 | £117.99 | £137.23 |
| Acceptable framerate at 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HEXUS.bang4buck metric (higher is better) | 1.81 | 1.95 | 1.50 | 1.83 |
What the HEXUS.bang4buck graph highlights is the fact that at 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF, the likely resolution and image quality the Sapphire X1950 Pro ULTIMATE card will be run at, the extra package cost is not compensated for by an equivalent or greater rise in performance. However, the metric solely takes the performance and price into account. The quiet Zalman cooler and better-than-reference bundle aren't factored in. However, the HEXUS.bang4buck result is good enough for the ULTIMATE package to be worthy of consideration on performance/price alone, we feel.
