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Review: GeCube vs Sapphire - Radeon X1950 Pro AGP: the must-have upgrade?

by Tarinder Sandhu on 4 April 2007, 08:35

Tags: ATi Technologies (NYSE:AMD)

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It's prudent to conclude by taking a look at the current AGP graphics-card environment and evaluating how the Radeon X1950 Pro fits in.

GPUs designed in the last couple of years have, for the most part, harnessed native PCIe connectivity. Associated chipset support from all the major players is pervasive enough for this to make implicit sense, we suppose.

That's left users with AGP slot-equipped motherboards with a restrictive upgrade path that, really, necessitates a wholesale switch to PCIe, should they wish to take advantage of truly high-end graphics, especially in multi-GPU configuration.

Now, AMD's realised there's a significant, established user base that currently uses AGP-based motherboards, don't want to spend considerable amounts of time and money upgrading to full-blown PCIe, and are looking for a worthwhile upgrade in graphics performance nonetheless.

AICs, then, have decided to bridge the excellent Radeon X1950 PCIe-designed GPU in to AGP form, via the Rialto ASIC, and our benchmarks have shown that little performance is lost in the transition between conduits.

What X1950 Pro AGP brings to the table is decent midrange performance, at a reasonable price, and in an area where NVIDIA, for once, isn't particularly strong.


Turning our attention to the GeCube X1950 Pro AGP first, the custom-designed heatsink is let down by a noisy fan and whilst both DVI ports are dual-link, only one supports HDCP. Performance, though, is predictably good, given the underlying architecture, but the etail price of around £140 makes it a little too expensive to recommend.

We'd urge GeCube to tie up with a wider range of etailers, drop the price by around £15, and ensure that the heatsink's fan was thermostatically controlled.

The Sapphire version, clocked in just a shade higher than the GeCube, is a little quieter in usage but could still do with a slower-spinning fan. The bundle and warranty are both reasonable and the extra framebuffer will bring performance benefits if you play at higher resolutions and/or with copious amounts of image quality enhancement.

Sapphire's SKU also has the advantage of being available at a number of prominent etailers, with pricing at around the £145 mark. Looking at just how well it performs and the lack of current competing options from NVIDIA, with the 8-series rumoured never to see AGP, it becomes relatively easy to recommend it if your AGP system needs a graphical shot in the arm.

Bottom line - X1950 Pro AGP is a decent SKU, GeCube needs to do better in a couple of areas, so Sapphire, offering a consistent package in every respect, takes top honours in this two-way shootout. Recommended if your ageing AGP graphics needs a refresh.

HEXUS Awards




Gaming Recommended
Sapphire X1950 Pro AGP 512MiB

HEXUS Where2Buy

The Sapphire X1950 Pro AGP 512MiB is currently available to buy for around £143.

The GeCube X1950 Pro AGP 256MiB is currently available to buy for around [link coming]

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of the companies' representatives choose to do so, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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would be nice to see how a Gainward 7800GS+ 512MB gets on against it.

Good to see agp still been used :)
Yup :)

Having 2 molex connectors on the Sapphire shouldn't be that surprising - it's reasonable to expect that some AGP only computers don't have PSUs with PCI-E power connectors :)
Kalniel,

It's not surprising, but a 6-pin power adapter hooks up to a couple of Molexs, as per the GeCube card, so it's just a matter of style.

Sapphire already produces an X1950 Pro PCB (PCIe) with the requisite 6-pin power connector, and that's why the change to two Molexs raised a very small eyebrow. :)
VERY timely review!

I'm really pleased that AMD and its two partners have come up with these cards.

I absolutely do want such a card and believe that there must be a whole lot of other people like me - with perfectly good PCs that badly lacking only on the graphics side.

Such PCs are, hopefully, going to be good for at least a couple more years, so I see the Sapphire's twin-port HDCPI support as a bit of a bonus.

What's the score with changing the cooling fans on such cards - are there readily-available low-noise replacements that will do as good a job (or better) than the originals?

If so, what sort of price, where to look and how easy/hard is it going to be to swap over fans?
afaik as ATI's bridge chip is on the back of the card something such as the VF-900 should work