System setup and notes
Hardware
| Graphics card(s) | Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro Dual-GPU 1024MiB (580.5/1404) | ASUS EAX1950 Pro 256MiB (580.5/1404) | Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX 512MiB (650/2000) | XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320MiB XXX Edition (580/1800) | ASUS EN8800GTS/HTDP/640M 640MiB (513/1584) | Foxconn FV-N88XMAD2-OD 768MiB (575/1800) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775) | |||||
| Motherboard | ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe (975X+ICH7R) | EVGA nForce 680i SLI | ||||
| Memory | 2GiB (2 x 1024) Patriot XLBK | 2GiB (2 x 1024) Corsair PC8500 EPP | ||||
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-12 2T @ 800MHz (PC6400) | |||||
| PSU | FSP Epsilon 600W | |||||
| Monitor | Dell 2405FPW - 1920x1200 | |||||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | |||||
| Mainboard software | Intel Inf 8.0.1.1002 | NVIDIA platform driver 9.53 | ||||
| Graphics driver | CATALYST 7.1 (6.10 for XTX) | ForceWare 97.02 | ||||
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, w/ SP2, 32-bit | |||||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks |
Far Cry v1.33 Quake 4 v1.30 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 |
|---|
Notes
We're comparing the Sapphire X1950 Pro Dual against our usual high-end line-up. We've also added an identically-clocked ASUS Radeon X1950 Pro 256MiB card in the mix, to see how the pre-CrossFired Sapphire comes to a single card.
We've benchmarked the Dual on an Intel i975X platform and we observed that in keeping with other internal CrossFire results performance in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, when run with HDR, was lacking. You'll see by just how much a little later on.
We tried running the single-PCB Sapphire X1950 Pro Dual on an EVGA nForce 680i SLI motherboard and noted that the CrossFire tab, required for ensuring that both GPUs are working concurrently, as expected, wasn't available, meaning that the card ran in single-GPU mode alone.
Our advice to you if you're contemplating purchasing the card is to go with an AMD/Intel platform to ensure CrossFire compliance.
Benchmarks were conducted at 1600x1200 and 1920x1200, and it will be interesting to see if the ASUS X1950 Pro 256MiB's relatively meagre framebuffer is put to the sword here.
