Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX
Our Summary and Conclusion
Performance Summary: The Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX performed just as expected in our benchmarks. The card finished right alongside ATI's own Radeon X1950 XTX in every test (as it should). And the Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX was measurably faster than the GeForce 7900 GTX virtually across the board. The dual-GPU powered 7950 GX2 outpaced the Radeon in most benchmarks, however, and the newer GeForce 8800 series cards were usually much faster. In a few higher resolutions tests though, like in FarCry, F.E.A.R. and NFS: Carbon, the Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX performed on-par with or just behind the 8800 GTS.
Despite the release of Windows Vista and NVIDIA's GeForce 8 series of cards, the Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX is still a sold video card. In fact, its still the most powerful ATI GPU-based card currently available. Had its price remained near the $500 mark, the X1950 XTX would be much harder to like. But Sapphire's Radeon X1950 XTX is available on-line for about $350 now. That makes this card just a bit less expensive than the a typical GeForce 8800 GTS. Given a choice between the two, we'd have to recommend the newer, more powerful, DX10 compliant GTS, but the Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX is no slouch. The fact remains, the card is plenty fast enough for all of today's games and its perfectly capable of handling Vista's Aero interface. If you're an ATI-fan holding out to see what R600 has to offer before your next major upgrade (and according to our current poll 39% of you are), the Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX will not disappoint in the interim.
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