Once again we find ourselves on the eve of big changes in the video card market. But then don't we always? With Vista and DirectX 10 just around the corner as well as a new crop of cards from both ATI and Nvidia in the works, we've entered that strange twilight zone period where we see manufacturers squeezing the last drop of juice out of the current video card harvest. Many buyers are hesitant to buy a top of the line card right now and with good reason. Nobody wants to plop down $500 dollars or more on a current top-of-the-line card when they know that within a short time another top dog will be on the market, at or near, the same price point and with (hopefully) greatly enhanced capabilities. Nvidia, ATI and their respective partners know this better than anyone and have taken steps to keep the cash flowing.

The concept is a simple one. Toward the end of a current GPU's life span create a new crop of cards with nearly the same performance as the current models but with a much lower price tag. The methods vary from reducing the number of pixel processors and shader units or dropping the core speed to simply using slower RAM modules or less of it. What it boils down to is you get a lot more for your money than at any other time in a GPU's life span. Bargain hunters rejoice.

"Sapphire is ATI's largest and best performing partner World Wide", Dave Orton, CEO ATI.

That says just about everything you need to know about Sapphire. Since 2001 Sapphire has been offering up ATI based cards and doing so at prices few manufacturers can compete with. With products such as their Toxic line-up, Sapphire caters to the enthusiast as well as the main stream user.

Specs

Here are the specs on the X1950Pro from the Sapphire website:

Features

Shader Technology

• Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware.
• Shader Model 3.0 vertex and pixel shader support:
  • Full speed 32-bit floating point processing
  • High dynamic range rendering with floating point blending and anti-aliasing support
  • High performance dynamic branching and flow control
• Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® 2.0

Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering

• 2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes:
  • Sparse multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable sample patterns, and centroid sampling
  • New Adaptive Anti-Aliasing mode
  • Temporal Anti-Aliasing
• Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1) at all resolutions, up to and including widescreen HDTV
• 2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes:
  • Up to 128-tap texture filtering
  • Adaptive algorithm with performance and quality options
• Improved rendering with higher subpixel precision and LOD computation levels
  • New rotational high quality rendering mode

3Dc+™ — Advanced Texture Compression

• High quality 4:1 compression for normal maps and luminance maps
• Works with any single-channel or two-channel data format

Ring Bus Memory Controller

• Programmable arbitration logic maximizes memory efficiency, software upgradeable
• New fully associative texture, color, and Z cache design
• Hierarchical Z-Buffer with Early Z Test
• Lossless Z-Buffer Compression (up to 48:1)
• Fast Z-Buffer Clear
• Z Cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering
• Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, up to and including widescreen HDTV

Avivo™ Video and Display Engine

• New advanced video capabilities, including high fidelity gamma, color correction and scaling
• Dual independent display controllers that support true 30 bits per pixel throughout the display pipe
• Full symmetry on both heads
• Each display interface supports display resolutions beyond 2560x1600
• Advanced DVI capabilities, including 10-bit, 16-bit HDR output
• YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays
• Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
• MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration:
• DXVA support
  • Hardware motion compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion
• All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
• Adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing and frame rate conversion (temporal filtering)

CrossFire™

• Multi-GPU technology
  
  
• Four modes of operation:
  • Alternate frame rendering for maximum performance
  • Supertiling for optimal load-balancing
  • Scissoring for compatibility
  • Super AA for maximum image quality
  
  
• Native CrossFire support simplifies setup by requiring no dedicated slave or master hardware
• 24-bit CrossFire connection enables high resolutions and refresh rates
• Supports the broadest range of platforms for both Intel and AMD

Whew!

The X1950 Pro falls roughly between the X1800's and X1900's in terms of features, yet is priced closer to what you would have paid for a X1600XT not so long ago. (And still can at some places.) But the X1950 Pro isn't a crippled version of a X1950XTX, it is actually a new chip based on ATI's new 80nm technology. Outside of Sapphire's familiar blue-green color, the card doesn't wander far from ATI's design. Other than a slight difference in the fan the cooler remains the same as the ATI card except, of course, for the graphics. The Sapphire card does, however, clock slightly higher than the original. The reference card runs at 575/1380 MHz.

The 7900 GTO is another "bargain" card we will be testing today. For all intents and purposes the GTO is simply a GTX with slower memory. I paid $250 for the 7900 GTO recently; at the same online vendor the Sapphire X1950 Pro runs $200.