Review: The fastest AGP from ATI

AGP still puts up a fight, we confirmed that after our test of HIS's AGP X1650XT card, and if you missed it you can read it here. Just like that one, this one is also done on Vista OS. We chose Vista to show you how well the venerable AGP system copes up with new OS.

For this test we got yet another card from HIS. Top of the line in its AGP series is the Radeon X1950 Pro, and HIS made a Turbo version of this card. The full name of the tested card is HIS X1950 Pro IceQ Turbo, and it's our pleasure to share the results with you.

The card's Turbo label means that its clocks are higher then the reference ones. The GPU works at 590 MHz, while the memory is clocked at 1540 MHz. The card ships with 512 MB GDDR3 memory on a 256-bit memory interface. The core is clocked 25 MHz higher then the reference 575 MHz, and memory ended up 80 MHz higher then the reference 690 MHz.

This difference in clocks is rather interesting, since HIS did absolutely the same thing with HIS X1650XT IceQ Turbo. The X1650XT also had 25MHz / 80 MHz higher clocks. The memory chips used are Samsung's 1.25ns parts which were easily overclocked.
Cooling is far from the reference design, HIS is using the third generation of their IceQ 3 with a heatpipe which does a great job in cooling the GPU. Apart from doing a great job as far as cooling itself goes, the IceQ is also almost silent. Memory and PWM are cooled by a passive heatsink. If you like modding, then you'll like this cooler, it gives a nice blue touch since it is UV reactive.

Temperature measurements in ATI Catalyst showed 40° C in 2D, while under load the card went up to 57° C. It has two dual-link DVI's that support HDCP. The HDTV out, AVIVO for video, Shader model 3.0, Advanced Adaptive Antialiasing, 36 pixel shaders and 8 vertex shaders are just some of the card's features, oh yes it's also RoHS compliant.

You can see the RIALTO chip on the back of the card.



The box is maybe a little too big, but it comes fully packed, and in it you'll find:

- an HIS X1950 Pro graphic card
- HDTV Output cable
- S-Video Out cable
- DVI - VGA Dongle x 2
- 6 pin power adapter
- Manual & Driver CD
- Microsoft Dungeon Siege Full
- HIS "get 1 free full game"

- CyberLink PowerDirector 5 SE Plus
- CyberLink Power2Go 5
- CD - CyberLink Medi@Show 3
- GameShadow
- ATI Demos

Testbed:

Motherboard:
Abit AV8
VIA K8T800 Pro

CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (provided by AMD)

CPU-Cooler:
Stock AMD Cooler

Memory:
OCZ EB DDR PC-3700 2x1024MB Platinum XTC Dual Channel Kit (provided by OCZ)
CL3-3-2-8-CR1T at 2.7V

Graphics Card:
HIS Radeon X1650XT (provided by HIS)
HIS Radeon X1950 Pro (provided by HIS)

Power supply:
OCZ GameXStream 700W (provided by OCZ)

Hard disk:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA (provided by Seagate)

Case fans:
Arctic Fan 9 PWM (provided by Arctic-Cooling)
AF12025 PWM (provided by Arctic-Cooling)





Testing:

We tested the card under Vista OS and added the results of recently tested HIS X1650 IceQ Turbo card for comparison. The X1950 Pro is the best ATI AGP card that money can buy, unfortunately we didn't have any matching Nvidia card to compare the results. We tried to overclock the card, and to out surprise, we had some luck. We managed to push the core up by 51 MHz, and it ended up at 641 MHz, which is 66 MHz higher then reference clock.

Samsung's 1.25 ns memory worked well even on 1674 MHz, which is 294 MHz higher then reference clock at a modest 1380 MHz. Even with these much higher clocks, the card didn't show any significantly higher results. So we advise you to stick to default clocks which will at least prolong the cards life.

Synthetic tests: