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Connect3D Radeon X1900 XT/XTX Series Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Sunday, 16 April 2006 |
PureOverclock provides us a review on the Connect3D Radeon X1900 XT/XTX Series graphics cards. In a week or so we'll be taking a good hard look at NVIDIA's GeForce 7900 series, but before this, I thought it was about time we went in depth with ATI's high end cards, the Radeon X1900 XT and XTX, graciously provided by Connect3D. Let's be honest, as ATI's flagship product R520 didn't go too well. It wasn't that it was a bad product, it simply came too late to market due to an unexpected 6 month delay and on it's launch was priced much higher than NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GTX, of which had already been available at e-tailers for several months and therefore had plenty of time for its price to stabilize.
 Connect3D Radeon X1900 XT/XTX Series Review
By now everyone should know the delay to R520 was caused by a logic gate bug which in turn caused ATI's projected yield rate to drop significantly lower than they expected. Once the logic gate bug was found and corrected R520 gained 150MHz in clock frequency. Without this gain the Radeon X1800 XT would not have been anywhere near competitive to NVIDIA's flagship of the time, the GeForce 7800 GTX. Of course, a few months after its launch prices settled and the R520 based Radeon X1800 XT became an attractive card. It is currently in direct competition with NVIDIA's spanking new GeForce 7900 GT.
ATI has done a great job with R580, and the Connect3D Radeon X1900 XT/XTX are both excellent examples. The game benchmarks show that both cards offer a substantial performance boost over the last generation of high end cards and in some cases make or break the games enjoyment, especially if you're one of the growing number of people moving to 20" widescreen LCD's with a native resolution of 1680x1050. If you have a monitor of this calibre you'll no doubt want to show it off by turning on all the eye candy and both these cards will allow you this luxury.
The Connect3D Radeon X1900 XT steals the show here. Unless you are very much into overclocking the Radeon X1900 XT is a wise choice. It offers almost all the performance the XTX has to offer for less money, with the added bonus of being able to overclock to XTX speeds. I'm betting all XT's will clock to 650/1550MHz minimum, stunning. We are planning on testing the GeForce 7900 GT and GTX very soon, but for now I can at least put the choices available into perspective. The GeForce 7900 GT cannot compete with the Radeon X1900 XT nor is it meant to.
The GeForce 7900 GT is essentially a die shrunk GeForce 7800 GTX and nothing more. It costs around £240 and it's performance currently puts it squarely in competition with the Radeon X1800 XT, and the soon to be released Radeon X1900 GT. Now that's understood we can move onto the real competitor to both the Radeon X1900 XT and XT, the GeForce 7900 GTX. Connect3D is currently selling it's Radeon X1900 XTX for £370, and the XT for £329 respectively. On the same website the cheapest GeForce 7900 GTX is the Leadtek at £381 but it's not in stock.
If you want the very best single card solution, either the XT or XTX are the ones to own and I highly recommend the Connect3D Radeon X1900 XT even more so then the XTX. It offers almost all the performance of the XTX for £40 less and you can overclock it to XTX speeds for free! Overall I have to say that ATI are in a very strong position in the extreme high end right now, and can safely put all the R520 problems firmly behind them. R580 has been a success from day one.
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