Some weeks ago ATI lifted the cover on the Radeon X1950 family of graphics cards. Specifically, covers were lifted on two new SKU's; the Radeon X1950 XTX and the Radeon X1950 CrossFire edition. The differences between them are found in the compositing engine found on the CrossFire card, required to enable ATI's multi-GPU CrossFire technology. Both the XTX and the Crossfire edition are virtually identical in their outward appearance, specifications and performance characteristics, but what will be surprising to many is that both cards are being introduced at exact same relatively affordable $449 price point, making it hard to resist the CrossFire version in the end. - Rage3D

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX and CrossFire 512MB Review

It's a bit surprising to have the prices confirmed thus, taking into account the extra hardware and what not that's needed for the CrossFire cards, but if you want to sell CrossFire, making the decision to upgrade to a CrossFire graphics card a no-brainer is certainly one way to do it. If you can find one, you might as well get the CrossFire card. Powering these two new SKU's is a new graphics core from ATI known to most as the R580+. Very much like the R580 before it, the plus brings in a few tweaks to the memory controller which lets ATI be the first on the block with a graphics card that feature high-speed GDDR4 memory modules.

That, and a new, more efficient and much quieter cooler, are what the new Radeon X1950's are all about. While the new Radeon X1950's shouldn't be of much concern to those of you already enjoying your R580 based Radeon X1900's, they do offer some very welcome improvements to the cooler and a glimpse into the near future of high-end graphics cards. With the Radeon X1950 they've again taken the opportunity to make a similar transition from on technology to another, but this time it's from GDDR3 memory to GDDR4 memory. To prove the point, ATI has set the Radeon X1950 memory clocks to a blistering 2.0GHz effective rate.

Performance with the Radeon X1950 is not all that impressive compared to the Radeon X1900 XTX, there are no new features to speak of, and the noise problems with the cooler were easily solved with a third-party cooler. What makes the Radeon X1950 attractive, though, is the price. Okay, $449 is still a hell of a kick in the teeth for most people, but considering that the Radeon X1900 XTX was introduced at $649 and that NVIDIA's current GeForce 7950 GX2 is still around $550 on the street, $449 doesn't look too bad. It's not unrealistic to think that the cards will drop even lower not too long after they start showing up at e-tailers.

It's also nice to see the Radeon X1950 CrossFire edition priced on par with the Radeon X1950 XTX graphics card, something that I was frankly a bit surprised to see considering the extra hardware and whatnot required to make a CrossFire master card. If selling CrossFire to the masses is ATI's goal, that's certainly one consumer friendly way to go about it. All that we have to be concerned about it availability, which could easily drive prices well above ATI's asking price. We'll have to keep an eye on that when the cards start becoming available in the coming weeks.

Even though the Radeon X1950 is priced really nicely for a high-end card, recommending it as an upgrade if you already have a Radeon X1900 XT or XTX would be ridiculous, at best, considering the slight performance advantage and lack of any new features whatsoever. However, should you have something slower, or even should you be looking to jump to the other side of the high-end graphics fence, then certainly the Radein X1950 is the way to go.