There was a time, not long ago in the grand scheme of things, when a PRO card meant top of the line, cream of the crop. Times have changed however and these days highly desirable Pro has been replaced with silly acronyms like XTX, XT, and GT. PRO, at least with ATI, has been relegated to the throne of less performance and fanboy mockery. With the Radeon X1950 PRO we've been reintroduced to the PRO acronym tagged onto a unique graphics card that uses a unique graphics core that introduces some much appreciated advancements in ATI's ongoing struggle against arch rival NVIDIA. Whether or not the Radeon X1950 PRO raises PRO back to the respectable perch remaisn to be seen. - Rage3D

ATI Radeon X1950 PRO 256MB CrossFire Review

The Radeon X1950 PRO is built using the RV570 graphics core which features 256MB of GDDR3 memory, 36 pixel shaders, 8 vertex shaders, and 12 ROP's. To those of you paying attention these specifications will look familiar; they are the same as featured with ATI's Radeon X1900 GT graphics card. The RV570 is no chopped down R580 like the Radeon X1900 GT uses though, no core that couldn't quite cut it; the RV570 was designed and built for the Radeon X1950 PRO and the mainstream performance segment with purpose and intent. So even though the Radeon X1900 GT is still around, it will be usurped by the Radeon X1950 PRO.

We're checking out a couple of reference Radeon X1950 PRO's sent to us by ATI. These cards, being reference, come with reference clock speeds of 575MHz core and 1380MHz memory. It's supposed to go for $199, the same price NVIDIA's GeForce 7900 GS starts at, but the few that have already shown up on store shelves have been priced considerably higher than that. The choice of competeing cards was fairly straight forward. NVIDIA's GeForce 7900 GS which comes in between $199-249 is ATI's main target competition, and with $195 price tag ATI's own Radeon X1900 GT also makes a fair comparison point.

Just $199 for the Radeon X1950 PRO is a pretty sweet deal. Compared to the GeForce 7900 GS it's definitely faster and scales just as well in CrossFire with the new internal bridges. It's also very quiet, certainly no louder than the GeForce 7900 GS cooler, and it doesn't get very hot. It's quite a bit longer though, which I guess might cause some problems if you plan on cramming it inside a really small case or something, but overall the length is nothing to really worry about. It's hard to find anything negative to say about it really, though if there's one thing it's the same thing I usually say about new ATI products; availability.

With the evolutionary advancements made with CrossFire, the successful move to an 80nm manufacturing process, and the low asking price, I think that the Radeon X1950 PRO represents a inconspicuous but significant step forward for ATI. For those of you on a tight budget, I don't think there's a better graphics card out there right now.