ASUS is a name mainly known for motherboards, but over the past few years they have expanded their product link to include video cards, monitor's, laptops, and other consumer electronic devices. Today we will be looking at one of their video cards the Extreme AX1950 PRO. The card features ATI's Radeon X1950 PRO chipset, 256MB of GDDR3 memory, CrossFire technology and HDCP support. On top of the these quite standard features of all Radeon X1950 PRO graphics cards, ASUS is adding some extras to their package. When going for an ASUS products you can rely on the quality and the technical support of a worldwide company, that cares about their customers. - ThinkComputers

ASUS Extreme AX1950 PRO HDCP Compliant Review

The ASUS Extreme AX1950 PRO comes in its retail packaging. On the front there is a picture of a girl and on the back there is a list of features, ASUS exclusives, and system requirements. Just like all Radeon X1900 series cards the Extreme AX1950 PRO is a long card, but not as long as NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 series cards. At the top of the card you will notice two native CrossFire connectors. You will need to purchase another Radeon X1950 PRO that comes with a CrossFire connector, because this card does not. ASUS uses an all red PCB with a very plain cooling system.

The cooling system is comprised of an all aluminum heatsink with heatpipe covered in a plastic shroud with a small fan at the back of the card. The only identifying mark to let you know that it is an ASUS product is the logo on the cooling system. Unlike most other Radeon X1900 series cards the Extreme AX1950 PRO does not use two expansion slots. This is mainly because the cooling system is a bit smaller than most. At the end of the card is the power connection. I really hope they start putting these facing out from the cards because the longer the cards get the harder the connectors are going to plug in.

We really enjoyed playing with the ASUS Extreme AX1950 PRO accelerator. We were able to play our favorite games at max resolution with all of the settings turned up and we did not notice any ghosting or skipping at all. It was great to get the full potential out of these games. While using and playing games the Extreme AX1950 PRO was much quieter than the Radeon X1900 XT video card. ASUS went with a quieter cooling solution that many consumers will prefer over the louder cooling system. Only one thing about it is it shoots the air back into your case because there is no PCI exhaust bracket.

When it is all said and done the ASUS card is the better deal. It outperformed the Radeon X1900 XT in most of the benchmarks and is around $170 compared to the Radeon X1900 XT's hefty price tag of around $260. With all the factors counted in, the better performance, quite running, and price you have to go for the ASUS Extreme AX1950 PRO graphics card.