After having taken a look at ATI's Radeon X1950 PRO in its various forms many times on our hallowed pages over the past few months since it was released, you can be left in little doubt as to how impressed we were with the price performance ratio offered by this particular SKU. By all means, we weren't the only ones, with Radeon X1950 PRO boards flying off shelves as the part proved to be immensely popular amongst consumers too. With the RV570 architecture that powers these parts proving to be so successful, it's hardly surprising that ATI were keen to take the core further, into lower priced territories. Thankfully, it seems that the yields have been right to do just this. - Elite Bastards

Sapphire Radeon X1950 GT 256MB HD Avivo Review

Thus, what ATI have created is an SKU that sits between the Radeon X1650 XT and Radeon X1950 PRO, but with a stance much closer to the latter, being as it is simply a full RV570 core with reduced clock speeds. The name of this new part, the Radeon X1950 GT accelerator. The RV570 is the first desktop GPU to be manufactured using the 80 nanometre process, and this core is designed specifically as a replacement for ATI's previous, R580 based, Radeon X1900 GT. As we mentioned in our introduction, the only difference between the Radeon X1950 GT and PRO is with regard to clock speeds.

Sapphire's Radeon X1950 GT sticks entirely to reference specifications, so what we're looking at is a 500MHz core, 1200MHz memory board, which also utilises the single slot reference cooler. In keeping with its specifications, the Sapphire board has the look of a reference design, sporting a 6-pin PCI Express power connector, and the two connectors required for CrossFire support. Sapphire's Radeon X1950 GT uses the same Samsung memory modules as on most boards, although interestingly on our sample these modules are rated at 1.2ns, which translates to a recommended maximum clock speed of 1600MHz.

Having seen the impressive performance of the Radeon X1950 PRO so many times in the past, the thought of seeing a full RV570 core hitting a lower price point was a mouth watering one indeed, and one that has been delivered as promised by the Radeon X1950 GT. The performance drop seen in this board over a Radeon X1950 PRO more often than not mirrors its lower clock speeds very closely. ATI's thinking when releasing this board has clearly been to bring a product to market that is cheaper than NVIDIA's GeForce 7900 GS while retaining a performance advantage over it.

The only down side to the Radeon X1950 GT is, ironically, its close proximity to the Radeon X1950 PRO in specification, which also means that there is only a relatively small gap in pricing between the two boards of around £20 for a basic, reference design part. If you intend on running your board at stock speeds and are looking for a graphical boost in this price range, then chances are you may well be tempted to splash out just that little extra to enjoy the full Radeon X1950 PRO goodness, which on occasion can make the difference between borderline and total playability at higher resolutions.

On the other hand, if £100 is your absolute budgetary limit, then the Radeon X1950 GT is the board for you. At least, until we see just what NVIDIA's forthcoming GeForce 8600 parts have to offer in the next week or so, at least. Similarly, if you're a hardcore overclocker, then you might want to save yourself that extra £20, and instead have some fun seeing just how close to or even beyond Radeon X1950 PRO performance you can push your Radeon X1950 GT.