You would think that the Radeon X1950 PRO would just about be discontinued, with the new mid-range graphics cards from NVIDIA offering DirectX 10 and the Radeon HD 2600 just around the corner, why would you even bother looking at the AMD DirectX 9.0c counterpart? Well the new NVIDIA cards come with an increased price tag and do not seem to offer the punch that the last generations do in DirectX 9.0c games, so the previous generation remains quite valuable. If you are not looking at jumping onto the DirectX 10 bandwagon straight away the Radeon X1950 PRO and GeForce 7900 GS are still very real examples of mid-range graphics cards you would consider buying. - TweakTown

PowerColor Radeon X1950 PRO SCS3 Edition Review

The particular card we are looking at today is the Radeon X1950 PRO SCS3 edition from PowerColor, which has a very well endowed heat sink on it allowing it to run silent. Because of this we do not expect the card to be a good overclocker, but we still want to check out how the card performs at stock speeds. After all, you should not have to sacrifice performance just because you want a quiet system. Checking out the card is a pretty quick process as well thanks to the mammoth heatsink on the front which manages to take up the whole card. The whole setup is a great design, though.

The Radeon X1950 PRO really took some time to establish itself as a serious player. Initially, it seemed that the card was just a typical let's release something for the hell of it product but with price drops and new drivers it has grown up nicely. We just have to hope that AMD do not stuff it all up by releasing the Radeon HD 2600 series with a high price tag and poor performance. This particular incarnation has a fair bit going for it as well. It is silent, which is always a good thing, and it is not one of those silent Radeon X1300's, it is actually a card you can game with.

The design of the card does mean CrossFire dual graphics is out of the question and while it is technically a con, clearly PowerColor knows that the chances of someone using CrossFire period, let alone on two of these cards is not a big deal, we cannot see it being a problem. This is one of the better versions of the Radeon X1950 PRO and the silent design works well. However, with a setup like this you normally have to trade off overclock ability, but if you only want to run at stock speeds the card performs just as well as all those other models with noisy spinning fans.

We tried some overclocking but did not get far at all. PowerColor have done a great job with the card with the only real gripe being the lack of an included game, which is disappointing as the company has bundled some fantastic games in the past. Come on PowerColor give us a new game, otherwise it is a product to take into consideration, as long as DirectX 10 is not a requirement for you.