SAPPHIRE RADEON X1950 PRO REVIEW

"Targeting the adrenaline addicted minds of the avid gamers with jaw-dropping performance, Sapphire delivers enthusiast-class features to the mainstream with the ATI Radeon™ x1950 Pro. The Sapphire ATI Radeon™ x1950 Pro promises to awaken the senses and free the imagination from the shackles of PC hardware limitations while remaining affordable. The Sapphire family of products are synonymous with extreme performance and reliability. The Sapphire x1950 Pro makes for a welcome addition to the family with its robust hardware offerings such as: the industry acclaimed x1950 GPU, 512MB of GDDR3 of onboard memory, CrossFire support, DirectX and OpenGL along with enhanced support for the Windows Vista™ 3D environment. Experience the price vs. performance champion with Sapphire x1950 Pro!"

"36 pixel shader processors, 8 vertex shader processors, Up to 256-bit 8 channel GDDR3 memory interface, Native PCI Express® x16 bus interface and Plug-and-play (native) CrossFire™"

"Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware. Shader Model 3.0 vertex and pixel shader supports. Full speed 32-bit floating point processing. High dynamic range rendering with floating point blending and anti-aliasing support. High performance dynamic branching and flow control. Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® 2.0."

"2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes: Sparse multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable sample patterns, and centroid sampling. New Adaptive Anti-Aliasing mode. Temporal Anti-Aliasing. Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1) at all resolutions, up to and including widescreen HDTV. 2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes: Up to 128-tap texture filtering. Adaptive algorithm with performance and quality options. Improved rendering with higher subpixel precision and LOD computation levels. New rotational high quality rendering mode."

"Programmable arbitration logic maximizes memory efficiency, software upgradeable. New fully associative texture, color, and Z cache design. Hierarchical Z-Buffer with Early Z Test. Lossless Z-Buffer Compression (up to 48:1). Fast Z-Buffer Clear. Z Cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering. Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, up to and including widescreen HDTV."

"Video capabilities, including high fidelity gamma, color correction and scaling. Dual independent display controllers that support true 30 bits per pixel throughout the display pipe. Full symmetry on both heads. Each display interface supports display resolutions beyond 2560x1600. Advanced DVI capabilities, including 10-bit, 16-bit HDR output. YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays. Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time. MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration: DXVA support. Hardware motion compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion. All-format DTV/HDTV decoding. Adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing and frame rate conversion."

"Multi-GPU technology. Four modes of operation: Alternate frame rendering for maximum performance. Supertiling for optimal load-balancing. Scissoring for compatibility. Super AA for maximum image quality. Native CrossFire support simplifies setup by requiring no dedicated slave or master hardware. 24-bit CrossFire connection enables high resolutions and refresh rates. Supports the broadest range of platforms for both Intel and AMD."