Noise, Overclocking, 2D Quality

The GeCube Radeon X1900 XTX is an exact copy of the reference Radeon X1900 XTX from ATI, and its cooling system behaves absolutely alike. The fan works at its max speed when the computer is turned on and is really hard to bear, but then slows down in steps to become almost silent. The speed of the fan would go up sometimes during our tests – the fan speed control circuit must have reacted to the GPU temperature getting higher, but the noise remained at a comfortable level even though with that irritating “plastic” quality.

The reviewed graphics card from GeCube is at the very top of the current Radeon X1900 series, so we didn’t expect it to be any good at overclocking. That was indeed so: the maximum frequencies the card was stable at were 675MHz GPU and 800 (1600) MHz memory. This review is about practical and inexpensive rather than extreme overclocking, so we only added a 120mm fan to blow alongside the card’s PCB. This is why we didn’t achieve any wonders, but you should be aware that the frequency potential of the GeCube Radeon X1900 XTX, and of any high-end graphics card for that matter, is almost exhausted even without any overclocking. The card is already working near its limit. Better overclocking results may be achieved by using water-based or cryogen cooling and by modifying the power circuit, but such experiments are rather expensive and involve not a small risk of damaging the card in the process.

The quality of 2D image provided by the card was expectably high in all display modes, including 1800x1440@75Hz and 1600x1200@85Hz. The GeCube Radeon X1900 XTX delivers a sharp picture without any fuzziness or shadowing which are sometimes observed with very inexpensive no-name products that use non-standard PCBs and low-cost components.