Conclusion

The new graphics processor ATI RV570 has showed itself a well-made solution. Manufactured on a new tech process, the GPU has a smaller die area in spite of a large number of transistors it incorporates and thus has a rather low manufacturing cost. As a result, the recommended price of the Radeon X1950 Pro is set at $199 although it surpasses its predecessor in functionality. This is not a limit. We guess ATI has some elbowroom for price maneuvering in the future because the new product is a simple and cutting-edge solution. The Radeon X1950 Pro provides support for multi-GPU configurations by incorporating a full-featured compositing engine, which is integrated into the GPU itself.

Launching successfully its GeForce 7 graphics architecture, Nvidia could refrain from developing absolutely new GPUs for mainstream graphics cards for about a year and a half already. The small G71 chip not only helps the company keep its leadership in the premium class with its GeForce 7950 GX2, but also offer small and inexpensive products like the GeForce 7900 GS at a profit. The GeForce 7900 GS is a good graphics card that delivers higher performance than the GeForce 7600 GT. Considering the small chip size, we guess the price of the 7900 GS may be soon lowered towards $150.

The Radeon X1950 Pro has had a small advantage over the original Radeon X1900 GT in most of the tests, which is natural considering the similar characteristics of the two cards.

There are few tests in which the Radeon X1950 Pro is slower than its main opponent GeForce 7900 GS. And the difference in speed is usually very small and often can be seen in certain resolutions only. These tests are Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Prey, Quake 4, Pacific Fighters and TES IV: Oblivion. These are mostly OpenGL games, some of them are also optimized for the specific features of the Nvidia GeForce 7 architecture.

If we were to compare the available $199 graphics cards in terms of performance, the new ATI Radeon X1950 Pro is not just better than the Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS but can successfully compete with the more expensive Nvidia GeForce 7900 GT that belongs to the $259 category. Also important is that the Radeon X1950 Pro offers you the option of enabling high-quality anisotropic filtering that surpasses everything Nvidia’s solutions can offer as of today. In other words, the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro is overall the best graphics card in the $199 price category. It is possible, however, that the price of products like GeForce 7900 GS, 7900 GT and 7950 GT will be going down at a fast rate and the Radeon X1950 Pro may find itself between a cheaper 7900 GS and a tremendous 7950 GT.

ATI Radeon X1950 Pro

Highs:

• Best performance in the $199 category
• Beats its market opponent in most of the gaming tests
• 36 pixel processors provide some reserve for future applications
• Supports FSAA and FP16 HDR simultaneously
• Supports VIVO
• Supports hardware decoding of H.264 and other HD video formats
• Effective and compact cooler
• Quiet operation
• Hardware CrossFire thanks to the integrated Compositing Engine

Lows:

• Rather high power consumption
• Long PCB may prevent installation into small system cases
• Inconvenient position of the additional power connector

Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS

Highs:

• High performance in OpenGL applications
• Supports hardware decoding of H.264 and other HD video formats
• Quiet operation
• Low power consumption
• Superb overclockability
• Compact size (in comparison with Radeon X1950 XT/X1900 GT)

Lows:

• Slower than the market opponent in a majority of benchmarks
• Lower texture filtering quality than with the competing product
• Does not support FSAA and HDR (FP16) simultaneously