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Figure 1. ATI’s X1950XTX and X1950CF. (Source: JPR)

True to their word, given at Siggraph, ATI promised to send samples of the new AIBs to us, and they showed up last week—a X1950XTX, and a X1950 CF. To us that means they are in production; we have found this to be a pretty solid rule.

Notice the dual-link connector on the CF version (AIB on the right), and the heat tubing running through the copper heat sink. It’s filled with a glycol.

We plugged them into an Asus A8 R32 MVP Deluxe 3200-based mobo with a 2.6-GHz dual-core FX 60 AMD processor, and connected them to the Dell 30-inch 2580 x 1600 display. Beta drivers came with the boards and we loaded them.

We pulled out the Ageia physic AIB and uninstalled the Chuck HDR patch.

We compared them to the Radeon X1900XTs we tested when they came out, and the results were interesting (Figure 2, below).

Figure 2. ATI Radeon X1950XTX 3Dmark06 test results. (Source: JPR)	Figure 3. ATI Radeon X1950XTX Crossfire, across four resolutions in 3Dmark06. (Source: JPR)

The results were about what we expected, and the X1950XTXs give a nice performance boost over the X1900XT of 8.2% at 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA, and were able to do that running cooler, quieter, using the same basic R580 GPU, and yet with higher clock and memory speed, as well as a new generation of memory: GDDR4.

So since we are lucky enough to have one of Dell’s fabulous 3007 FWP 30 inch LCD monitors, we had the opportunity to test the AIBs up to 2560 x 1600, so we did (Figure 3).

No mater what we tried we could not get the system to run 4X AA, or even 2X AA at 2580 x 1600, and kept getting an “IDirect3DDevice9::Create Texture Failed: OutOfMemory (D3Derr_outofvideomemory)” error message.

With 512 MBytes of GDDR4 on the boards it’s hard to figure out what is using all that memory that it’s being denied to the test. At the time of this writing no one at ATI had an answer, and FutureMark said, “Not our problem.”

Of course we reported this to ATI and they’re looking into it, but we had to wrap up and go to press and couldn’t wait for them.

However, it was perplexing so we tried the AIBs with an application at various resolutions. We choose F.E.A.R as the test and ran it with Crossfire on and off, and with Vsynch off. (We actually ran one series with Vsynch to see the difference—it was slower.) The results we got are shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. ATI Radeon X1950XTX Crossfire, across four resolutions in “F.E.A.R.” (Source: JPR)

We ran the test with Crossfire on four times, rebooting in between, trying to get a different result for the anomaly in the slope at 1600 x 1200, but it was consistent; for some reason the AIBs break at that point with CF on.

However, there was no out of memory error.

We also noticed in Crossfire mode the screen would tear and produce blocks that drifted up to the left, as if it was losing synch between the two frame buffers. Again ATI’s tech support was stumped, and suggested we try another set of boards. As appreciative as we were of their generosity, time, alas, was not on our side and we had to decline for this report, but will take it up again next week.

To be fair we have seen similar problems with Nvidia GeForce 7900 SLI while running GWAR where texture maps fail to load properly and make triangular discolored and distorted patches.

We didn’t try the over-clocking since in previous tests it didn’t prove to give that much of a boost and often resulted in a crash.

Figure 5. “F.E.A.R.” tearing in Crossfire mode. (Source: JPR)

What do we think?

The X1950XTX is a nice (8%) boost over the X1900; however, if you already have X1900s, these new AIBs aren’t that attractive, and may, based our experience so far, come with more problems then benefits.

If you were thinking of getting an X19xx then the aggressive price of the new X1950s ($449) could be interesting.

Also, since it’s not clear if ATI will bring the R600 out in time for the holidays, and if you’re looking for a personal gift (that is one for you from you) then we’d suggest waiting and making a decision in late November. Also, Nvidia will have their new G80 out then, and if ATI holds back on the R600, and Nvidia doesn’t get too greedy on the price, it may be a better choice.

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