1. Foreword. The First Impression.
2. Cooling System. Basic Components.
3. Setting Up and Overclocking.
4. Synthetical Tests (3DMark 2001SE and 2005).
5. Direct3D Games (Far Cry, Serious Sam 2).
6. OpenGL Games (Quake 4, Prey).
7. Conclusions.

Not so much time ago, ATI & AMD have introduced an interesting solution to the market of AGP based video hardware — Radeon X1950 Pro. No wonder that it's aimed there as the primary competitor to GeForce 7800GS by NVIDIA because the previous top-level AGP design, Radeon X1600 Pro, hasn't been tough enough to make a real challenge. Even if a modification with a faster video memory called Radeon X1650 Pro was released for the AGP bus a while ago, it wouldn't make any serious difference. A much more powerful solution has got to be developed, so here it is.
 
Radeon X1950 Pro by Sapphire Technology for the AGP bus is related very much to a PCI Express release of this card with the most important difference of carrying 512Mb of video memory right from the moment of official introducing in December of 2006. That's right, a PCI Express version of Radeon X1950 Pro has been promoted to the market with 256Mb initially as well as AGP versions by other manufacturers. However, as 1.4 ns and faster 512Mbit GDDR3 SDRAM chips have fallen in price several months later, 512Mb PCI Express based cards have been also introduced by Sapphire as well as 512Mb AGP based cards by other manufacturers. In a matter of fact, both bus designs are powered by the same ATI RV570 graphprocessor, and even more, they're almost identical visually. All right, the sample about to be reviewed is one of the first manufactured, so let's see how fast it runs on the aging AGP 8x bus. Can it blow a new life into such an old computer hardware or is it just a waste of money?

The video card comes in a retail box carrying the logotypes of Sapphire and ATI, also some kind of female-like mechanical creature we've seen many times before. Although the box is rather small, it contains the video card and many additional hardware: two DVI to D-Sub (VGA) adaptors, a splitted to composite video adaptor, a splitted to per channel (RGB) composite video adaptor, one cable for splitted and one for composite video signal, and a twin cable for auxiliary power supply. Of course, there is a driver CD, also a quick install guide written in 17 languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, Russian, Croatian, Greek, Hungarian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Turkish) and two "Fueled by Sapphire - Graphics by ATI" stickers. You may also notice a "HDCP Ready" label on the box, though the card has probably nothing to do with digital content protection because it doesn't come with a HDMI connector. What to say, another marketing trick.
 

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There is no single reference design for Radeon X1950 Pro, but this one seems to be the most popular. The power supply stabiliser is located in the right part of the card close to two 4-pin "molex" style connectors. The opposite part is populated by two DVI and one TV-out connector with a Sapphire hologram on the top. There is a large radiator of some unusual shape with a semi-transparent blue cover featuring the same female-like mechanical creature.
 

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There is nothing special on the back side of the card. You can see a PCIe to AGP bridge (RIALTO) covered by a sticky protective rubber pad of pink colour, also a straight line of multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) and a square chip leftwards which is the primary PWM controller.
 

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