HBlog - Hardware Blog

First INQpression Water-cooling makes X1900XTX performs like X1950XTX

THE SAPPHIRE Toxic X1900 XTX card is the first water-cooling serial produced card that had all you need in the package. Sapphire is getting ready for a new one based on the X1950 XTX card, the one that runs with faster memory, but interestingly enough we proved that even Sapphire Toxic X1900 XTX has still a lot of steam.

The card is clocked at 675MHz core and 1600 Hz memory. The original X1900 XTX works at 650 MHz and 1550 MHz memory. The card has sixteen pipelines, forty eight pixel shaders just like every R580 based card.

Let’s focus on the cooling. The R580 core is cowered with a water block. Two tubes get the water in and out of that water block and the both tubes are connected to a huge radiator / pump / reservoir part. The Radiator / pump / reservoir part looks like a second graphic card. You can plug it to a free slot in your PC. A radiator has a fan that cools the radiator and the water in it. It has two modes that you can change via simple switcher. One is silent mode that runs cooler slower but still does the job and second is performance one that give you more cooling juice if you overclock. Memory don’t mind that is just passively cooled it works well at 1600 MHz.

The package is incredibly big as it has to accommodate the card,a radiator with a pump all connected with tubes. It is roughly twice as deep than the usual box and is partially transparent. The package also includes two DVI dongles, Composite Video cable, Avivo – audio in and out cable, S Video cable and HDTV cable – S video to RGB and a Molex to PCIe six pin power cable.

The card has two DVI and a single Avivo in and out and it comes with a driver CD, Sapphire Select game DVD, Power Director 4.0, Power DVD 6.0, Sapphire Trixx Overclocking tool and a user manual. Select DVD enables you to go on the internet and register for one of the few games that the company offers. Therefore you don’t need to be stuck with a single game that you maybe don’t like.

It is very easy to install the card. No special skills are required, you just plug the card in a PCIe slot, plug a six pin PCIe power connector, plug the radiator / pump / reservoir part in a second PCIe or PCI slot just to hold it, connect a 12 V Molex connector to power it and turn it for some rock and role. After that it works as any normal graphic card but is much more quiet than any other X1900 XT even the X1950 XTX.

Benchmarketing
We used :
Foxconn C51XE M2aa Nforce 590 SLI motherboard
Geforce 7900 GT 450/1320 MHz
Athlon FX 62 2800 MHz 90 nanometre Windsor core
2×1024 MB DDR2 Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3 memory
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Thermaltake Mini Typhoon Athlon 64/X2/FX cooler and Intel CPU’s
Silverstone Strider ST60F, 600W ATX 2.0 SATA

We compared the card versus the just released X1950 XTX card and a good old X1900 XTX card. First we need to say is that Sapphire Toxic X1900 XTX is much quieter than the other two. That’s where water cooling scores. It is especially more quiet than X1900 XTX air cooled, as this card could speed up the fan in heavy 3D testing or games.

Doom 3 shows that Toxic can even beat the X1950XTX. The performance is close but it is impressive to see that DDR 3 card clocked at 1600 MHz loses just marginally from X1950 XTX. Even with effects on Toxic is just 0.3 to one frame slower than X1950 XTX and it wins by up to three frames from X1900 XTX with a stock cooler.

In Far Cry Toxic is faster at first two resolutions by up to one frame and it loses by six frames at 20×15. Toxic is faster in Quake 4 by a small margin at two top resolutions and in two smaller it loses by a small margin. It is again faster in the same game with 4X FSAA and 8X Aniso surprised us that Toxic can outperform faster clocked card. It has to be due the 25 MHz faster core.

In FEAR Toxic stays behind just for a single frame in three top resolutions and four frames at 10×7. FEAR with 4X FSAA and 8X Aniso Toxic matches faster X1950 XTX at 12×9 and 20×15 and loses by a single frame at 16×12 and two at 10×7. Not even worth to mention it.

In Serious Sam 2, X1950 XTX is slightly faster by averagely single frame and in the same game with effects on it lags up to five frames. It is always two to three frames faster than a default clocked X1900 XTX. Only in highest ever settings Serious Sam High Quality HDR + FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X, Toxic loses its breath as X1950 XTX wins by up to seven frames but sometimes as little as two at 20×15.

Toxic wins 3Dmark03 by more than 100 marks, 3Dmark05 by less than 100 and loses in 3Dmark06 by less than 50 marks. X1950 XTX is just slightly faster in Shader model 2.0 and 3.0 / HDR tests. Overall Toxic sure can show its teeth.

In Short
First or all Toxic is the quietest card from X1900XTX and X1950 XTX that we seen so far. This is the key buying argument. Second stuff is that it ends up faster even from the X1950 XTX in some cases. You can push the card for additional 20 MHz and get even faster speeds as water will cool it but 700 MHz is unreachable.

We like the fact that its quiet, faster and that it can overclock. Sapphire makes dual Crossfire water-cooled with new Limited Edition TOXIC X1950 Crossfire card and TOXIC X1950XTX. Both cards are water-cooled but use two cards and two coolers, but deliver best performance for the niche enthusiast market.

Toxic should land in RV570, Radeon X1950PRO market as people would definitely like to have it and this one should overclock higher. Overall we like the water cooled Toxic it is a good, quiet card. At this time Toxic X1950 XTX should hit the shelves quite soon and will take $/€500 place and Toxic X1900 XTX is going to drop and make it even cheaper. µ

Reviewed and tested by Sanjin Rados and Fuad Abazovic

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