X1950 pro benchmark: Официальное тестирование RV570, он же Radeon X1950 Pro / Видеокарты

A lot has already been said about the long-awaited new products from ATI under the code names RV570 and RV560. The earth is full of rumors, but sometime you still have to put an end to it. Today we can finally tell you about this new video processor and acquaint you with the results of its performance quite officially. We tested the Radeon X1950Pro, including on the new stand, based on the Intel Core Duo X6800, but first things first.

We will get acquainted with the new GPU, designed to compete for a place under the sun in the class of products priced at $199-229, using the X1950Pro video card from PowerColor. The video card is designed for use with the PCI-Express bus, equipped with a VIVO/HDTV-out connector and two DVI Dual-Link connectors supporting resolutions of 2048×1536 @ 85 Hz with analog connection and up to 2560×1600 with digital connection.

The first thing that catches your eye is a huge cooler from Arctic Cooling. Of course, it was a little strange to see such a huge cooler for cooling a chip with a rather modest power consumption, made according to the 80 nm process technology. However, in the fight for silence, TUL, whose brand PowerColor is, decided not to save. This is a plus for her.

Heat pipes and a lot of radiator fins are located under the casing inside the cooler. The fan spins at a speed of about 1000 rpm, that is, it is completely silent. Well, we did not expect anything else from the Arctic Cooling product. The «thickness» of the cooler occupies two standard slots, but this has long become commonplace for solutions of this class.

For better heat dissipation from the GPU, a copper base is used, to which as many as 3 heat pipes are attached. The memory chips are cooled due to their contact with the sole of the aluminum heatsink through thermal rubber bands.

The PCB design has quite a lot in common with the typical PCB used for older Radeons, but there are also significant differences. First of all, the changes affected the power subsystem. The number of small things has almost halved, and there are only 3 power elements (covered with black radiators), which directly indicates the rather modest appetites of the RV570 in terms of power consumption. Another interesting point is the two pin combs, reminiscent of the SLI connector on NVIDIA video cards. However, the purpose of these pins on the Radeon X19 PCB50 Pro is the same — to ensure the operation of two identical video cards in CrossFire mode without a Master card, but with the help of an adapter. We can say that ATI recognized the effectiveness of NVIDIA’s approach to combining two video cards, but decided not to limit themselves to simple copying, but went a little further. The secret of having two connectors is simple — ATI has used a bidirectional bus to exchange information between video cards. According to ATI specialists, this should increase the efficiency of the CrossFire bundle, but we can’t say yet by how much. The test sample came to our laboratory in a single copy and without any additional accessories. What pleases in Radeon X1950 Pro did not abandon support for the VIVO function and the ATI Rage Theater chip is present in its rightful place.

The reverse side of the video card is replete with many small elements, but without any special attractions. Unless, apparently, the simplification of the power supply system also affected the reverse side of the PCB.

The ATI RV570 video processor contains 36 pixel pipelines, respectively — 12 texture units, the number of vertex pipelines has not changed and is 8 units. As you can see, the pipeline formula is identical to the one we saw with X1900GT, this is not surprising. The X1950 Pro is intended to replace it, so the X1900GT will soon be taken out of production, since its production is much more expensive. The clock frequency of the RV570 on the board from PowerColor is 580 MHz.

Compare the core sizes of R580 and RV570. The chip area has been significantly reduced, despite the presence in the RV570 of additional blocks for the organization of CrossFire.

The total amount of video memory is 256 MB, typed in 8 microcircuits manufactured by Samsung. Used common video memory with an access time of 1.4 ns and a nominal frequency of 1400 MHz DDR. At this frequency, the memory also works. The memory bus width, as it should be for a serious product, is 256 bits.

Perhaps these are all the details that I would like to mention at the moment. Moreover, for serial models there is a chance to see a rather large spread both in the applied cooling systems and in frequencies. But we can get a first glimpse of the RV570’s performance right now. Let’s move on to the tests.