VGA card for gaming

VGA card for Gaming
A review by rouzbeh_am on Sapphire RADEON X1950 XTNovember 6th, 2007
Author's product rating:
Speed
Fast
Stability
Very stable
Ease of Installation
Excellent - very quick and easy
Picture Quality
Excellent
Value For Money
Excellent
Advantages:
Fast and quiet . Dual DVI . No compatibility problem with games . Very fast .
Disadvantages:
No DX10 support .
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
I own one of these cards on my newly assembled computer. I searched alot on internet before arriving to this decision specially remembering that the new ATI 2XXX and nvidia 8800 cards have arrived.
If you are looking for performance under a 200USD price tag, X1950 XT is a video card that I suggest you to not pass by. As I have seen on many benchmarks X1950 XT did very well against its main competitor: nVidia.The X1950 XT is a powerful graphics card. Its core runs a mere 25 MHz slower than that of the X1950 XTX, and its memory runs a full 250 MHz (effective) faster than the X1900 XTX. It is on par with the previous X1900 XTX champ, and fast enough to run at high resolutions with nice eye candy. It will handily beat a 7950 GT, and even best a 7900 GTO or 7900 GTX at most things. [1]
It is one of the fastest DX9 cards out there. It has 256mb of RAM which is enough for all of the new games. But it is not supporting DX10. In July 2007, X1950XT series was chosen by the famous TomsHardware website as one of the best gaming cards around.So, if you are not going to pay your valuable money on DX10 supporting cards (which the good ones are at least 150 USD more expensive), this VGA card is what you want. However, I even recommend this card more than ATI 2600 series which supports DX10. I have seen a very low performance in gaming by the newly arrived 2600 cards.This card generates quite low amount of noise although it enjoys a big cooling system.
If you are thinking about X1950XT vs 1950Pro, I would recommend X1950XT, since it enjoys a newer technology and delivers about 10%-15% better performance.Note: You will be needing a very powerful power supply unit (PSU) for this card. Your PSU should be able to deliver more than 28Amp on one of the lines. Most of the 700+ Watts power supply will satisfy this requirement.
[1] www.tomshardware.com