ATI Radeon X1950XTX CrossFire Review

Post by **Apoptosis** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 7:47 am

ATI Radeon X1950XTX CrossFire Review

Previously Legit Reviews looked at single card performance with the ATI Radeon X1950XTX with stellar results, but was still conducting our CrossFire testing. With X1950 Crossfire testing complete the outcome is different than single card testing with the GeForce 7900GTX SLI making a comeback of sorts. Read on to see what this means and which multi-GPU platform is right for you.

ATI's CrossFire gets a nice bump in performance with the X1950 and is a blazing fast system, but in our testing is still not enough to lay claim to the fastest multi-gpu system. When it works it does work well but really needs to be more consistent. I suppose that the problem is that the X1950 single card is so damn good at stomping the competition that it makes CrossFire look less than stellar.

Article Title: ATI Radeon X1950XTX CrossFire Review
Article URL: http://legitreviews.com/article/379/1/

prozac26 · Post by **prozac26** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 8:40 am

Nice review!

7900GTX in SLI seem to hold their own in most benchies, which is interesting.

l0velY · Post by **l0velY** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 11:04 am

Question:

What were the CPU and RAM speeds used on the 4800+?
It's possible that either one could be bottle-necking the card(s).

TGIF,

h

Bwall · Post by **Bwall** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 1:27 pm

CPU speed is default at 2.4GHz and RAM speed at 2-2-2-6.

I believe that there is some CPU bottlenecking but I still need to confirm that with a faster system. I think with a Conroe CPU we will see framerates on all tests go up because it is really much more powerful than the current test system.

We are working hard to upgrade the test system and will retest all the cards once we can get that completed.

l0velY · Post by **l0velY** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 1:33 pm

wickedld9 wrote:CPU speed is default at 2.4GHz and RAM speed at 2-2-2-6.

I believe that there is some CPU bottlenecking but I still need to confirm that with a faster system. I think with a Conroe CPU we will see framerates on all tests go up because it is really much more powerful than the current test system.

We are working hard to upgrade the test system and will retest all the cards once we can get that completed.

Awesome, thanks wicked and keep up the good work!

have a good weekend,
h

Bwall · Post by **Bwall** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 5:49 pm

Ok, decided to see what happens with "a little more cpu." Keep in mind these are quick tests on my personal gaming system.
Nvidia driver settings set to high quality. Fear and 3DMark06.

Test system:

Intel Bad Axe -BIOS 1304
E6600 at 3.4 GHz (378.67x9=42% overclock)
2GB Team Xtreem DDRII 4-4-4-12 947MHz
Western Digital 74GB Raptor
Watercooled CPU

Nvidia driver: 91.31
ATI: R580+ Beta

I want to apologize now for the charts looking like crap. A friend is currently gaming on the machine I have photoshop on.

3Dmark06:

FEAR:

Hhmmm seems CrossFire like CPU. ;) Please don't flame me for not testing 7900GTX SLI, we don't have an SLI motherboard and I'm not about to use the hacked drivers to report a score.

-Brian

l0velY · Post by **l0velY** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 6:07 pm

Thanks for keeping my head straight

h

Post by **Apoptosis** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 6:47 pm

wow... that scaled pretty nice for ATI on a faster processor, thanks for going the extra mile!

Evilsizer · Post by **Evilsizer** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 7:55 pm

nice to see that bump with conroe systems.

sorry my only nit pick about the review is the charts labeling as the top performer is the 7900gtx in sli. the label is 7900gt slix sli. that had me confused till i saw at the end the reivewer was talking about the 7900gtx. I thought they came out with something i havent seen yet.

if possible a non oced run with the e6600 @2.4ghz stock should be done. As this will show clock for clock how much more you get CF with a conroe base system.

has ati done a similar option in the drivers like NV for being able to enable the multi threaded option?

Bwall · Post by **Bwall** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:25 pm

Evilsizer wrote:nice to see that bump with conroe systems.

sorry my only nit pick about the review is the charts labeling as the top performer is the 7900gtx in sli. the label is 7900gt slix sli. that had me confused till i saw at the end the reivewer was talking about the 7900gtx. I thought they came out with something i havent seen yet.

if possible a non oced run with the e6600 @2.4ghz stock should be done. As this will show clock for clock how much more you get CF with a conroe base system.

has ati done a similar option in the drivers like NV for being able to enable the multi threaded option?

hahaha, whoops, I just saw that. I fixed the charts last night because I had 7900GT instead of 7900GT SLI, looks like my program got a little happy and decided to mess up 7900GTX SLI also. They should be fixed now.

I'll see what I can do for E6600 stock on Sunday, blowing off a little steam tonight (read: drinking

) and heading to the lake tomorrow.

And yes, ATI has drivers that take advantage of dual core CPU's.

Evilsizer · Post by **Evilsizer** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:31 pm

wickedld9 wrote:
Evilsizer wrote:nice to see that bump with conroe systems.

sorry my only nit pick about the review is the charts labeling as the top performer is the 7900gtx in sli. the label is 7900gt slix sli. that had me confused till i saw at the end the reivewer was talking about the 7900gtx. I thought they came out with something i havent seen yet.

if possible a non oced run with the e6600 @2.4ghz stock should be done. As this will show clock for clock how much more you get CF with a conroe base system.

has ati done a similar option in the drivers like NV for being able to enable the multi threaded option?
hahaha, whoops, I just saw that. I fixed the charts last night because I had 7900GT instead of 7900GT SLI, looks like my program got a little happy and decided to mess up 7900GTX SLI also. They should be fixed now.

I'll see what I can do for E6600 stock on Sunday, blowing off a little steam tonight (read: drinking ) and heading to the lake tomorrow.

And yes, ATI has drivers that take advantage of dual core CPU's.

anychance of a show how much it affects the performance with the multi threaded option enabled vs disabled. the main reason i wondering if you could do the stock run with e6660 is its 2.4ghz as the one you used in the review. Just wondering how much more from the cpu vs the 2 makes a difference with the new card. thanks for your work, hey drink a few for me .