ATI Radeon X1950 Announced!

[alvino]

It's now known as the X1950, not the X1900+. Basically the R580 core with some minor changes. The most important of those changes is the use of GDDR4 RAM. Memory clock frequencies have not been announced either, though Samsung announced its GDDR4 is already capable of 3.2GHz in 8x512Mbit configurations. There will be two flavors: the top XTX variant and the CrossFire Edition version.

There will also be a new X1900 XT, the same R580 core, but with 256MB of GDDR3 to make the price point lower than $300, making it around the price range of the 7900 GT and X1900 GT (possibly phasing out the X1900 GT).

No official specifications have been announced, nor any date. Sampling availablity for the X1950 XTX will begin on August 7, 2006 and the CrossFire version on August 14, 2006. Sampling for the new X1900 XT 256MB will begin immediately.

I will keep this updated as news comes out. If anyone would like to add to this as announcements come out, please feel free to do so.

 

[PerfectSK]

Lol, sweet, thanks for the update. It looks so sleek, I love the candy red finish.

 

[alvino]

Yes, one of the most noticable changes to the X1950 is the cooler. It's more streamlined, and definately looks like the Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer series, which could possibly mean that ATI landed a deal with Arctic Cooling. As for performance, we won't know until it releases, but I can tell that it'll be definately quieter than the stock ATI cooler that they use now.

 

[drumthrasher]

damn! like i've said, ati's cards look a lot better than nvidias...how much might this cost?

 

[alvino]

No official date or price has been announced. I will post further news as it comes out as soon as possible.

Yeah, ATI's coolers have always looked better than nVIDIA's. The stock ATI cooler for the X1800 and X1900 is so good. It rivals the Zalman VF-900Cu, only at max fan speed though, which makes it a jet engine. That's why I got the VF-900Cu because it's so much quieter.

 

[ownage]

ATi's current stock coolers DO NOT rival the VF-900. They are infact better only when they are running at max. That is the downside. If you copare VF-900 max to ATi stock max, the ATi stock cooler will come out on top.

 

[alvino]

That's what I said, Conrad.

"It rivals the Zalman VF-900Cu, only at max fan speed though, which makes it a jet engine", said Alvino.

Haha, I can't wait to see how this new cooler performs though...it looks so nice. Of course, that picture is only the reference design that ATI has provided, once it's in the hands of other manufacturers, we don't know if they'll stick with another heatsink design.

 

[Half Evil]

Sorry, a bit old, but I thought that I should just say, that card looks amazing.

I just hopes it performs as good as it looks.

 

[Nik00117]

Wasn't this announced a few weeks back?

I bet it seupports DX10

/me is thinking that is starting too look like his next GPU

 

[ownage]

Nope, no directX10 until R600.