Sapphire Radeon X1900 GT

On budget and on fire!

Date reviewed: November 25th, 2006

Author: Christos

Today we will be looking at the sapphire X1900 GT. This is the first review that I am posting. I thank you in advance for reading , and hope you get the information you are looking for.

We will look at the card specs, it's normal performance, and finally it's overclock potential.

Note: This card is the originally spec'd X1900 GT card from ATI. This means that the stock 3D clocks are: 575Mhz = Core, and 600Mhz (1200Mhz ddr) = Memory.

Here are the card specs as per sapphire's web site:

RADEON X1900 GT core (575MHz)
256MB GDDR3 onboard memory (1200 MHz)
36 pixel shader processors
256-bit Memory Bus
PCI Express x16
ATI CrossFire by pairing the Radeon X1900GT with a Radeon X1900 CrossFire Edition card.
Video Acceleration of: MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264
Dual Display support
Dual DVI/VIVO/ HDTV
DirectX 9.0 - Shader Model 3.0 / OpenGL Support

I was looking for a new card this past summer, that would finally replace my old beaten Radeon 8500 LELE, and that would allow me to play the newer games at high resolutions and ALL of the eye candy turned on. Seeing the specs above and actually finding a store in Montreal that actually had it in stock at a decent price (August, 2006), I bought it. I paid $265 cdn, + taxes which totaled : $ 302 cdn. Now that is not cheap, so let's see if I got my money's worth.

This is the box the card came in, it's pretty compact, but it protected the card well. This card did not have the game bundle like shown on Sapphire's website, and I assume that is why the box is also smaller. The front cover describes the product well and includes Sapphire's usual cyborg girl. The left hand side of the box describes all the minimum requirements to use the card. On the back of the box you get a small list of the card's features, and what's inside the box.

(click pic to enlarge)

(click pic to enlarge)

Now let's see what we get inside the box. There are 2 DVI to VGA connectors, that will allow you to connect to an analog monitor if required. There's the composite cable with : Pr, Pb/AV output, Y and S-Video output. There is one cable with : Tv-Out with S-Video, one with : Vivo with S-Video, and an R,B,G cable. This card is HDTV capable but the cable is not included. We also have a molex to PCI-E connector in case your PSU does not have one included. Included is also the cd with the ATI catalyst drivers version 6.4, so I would suggest you update them with the most recent ones available on ATI's website. And you also get a quick start guide in several languages. The guide is very skimpy and won't help, if you run into issues while installation. Sapphire also includes a small sticker, which you can place on your rig to proudly display what is powering your pc's graphics.

(click pic to enlarge)

Now onto the card itself...