Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro Dual @ HotHardware
HotHardware reviews the Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro Dual that delivers High-End performance with two mid-range GPUs. The card’s cooling system is even quieter than single GPU X1950 Pro cards. However, there’s no DirectX 10 support and the card won’t work correctly on nVidia motherboards. HotHardware writes in the conclusion:
Sapphire certainly has a tough sell on their hands with this product. GeForce 8800 cards are down to price points of $250-$300 (for the GTS 320 MB), which can deliver similar performance levels and lower noise levels, and won’t require any special chassis or Crossfire compatible motherboard. In addition, GeForce 8800 cards have DirectX 10 support, whereas the X1950 Pro Dual is still part of the DirectX 9 generation. If Sapphire had the chance to get these cards on the market 4-5 months ago, it could likely have put up a fight against (higher priced, at the time) GeForce 8 series cards. However, at this point in time, this card’s chance to shine has likely passed. Most of the truly unique features which this board was originally touted with (Quad-GPU Crossfire, quad-monitor outputs) were eliminated in order to get the product out the door.
The Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro Dual will likely live on as more of a technology demonstration rather than a mass market product. Hopefully Sapphire can chalk this one up to research and development, possibly allowing for future multi-GPU cards to be produced and sold faster. It’s a great product to wow your friends with (check out the size of this card - it’s huge!), but unless Sapphire can push these things at around $250, it will be tough to convince potential buyers. Sapphire hasn’t mentioned an official MSRP, although original estimates pegged a price tag of around $350-$400.
Read the full review of the Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro Dual here.