Connect 3D and Sapphire Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX
by Josh Venning on April 10, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
We've talked a lot about ATI's X1900 series lately, and it just happens to be the kind of graphics card that people like hearing about. The X1900 XTX is one of the most powerful cards available at the time of this writing, and it's going to be impressive no matter how it comes from the manufacturer. For those interested in a reliable, good quality X1900 XTX Connect3D's version will certainly do the job, but the Blizzard X1900 XTX arguably does it a little better and with a bit more panache.
Whether or not water cooled cards like this will be more than a novelty is yet to be seen, but this one manages to work well, install easily, and look good doing it. It does have its drawbacks though. We already mentioned that it is a bit of a power hog, which is a red flag for many PC users. Also, while we didn't find any specific problems with heat, the water reservoir and radiator of the Blizzard are likely less effective than other solutions due to their location and size. A larger reservoir with a radiator external to the case can do a better job, first because more water means the ability to store more heat, and second because eventually the air flowing over the radiator would be warmer inside the case than out. We also found that care had to be taken when installing the card, as the hoses were somewhat fragile and space may be an issue as it tends to fill up the inside of the case (though not a lot more than any other X1900 XTX).
There area few other concerns with water cooling as well. First, water and electronics are not good bedfellows, so anyone that moves their computer around a lot will want to exercise extra caution. We also wouldn't mind seeing a water cooling solution that did something for the GPU RAM as well as the GPU core. That second point leads us into our final comment: while the detached radiator connected to the GPU via two hoses does offer a bit more flexibility in terms of where you locate the radiator, it might be better overall to simply go with an attached water radiator and a traditional two-slot design. That way you eliminate the possibility of damaging or crimping the hoses, there's less chance for developing a leak, and you can easily cover the RAM as well as the GPU core.
The Blizzard isn't perfect, but few products are. While we weren't able to overclock it higher than some of the other X1900 XTXs in the past, we still got a fairly high overclock, and the factory overclock alone is a plus to this package. Other positive things are the fact that it does run much more quietly than other X1900 XTXs, it comes completely assembled so you won't have to worry about voiding any warranties in your quest for water cooling, and it's quite easy to install. It didn't show any breakthroughs in terms of heat dissipated and temperatures, but there weren't any heat problems either so by all accounts the water cooling system seems to do its job.
Price wise, we understand that the Blizzard X1900 XTX will be selling for $570 with a $30 mail in rebate when it's released, which should be about the third or fourth week in April. The Connect3D X1900 XTX is selling for about $495 at the time of this writing. Currently, the X1900 XTX is available for about $50 or $60 less than the NVIDIA 7900 GTX which is good news for ATI considering performance between the two is so similar. If you're interested in the games offered by Sapphire, you also have to consider that you're getting an extra $60-$80 in value there, but that only really applies if you would otherwise purchase two of the offered games separately.
We realize the X1900 XTX has been in the spotlight lately, but we felt that these cards and particularly the Blizzard X1900 XTX warranted a look. We know that these aren't the most affordable cards on the market right now, and it can be frustrating hearing about the kind of gaming power available without it being financially within reach. However, the stakes are higher with these high-end cards for both ATI and NVIDIA since they help to drive perceptions and create market share, so we want to keep a close eye on what's happening with them. For those that want more economical offerings, we will be looking at some more moderately-priced cards range in the near future.
We've talked a lot about ATI's X1900 series lately, and it just happens to be the kind of graphics card that people like hearing about. The X1900 XTX is one of the most powerful cards available at the time of this writing, and it's going to be impressive no matter how it comes from the manufacturer. For those interested in a reliable, good quality X1900 XTX Connect3D's version will certainly do the job, but the Blizzard X1900 XTX arguably does it a little better and with a bit more panache.
Whether or not water cooled cards like this will be more than a novelty is yet to be seen, but this one manages to work well, install easily, and look good doing it. It does have its drawbacks though. We already mentioned that it is a bit of a power hog, which is a red flag for many PC users. Also, while we didn't find any specific problems with heat, the water reservoir and radiator of the Blizzard are likely less effective than other solutions due to their location and size. A larger reservoir with a radiator external to the case can do a better job, first because more water means the ability to store more heat, and second because eventually the air flowing over the radiator would be warmer inside the case than out. We also found that care had to be taken when installing the card, as the hoses were somewhat fragile and space may be an issue as it tends to fill up the inside of the case (though not a lot more than any other X1900 XTX).
There area few other concerns with water cooling as well. First, water and electronics are not good bedfellows, so anyone that moves their computer around a lot will want to exercise extra caution. We also wouldn't mind seeing a water cooling solution that did something for the GPU RAM as well as the GPU core. That second point leads us into our final comment: while the detached radiator connected to the GPU via two hoses does offer a bit more flexibility in terms of where you locate the radiator, it might be better overall to simply go with an attached water radiator and a traditional two-slot design. That way you eliminate the possibility of damaging or crimping the hoses, there's less chance for developing a leak, and you can easily cover the RAM as well as the GPU core.
The Blizzard isn't perfect, but few products are. While we weren't able to overclock it higher than some of the other X1900 XTXs in the past, we still got a fairly high overclock, and the factory overclock alone is a plus to this package. Other positive things are the fact that it does run much more quietly than other X1900 XTXs, it comes completely assembled so you won't have to worry about voiding any warranties in your quest for water cooling, and it's quite easy to install. It didn't show any breakthroughs in terms of heat dissipated and temperatures, but there weren't any heat problems either so by all accounts the water cooling system seems to do its job.
Price wise, we understand that the Blizzard X1900 XTX will be selling for $570 with a $30 mail in rebate when it's released, which should be about the third or fourth week in April. The Connect3D X1900 XTX is selling for about $495 at the time of this writing. Currently, the X1900 XTX is available for about $50 or $60 less than the NVIDIA 7900 GTX which is good news for ATI considering performance between the two is so similar. If you're interested in the games offered by Sapphire, you also have to consider that you're getting an extra $60-$80 in value there, but that only really applies if you would otherwise purchase two of the offered games separately.
We realize the X1900 XTX has been in the spotlight lately, but we felt that these cards and particularly the Blizzard X1900 XTX warranted a look. We know that these aren't the most affordable cards on the market right now, and it can be frustrating hearing about the kind of gaming power available without it being financially within reach. However, the stakes are higher with these high-end cards for both ATI and NVIDIA since they help to drive perceptions and create market share, so we want to keep a close eye on what's happening with them. For those that want more economical offerings, we will be looking at some more moderately-priced cards range in the near future.
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gersson - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
Thank you for constantly deleting my posts especially if they have something completely harmless and neutral. I notice that they are usually erased when I am the 1st poster...This is my last post @ daily tech. Enjoy it while it still exists -_-
JarredWalton - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
Not sure if Daily Tech has deleted any of your posts or not, but I can tell you that there have been 13 comments on this article so far (this will the #14) and none of them have been deleted. None of them have been "voted down" either, so by default you should see all the comments. You might want to verify that your filter at DailyTech is set to -1 so that you can see all posts.LoneWolf15 - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
I think it's likely that a solution from Arctic Cooling (i.e., the Accelero X) or one of Zalman's coolers would do as good of a job, be reasonably quiet, and not have the drawbacks that a liquid-cooled setup would. It would be interesting to make a comparison as to how they would stack up.The Sapphire card looked interesting, but the results indicated to me it's a lot of sizzle without much steak.
Questar - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
"Of course, if the GPU runs cooler it should draw less power"This is new to me. Can you point me to anything to back this up?
NegativeEntropy - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
As you imply, the author is either mistaken (as the evidence shows) or was making a faulty assumption. For a given CMOS chip to consume less power one of two things needs to happen: lower the frequency or the voltage. This assumes no fancy technology to turn off part of the chip. Assuming this thing runs at stock voltage, it should consume slightly more power than stock due to the frequency increase (not counting the pump).Gioron - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
Close to true, but not quite. The dynamic power of switching transistors is unnafected by temperature (its proportional to frequency and the supply voltage squared), but leakage current through an off transistor does decrease at lower temperatures and this current is a constant unaffected by the frequency. However, for most chips this isn't a huge difference... yet. As processes scale to smaller feature sizes leakage is increasing and some manufacturers have already run into problems with chips where 40% of their power is leakage and they suddenly had a chip using almost twice as much power as they expected, but most current chips see only a very small percent of their power usage as leakage current and making a small change to a small percentage of power is not likely to be noticable.DerekWilson - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
This comment resulted from a conversation I had with Josh about temperature and power. As you have mentioned here, leakage current does vary with temperature. And, in any material, conductivity is affected by temperature as well -- which will also affect power. Two otherwise identical chips will absolutely draw different ammounts of power if one is very cold and the other very hot. Whether this ammount is significant is not addressed in this article, but the fact does remain that temperature affects power draw.And, as has been pointed out, with 90nm and below we will see this phenomenon increase (provided no one stumbles upon a miraculous answer to the leakage problem).
Sunrise089 - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
The Sapphire card seems pretty dissapointing. You give up an extra slot (right?) and pay ~$50 more to get almost no decrease in noise, almost no more of an overclock, and no less heat. Read that again: NO LESS HEAT! To me, a watercooling setup that runs equally hot as an air cooled setup isnt worth the leak risk, slight as it may be.JarredWalton - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
Two things: it takes longer to get to the same temperatures. Second, standard XT/XTX cards are two-slot solutions, so this just makes the second slot movable to either side of the GPU. But yeah, it's a bit underwhelming. At least it's a bit quieter - X1900XTX cards aren't very good on noise levels.mkruer - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
Does this seem completely pointless? Why not use heat pipes to draw more heat away from the core of the GPU and keep the fan heat sync in one assembly? This seems totally pointless unless you like having the possibility of your graphic card spring a leak.