Connect 3D and Sapphire Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX

Introduction

Every once in a while we see some very unique approaches to graphics card designs, even more so than just a slightly modified or fan-less heat sink (like ASUS's silent 6600 GT). Many times, HSF alterations on reference designs are to cut down on heat or noise that's generated during the card's operation, but some solutions are a bit more dramatic than others.

Liquid cooling with GPUs has been around for a while now and there is a lot of debate over how practical and effective it really is. It can definitely be impressive to see a gaming setup with its processors massively overclocked and cooled with liquid nitrogen systems, but for most people this type of system is very much out of their reach. Water cooling is a little more practical, but in order for it to be anything more than a novelty (i.e. used only be a small number of enthusiasts), it has to yield practical benefits without a lot of extra cost and trouble.

In principle, water cooling has some very nice benefits. For one, there is potential for these cards to run much cooler than air cooled cards, which would allow for high overclocks. Fan noise could also be cut down drastically, as water moving through small tubes is generally far quieter than a fan blowing air. However, one thing water can't get you is temperatures lower than the ambient room, but for most people that means 25 C or less, so that should be sufficient.

Today we are looking at two cards using ATI's current top-performing solution, the X1900 XTX. One of the cards is made by Sapphire, a company known for its innovative graphics card designs. This card features a slightly different take on water cooled graphics solution, and it aims to address the address the issues many people have with assembling water cooling systems. The second card is a more traditional design from Connect3D, using the same X1900 XTX chipset. It will also as something of a baseline performance metric, since absent special cooling configurations most X1900 XTX cards will perform similarly.

These two X1900 XTXs are very different from each other and show how much variation there can be between two versions of the same graphics card, and that should make things interesting. While the Blizzard X1900 XTX may overshadow its Connect3D competitor in terms of design, performance will still be similar in many areas, provided clock speeds are the same. We'll look at overclocking potential as well as noise levels, though, and there at least we should see some more substantial differences.