HIS Radeon X1950 XT IceQ3 Turbo

HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEM: We tested the HIS IceQ3 Radeon X1950XT on the Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 - an Intel P965 chipset-based motherboard - powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 processor and 1GB of Corsair XMS2 DDR2 memory. The first thing we did when configuring this test system was enter the BIOS and loaded the "High Performance Defaults."  The hard drive was then formatted and Windows XP Professional with SP2 was installed. When the installation was complete, we installed the latest drivers, and removed Windows Messenger from the system. Auto-Updating and System Restore were then disabled, the hard drive was defragmented, and a 1536 MB permanent page file was created on the same partition as the Windows installation.

In a slight departure from our standard testing procedure, we also installed HIS's iTurbo software on our test system and the HIS X1950 XT was boosted to the advertised iTurbo speeds (650MHz / 900MHz) in all benchmarks. The other video cards used in the benchmarks were all running at manufacturer reference speeds. Lastly, we set Windows' Visual Effects to "best performance," installed all of the benchmarking software, and ran the tests.

The HotHardware Test System The Mid-range Overclocker

Performance Comparisons with 3DMark06 v1.0.2 Details: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/

3DMark06

3DMark06 is the latest addition to the 3DMark franchise. This version differs from 3Dmark05 in a number of ways, and now includes not only Shader Model 2.0 tests, but Shader Model 3.0 and HDR tests as well. Some of the assets from 3DMark05 have been re-used, but the scenes are now rendered with much more geometric detail and the shader complexity is vastly increased as well. Max shader length in 3DMark05 was 96 instructions, while 3DMark06 ups the number of instructions to 512. 3DMark06 also employs much more lighting, and there is extensive use of soft shadows. With 3DMark06, Futuremark has also updated how the final score is tabulated. In this latest version of the benchmark, SM 2.0 and HDR / SM3.0 tests are weighted and the CPU score is factored into the final tally as well.

The HIS Radeon X1950 XT muscles its way to the front of the pack, beating the closest competitor by as much as 13%. The two Radeons manage to beat the GeForces in both the overall test and the shader 3.0 tests. Although the GeForce 7950GT manages to beat out the X1900 XT in the shader 2.0 test, it still doesn't come close to trumping the X1950 XT. These results aren't too surprising, since we know from our initial look at the X1K refresh that the X1900 XT and the X1950 XTX are great performers. Our HIS X1950 XT, boosted on iTurbo, was running at stock X1950 XTX core clock speeds, so it's reasonable to assume similar performance levels, and the X1950 XT certainly doesn't disappoint.