ATI Graphics Card Buyer's Guide 2006, Part II

Sapphire Radeon X1900 XTX

Sapphire decorates the cooler of this card with a sticker, but aside from that, the card follows ATI's reference layout. The cooler covers both the speedy GPU and the video memory. Warm exhaust air is pushed out of computer case via a grille at the back of the card. Due to its size and weight, the massive cooler requires both a pair of expansion slots and secure mounting. The GPU is ideal for games with lots of eye candy that make extensive use of shader effects. This is a result of the enormous number of pixel shader units included in the new design, letting the X1900 XTX shine in games like F.E.A.R. and Oblivion.

Sapphire's X1900 XTX features two digital DVI connectors and an HDTV / S-Video output.

The card comes with a full set of cables, including HDTV, S-Video and RCA, as well as a Vivo cable for video input and output. Sapphire's software DVD player of choice is Power DVD 6 2ch. An auxiliary power cable connects the graphics card with the power supply. A couple of DVI-to-VGA adapters allow the card to be use with up to two analog displays.