How $200 Goes a Lot Further

Factory Overclocking

We live in a day and age when manufacturers find themselves with very similar products and try anything under the sun to differentiate their offerings. There are special coolers, fancy box art, bundled software, accessories, gizmos and doodads galore. While "free" software is nice, another avenue to wow potential customers is to overclock the card above the reference design specifications.

Overclocking can be hazardous to those who attempt to participate with reckless regard to the laws of physics. Microscopic electrical gates can only take so much energy before they fuse together and you end up with a broken graphics card. While too much is a bad thing, slightly overclocking a card is not detrimental to its life but can add an edge to performance comparison showdowns.

In the case of the Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro Ultimate, you get the best the marketing machine has to offer. The Radeon X1950 Pro core is overclocked to 580 MHz (5 MHz) and the memory is operating at 800 MHz (1600 MHz DDR) or 110 MHz over the reference clock frequencies. The card also comes with other value-added features and accessories.