- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 6 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Best bang for the buck"
Pros: Finally a powerful mid-priced card
Cons: so many choices ... the 8800 GT is pretty damn good too if you can find it
Summary: Well, this is a response to the schmee23, who is obviously on crack or hasn't taken a look at recent benchmarks.
There is no way that the X1950 Pro is anywhere close to the HD3850 in performance. It's more powerful sibling, the HD3870 gets close to the 2900 XT in performance for half the price.
The X1950 Pro gets anywhere from 4000-5000 on 3DMark06, depending on the CPU/system and how much the gfx card is over-clocked. I admit that 3DMark06 does not always accurately reflect actual game performance. However, I cannot imagine the X1950 Pro beating the HD 3850, which easily doubles its score at 9500-11000 on 1280x1024. Other tests with ES4: Oblivion and AoE III confirm that the HD 3850 gets about 30-60% more FPS than the X1950 Pro on 1600x1200, FSAA 4X, Aniso. 8X settings. (I'm pretty sure that the X1950 with its DirectX 9-only support would do better if it too had a die shrink, but that's not the case, is it?)
Besides, the HD 3850 comes with DirectX 10 support and the feel-good factor of having a brand new card compared to one 1.5 generations behind.
Anyways, just about every review out there confirms that the HD3850/70 and the 8800 GT (not to be confused with the older 8800 GTS/XT/etc.) are a huge improvement over any of the older cards.
