Powercolor X1900XT 512mb

The Card

The Powercolor X1900XT is based on ATI’s R580 technology. This is a very efficient architecture and is a 90nm part.

Quick Reference Features:

Detailed Features

 

• 384 million transistors on 90nm fabrication process

• 48 pixel shader processors

• 8 vertex shader processors

• 256-bit 8-channel GDDR3 memory interface

• Native PCI Express x16 bus interface

Ring Bus Memory Controller

• 512-bit internal ring bus for memory reads

• Fully associative texture, color, and Z/stencil cache designs

• Hierarchical Z-buffer with Early Z test

• Lossless Z Compression (up to 48:1)

• Fast Z-Buffer Clear

• Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, including widescreen HDTV resolutions

Ultra-Threaded Shader Engine

• Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware

• Full speed 128-bit floating point processing for all shader operations

• Up to 512 simultaneous pixel threads

• Dedicated branch execution units for high performance dynamic branching and flow control

• Dedicated texture address units for improved efficiency

• 3Dc+ texture compression o High quality 4:1 compression for normal maps and two-channel data formats

• High quality 2:1 compression for luminance maps and single-channel data formats

• Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® 2.0

Advanced Image Quality Features

• 64-bit floating point HDR rendering supported throughout the pipeline

• 32-bit integer HDR (10:10:10:2) format supported throughout the pipeline

• 2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes

• 2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes

• High resolution texture support (up to 4k x 4k)

 

Avivo^TM Video and Display Engine

 

• High performance programmable video processor

• Accelerated MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264 decoding (including DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray playback), encoding & transcoding

• DXVA support

• De-blocking and noise reduction filtering

• Motion compensation, IDCT, DCT and color space conversion

• Vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing

• 3:2 pulldown (frame rate conversion)

• Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time

• HDR tone mapping acceleration

• Maps any input format to 10 bit per channel output

• Flexible display support

• Dual integrated dual-link DVI transmitters

• DVI 1.0 / HDMI compliant and HDCP ready

• Dual integrated 10 bit per channel 400 MHz DACs

• 16 bit per channel floating point HDR and 10 bit per channel DVI output

• Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion (10 bits per color)

• Complete, independent color controls and video overlays for each display

• High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all outputs

• Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays

• Xilleon^TM TV encoder for high quality analog output

• YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays

• Spatial/temporal dithering enables 10-bit color quality on 8-bit and 6-bit displays

• Fast, glitch-free mode switching

• VGA mode support on all outputs

• Compatible with ATI TV/Video encoder products, including Theater 550

 

CrossFire^TM

• Multi-GPU technology

• Four modes of operation:

• Alternate Frame Rendering (maximum performance)

• Supertiling (optimal load-balancing)

• Scissor (compatibility)

• Super AA 8x/10x/12x/14x (maximum image quality)

 

Power supply notes :

 

* Connection to the system power supply is required:
o 450-Watt power supply or greater, 30 Amps on 12 volt rail recommended (assumes fully loaded system)
o PCI Express compliant power supply (recommended). Connect directly to the power supply with a 6 pin PCI Express power connector
* For CrossFire^TM: 550 watt power supply or greater, 38 Amps on 12 volt rail

Package

As stated earlier: Powercolor focus more on getting their cards out there at a reasonable price point rather than the bundle that is with the card. Having said that this VIVO card has everything you will need and more to connect this to an output device.

Cables include:

* 2 x DVI – VGA connecters
* Composite Video to Video cable
* S-Video to Dual S-video out and dual Composite out
* S-Video to Component out
* Dual Molex to PCI-E Power connecter
* S-Video to S-Video cable

This is very complete and I am impressed with this hardware bundle.

Software includes:

* Latest ATI Video card drivers
* Cyberlink DVD Solution. Includes PowerDirector, PowerDVD, PowerProducer, MediaShow, MusicMatch, Power2Go, PowerBackup (trial) and PowerDVDCopy (trial).

Although lacking in any games this is a decent package, especially for those wanting to take advantage of the AVIVO features of this card. Personally I have not used any of the “free” games with any of my cards as usually these are not AAA titles.

Also included is a Quick Installation Guide, Users Manual, Crossfire Power Supply Requirements advice and Warranty Information.

The package is thorough for the connectivity and although not amazing in the software stakes, it is acceptable.

The Cooler

Lets take a look at the cooler that is on the X1900XT

The card is still using the stock ATI cooler that we have seen on previous models such as the X1900XTX. This is a decent cooler but is very loud when put under extreme load. The cooler does have its redeeming features though. It has copper contact with the core and memory and is very efficient of taking heat away from the card. This makes sure the heat stays away from the inside of the case.

I have to say that despite the core getting fairly hot at times the fan does not spin up that much, only after gaming for about 1/2 hour. However if you are looking for a quiet life then you will either have to buy another cooler for the card or just choose something with a cooler that doesn’t make the horrible “whizz” sound that this one does under full load.