In the test 15 years ago: The best Radeon X1900 XTX came with a Zalman cooler

Asus & apos; The model included the games King Kong and Project Snowblind as well as the video editing software PowerDirector 3 DE. Club 3D also relied on bonuses and threw Colin McRae Rally 2005, WWF Panda Junior in Africa as well as PowerDirector and PowerDVD 5 into the ring. At HIS there were Dungeon Siege, PowerDirector 3 SE Plus and PowerDVD 6, while Sapphire relied on PowerDirector 4 DE and PowerDVD 6. Mad-Moxx did without games and software and instead relied on a pre-installed Zalman VF-700 Cu, which should ensure quieter and better cooling of the GPU. There was absolute standard food at PowerColor, because the manufacturer did not include a special cooling solution or special accessories.

Test results saw the custom cooler in front

The differences in the performance of the graphics cards were, as expected, within the scope of the measurement inaccuracy. All Radeon X1900 XTX were about the same speed, the Radeon X1900 XT a few percent slower.

«Previous 1,280 x 1,0241,280 x 1,024 4xAA/16xAF3DMark053DMark06Age of Empire IIIAquamark 3Doom 3Earth 2160F.EARHalf-Life 2 – Lost CoastQuake 4Serious Sam 2The Chronicles of Riddick Next»

• 1,280 x 1,024 unit: percent
  • • Mad-Moxx X1900 XTX99,7
    • Club3D X1900 XTX99,2
    • HIS X1900 XTX99,1
    • Sapphire X1900 XTX98,9
    • Asus X1900 XTX98,7
    • PowerColor X1900 XTX98,7
    • Sapphire X1900 XT96,5
• 1,280 x 1,024 4xAA/16xAF:
  • Mad-Moxx X1900 XTX65,8
  • HIS X1900 XTX64,2
  • Club3D X1900 XTX64,0
  • PowerColor X1900 XTX64,0
  • Asus X1900 XTX63,9
  • Sapphire X1900 XTX63,8
  • Sapphire X1900 XT62,3

On the other hand, there were larger differences in the B grades. In terms of volume, the Mad-Moxx X1900 XTX was most convincing thanks to the built-in Zalman VF700 Cu. The other models were about 58 percent louder under load, whereby the Sapphire model was positively out of line. The Radeon X1900 XT from Sapphire, on the other hand, was by far the loudest model, although it formally relied on the same cooler. A similar picture emerged for the temperatures. The GPU on the Mad Moxx graphics card was 16 Kelvin cooler under load than the GPUs on the graphics cards with a reference cooler. The bottom light was again the Sapphire Radeon X1900 XT, which was close to the temperature limit at 91 ° C.

«Previous VolumeTemperaturePower consumptionOverclocking Next»

• Volume unit: dB (A)
  • Idle (Windows desktop):
    • Sapphire X1900 XTX56
    • Sapphire X1900 XT56
    • Mad-Moxx X1900 XTX56
    • Club3D X1900 XTX57
    • HIS X1900 XTX57
    • PowerColor X1900 XTX57
    • Asus X1900 XTX57
  • last:
    • Mad-Moxx X1900 XTX57
    • Sapphire X1900 XTX60
    • Club3D X1900 XTX61
    • HIS X1900 XTX61
    • PowerColor X1900 XTX61
    • Asus X1900 XTX61
    • Sapphire X1900 XT63

If a current high-end model from ATi was not fast enough, the performance could be further increased by overclocking. In terms of GPU, PowerColor came off best with 682 MHz, while the Asus model achieved the highest memory clock with 873 MHz. The performance increases in the benchmarks were more of a theoretical nature. In addition, the overclocking results of individual graphics cards could not be transferred to all models of a manufacturer, as they depend on the chip quality.

Conclusion

Which Radeon X1900 XT (X) came out best in the test difficult to determine. The best cooler was clearly the Mad-Moxx model. At 530 euros, this was also the only model that exceeded the 500 euros mark. Those who wanted to spend less could choose from the remaining models and buy the cheapest graphics card with the best features.

In the “Tested 15 years ago” category, the editorial team has been looking into the test archive every Saturday since July 2017. The last 20 articles that appeared in this series are listed below:

• PCIe x8 versus PCIe x16 for multi-GPU systems
• ATi's X1900 GT bit its teeth on Nvidia's 7900 GT
• PhysX accelerator for 299 euros from Ageia
• The GeForce 7600 GS was a stunner for 125 euros
• HTPC case from Lian Li and Silverstone
• The GeForce 7900 GTX in 90 nm and with a higher clock rate
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi for more audio quality and FPS
• Intel’s Pentium EE 965 was faster and more economical
• Silentwinter got the Athlon 64 going with RAM-OC
• ATi's all-in-wonder Radeons with TV tuner
• Entry-level graphics cards were loud or slow
• Noctua's first CPU coolers NH-U9 and NH-U12
• The GeForce 7800 GS breathed life into AGP again
• ATi's Radeon X1900 XTX was fast, hot and loud
• Dual-core CPUs from AMD and Intel in a duel
• In the second attempt, ATi CrossFire was better

< li> The 1st thermal paste made of liquid metal for the PC

• Two GeForce 7800 GTX 512 in the SLI network
• When 2 GByte RAM were generous
• Insulation mats for a quiet computer

Even more content of this kind and many more reports and anecdotes can be found in the retro corner of ComputerBase forum.