Sapphire Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX Review April 19, 2006

Introduction

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All this adds up to a GPU that’s been designed to tackle the pixel shader-heavy DX9 games that are becoming increasingly common today under the most demanding situations: high screen resolutions with AA applied.

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Blizzard Cooling

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Cooling cont’d and Higher Speeds

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Two-slot design

In fact, by separating the Blizzard cooling enclosure from the rest of the Radeon X1900 XTX card, it gives the end user the freedom to place the Blizzard cooler practically anywhere he or she wants inside the system case. The hoses used to connect the two components are about 13” long, so you could place the Blizzard cooler on the opposite end of your system’s motherboard if you wanted to and probably still have a little bit of room to work with, or you could place the two components next to each other if you’d like.

In other words, Sapphire’s Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX card takes up just as many slots as any other X1900 XTX card on the market. In fact, it’s actually a little more flexible than your typical X1900 XTX card because you can place the Blizzard cooling enclosure anywhere you’d like. In fact, on some motherboard’s you may even be able to place it above your graphics card depending on how your motherboard’s North Bridge and your system case are situated.

The rest of the cooling

Other than the Blizzard cooling unit, the rest of Sapphire’s Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX card is fairly stock. Here we should note that like Thermaltake’s TideWater liquid cooling unit, the memory modules on Sapphire’s Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX aren’t actively cooled by the liquid cooler, instead Sapphire relies on your typical RAMsinks to cool the memory. Sitting atop each of the board’s eight 1.1ns memory modules is a small aluminum heatsink. Sapphire doesn’t do anything special to cool the other hotspot on their Blizzard X1900 XTX board either -- flanking the VRMs is the same red aluminum heatsink ATI and all of their board partners use to cool the power circuitry on their X1900 XTX cards.

Higher clock speeds

Besides outfitting their Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX with an enhanced cooler, Sapphire has also bumped up the clock speeds on their Blizzard board for better performance. Whereas your typical X1900 XTX card ships with its GPU clocked at 650MHz, the GPU on Sapphire’s Blizzard card runs at 675MHz, 25MHz beyond stock speeds. Meanwhile, the board’s memory operates at an even 800MHz, also 25MHz over stock. This makes Sapphire’s Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX the first X1900 XTX card to be overclocked from the factory, up to now board manufacturers have been sticking to ATI’s stock clock speeds. By default this gives Sapphire’s Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX board the unique distinction of being the fastest X1900 XTX card on the market right now.

Software and accessories

Rather than bundling their latest graphics cards with an assortment of games and game demos (like most manufacturers do), Sapphire has recently instituted their Sapphire Select game bundle program. Included inside the packaging of the Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX is a Sapphire Select DVD. On the Sapphire Select DVD you’ll find four games: Tony Hawk’s Undergound 2, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, and Richard Burns Rally. You can try all four games for up to one hour, at that point you’ll then pick two games to be unlocked for the full version. The other two games can then be purchased at a discount if you’d like.

In addition to the Sapphire Select DVD, Sapphire also includes a copy of CyberLink PowerDVD 6 2-channel edition, and PowerDirector 4DE. Hardware accessories included with the card are a 6-pin PCI-E power connector, two DVI adapters, S-Video and composite video cables, a component video cable, and VIVO cable.

Test Systems

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System Setup

AMD Athlon 64 FX-57

ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe (CrossFire Xpress 3200)
MSI K8N Diamond (nForce4 SLI X16)

2GB OCZ DDR400 SDRAM

ATI Radeon X1900 XTX
Sapphire Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX
ATI Radeon X1900 XT
Catalyst 6.4

NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT
Driver version ForceWare 84.25

250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache

Windows XP Professional SP1

DirectX 9.0c

Benchmarks

Pacific Fighters 4.04 (with Perfect landscape setting for ATI and NVIDIA)
Call of Duty 2 1.01
Half-Life 2 Lost Coast
Lock On: Modern Air Combat 1.02
Far Cry 1.33 (1.4 patch for ATI cards)
F.E.A.R. 1.03
Battlefield 2 1.2
Quake 4 1.0.4

HDR: HL2 Lost Coast

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Half-Life 2: Lost Coast – Direct3D

Battlefield 2

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Battlefield 2 – Direct3D

Quake 4

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Quake 4 – OpenGL

Lock On: Modern Air Combat

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LOMAC – Direct D

Pacific Fighters 4xAA/16xAF

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Pacific Fighters – OpenGL

F.E.A.R. Performance

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F.E.A.R. – Direct3D

Call of Duty 2

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Call of Duty 2 – Direct3D

Far Cry HDR

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Far Cry – Direct3D

Temps and Overclocking

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Half-Life 2: Lost Coast – Direct3D

Temperature Testing

Ballistics Report

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Pros

Radeon X1900 XTX core: With ATI’s emphasis on dynamic looping/branching in their entire R5xx line and R580’s emphasis in particular on pixel shading by including 48 dedicated pixel shading units, some have made the argument that ATI’s Radeon X1900 XTX is better equipped to handle future Shader Model 3.0 games coming later this year (that will feature more extensive shader effects) than NVIDIA. On paper, this certainly seems like a fine argument, and it can even be suggested that current games like F.E.A.R. and Oblivion have proven this out, with the X1900 XTX outperforming NVIDIA’s GeForce 7900 GTX in these titles, but we’ve also got to remind you that the game engine everyone’s looking forward to seeing is Epic’s Unreal Engine 3. UE 3 will use 3.0 shaders extensively, as well as other eye candy effects like HDR lighting, stencil buffered shadow volumes and volumetric fog. Of course, it also doesn’t hurt that Epic has also picked up dozens of licensees for UE 3 either, many of which will be released this year. Another advantage ATI’s high-end R520 and R580 GPUs share is their more efficient memory subsystem. ATI outfits both GPUs with eight 32-bit memory controllers, versus the four 64-bit controllers that were used previously, this allows them to serve more read/write requests simultaneously than before.

Higher clock speeds: Rather than stick with ATI’s stock speeds for the Radeon X1900 XTX, Sapphire overclocks their Blizzard X1900 XTX board from the factory, running the graphics core and memory 25MHz over stock at 675/800 respectively. This change buys the Sapphire Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX another 3-4% in performance overall, making it the fastest X1900 XTX on the market right now.


Blizzard cooling: Sapphire partnered with Thermaltake to produce the liquid cooling for their Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX card. If you’re familiar with Thermaltake’s TideWater cooler, the concept is basically the same. The cooler uses distilled water to keep the GPU cool while also generating less noise than the stock Radeon X1900 XTX cooler. How much quieter is the Blizzard X1900 XTX over ATI’s stock heatsink/fan unit? The Blizzard cooler is definitely quieter than the stock ATI cooler, but the difference isn’t as remarkable as some of Sapphire’s cards in the past that have relied on “near-silent” cooling. Under the “low” setting the Blizzard card runs a few decibels quieter than ATI’s cooler. We’re running one of Zalman’s CNPS9500 LED CPU coolers on our system testbed now, so our ears definitely appreciated the quieter operation of the CNPS9500 LED/Blizzard combo on our Athlon 64 FX-57 system. At the same time though the Blizzard cooler is nowhere near as quiet as the Zalman cooler, even when running in the “low” mode, nor is at as quiet as Zalman’s VF900-Cu VGA cooler (review coming shortly).

In terms of performance, Sapphire’s Blizzard liquid cooling works precisely as advertised. Even when running under the “low” setting, the Blizzard X1900 XTX board ran our load testing over 15 degrees cooler than the stock ATI Radeon X1900 XTX, despite running 25MHz faster. That’s a pretty nice improvement in our book.

Sapphire Select bundle: While the games are a bit outdated, we do like the concept behind Sapphire’s Select bundle. It’s a neat idea that gives the end user more choice when it comes to their game bundle, and we’d like to see Sapphire expand the program to include newer games.

Cons

No liquid cooling for RAM: Sapphire’s Blizzard liquid cooling solution does such an excellent job cooling the GPU, that we’d love to see Thermaltake/Sapphire also cooling the board’s memory modules and perhaps even power circuitry. Fortunately these hotspots on the board are minor in comparison to the GPU, so we can’t complain too much.

Final Verdict

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FiringSquad says:

Well, the fact that they’re running their Blizzard board at higher clock speeds than stock is certainly an interesting decision. This is Sapphire’s first stab at overclocking their board out-of-the-box, running the board’s memory and graphics core 25MHz over the X1900 XTX’s default clock speeds. In the past Sapphire would provide a software utility to accomplish this task, whether it was TRIXX, APE, or Redline, but with the Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX you’ve got the card overclocked from the factory – all you have to do is boot up the board to enjoy the higher clocks. This feature alone will likely appeal to some of you.

On top of that, you’ve also got a board that runs quieter than your typical stock ATI Radeon X1900 XTX card. We wouldn’t say the card runs nearly silently, as we’ve seen aftermarket VGA coolers as well as graphics cards from Sapphire in the past that are closer to that claim, but Sapphire’s Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX is the quietest X1900 XTX card we’ve tested to date.

Instead of lower noise levels, the greatest advantage the cooling unit of Sapphire’s Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX has over stock X1900 XTX cards is without a doubt its lower operating temperatures. In testing our Blizzard card ran at considerably lower temperatures than our stock Built by ATI Radeon X1900 XTX graphics card – over 20 degrees Celsius under load with the card’s fan set to “high”. That’s a pretty remarkable difference in our opinion, especially when you factor in that the Blizzard board is also running at higher clock speeds.

The real selling point of the Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX is that you’re getting all this for just under $550 – Sapphire says that they’ll begin selling the board on Newegg next week for $539 after $30 mail-in rebate. With only the cheapest X1900 XTX cards selling on Newegg for $489 right now and most starting at $500 and up, you’re basically getting a factory overclocked X1900 XTX board with better cooling for roughly a $40 or $50 price premium. Sure, you could probably buy a stock Sapphire X1900 XTX card, slap on a Arctic Cooling Accelero or Zalman VF900 for the same price or a little less, but with Sapphire’s Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX card, Sapphire does all the work for you. Hardcore enthusiasts will probably opt to go the DIY route, and probably overclock their X1900 XTX board a lot further than the Blizzard’s extra 25MHz as well, but for everyone else, Sapphire’s Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX is a nice compromise.

Because of this we’re awarding the Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX with our Bull’s Eye Award. We feel Sapphire’s done just enough with the Blizzard card to distinguish themselves from the other X1900 XTX cards on the market. Would we recommend this card for HTPC use? That’s a very tough call that’s really going to depend on your sensitivity to noise. With the flexibility provided by the external liquid cooling, Sapphire’s Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX is a tempting choice, especially since it does such a good job of battling heat, but on the other the Blizzard card’s noise level may still be a little too high for use in a media-centric system, especially considering how good the near-silent aftermarket cooler from the likes of Arctic Cooling or Zalman are. Don’t buy the Blizzard card expecting to be able to overclock to higher levels either.

In closing, there’s a lot to like about Sapphire’s Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX. No, it isn’t the perfect X1900 XTX card, but it is the most feature-packed, coolest-running, and fastest Radeon XTX board on the market right now. That counts for a lot in our book, hence the Bull’s Eye Award and 89% score.