A Closer Look:

Top View	12v PCI-E	Dual DVI w/S-Video
Bottom View	Internal Cross	Fire Connection

    Now that the card has been removed from the box, let's quickly go over the layout. Starting at the back end, we find a 12v PCI-E power connector which is mounted in the center of the card, a newer style GPU cooler has been added, and at the front of the card is the dual DVI plugs along with the S-Video plug for TV out. On the top edge of the graphics card are the connections for the new internal CrossFire system.

HSF Top View

Hot Air Output

Underside

    Let's break things down and start off with the newer design of the heatsink fan. The all-white plastic enclosure covers a heatsink with a single heatpipe that goes through the plate above the GPU and passes through the fins at the back. The fan is incorporated into this enclosure and draws air from the top and bottom, and as the fan spins it slings this air over the fins and out the back of the heatsink enclosure. The heatsink also sits over the RAM modules, and a connection is made between the two with thermal pads.

GPU and RAM

RV570

    Under this heatsink is the new GPU, the RV570. This is the new 80 nanometer semiconductor with 12 pipes and 256 bit memory support, and clocks in at 581MHz. The 80nm semiconductor is roughly 34% smaller than the 90nm version. Some of the other features include 36 pixel shader processors, 8 vertex shader processors, 10-bit color processing, HDCP support, and Dual-Link DVI support.

    Surrounding the ATI GPU are eight Samsung (K4J5532306-BC14) 8 x 32mb -1.4ns 256Bit 1.38GHz DDR RAM modules. These RAM modules have thermal pads that take up the space between the top of the RAM and the bottom of the cooler, so any heat generated by the RAM will get transferred to the heatsink.

Crossfire Bridges

Waiting for a Partner

    The ASUS EAX1950PRO CROSSFIRE graphics card is equipped with the new CrossFire internal connection system. This setup uses a two-piece connection bridge to link the cards, creating a CrossFire setup. The CrossFire dual bridge setup allows the cards to pass data back and forth at the same time over the different bridges. The only thing missing now is a new motherboard chipset to kick things up a notch.

Installation and Setup:

Up High	Down Low	CCC
GPX Software	GPX Hardware	VPU Recovery

    It's a video card. Do I really need to go over the installation procedures on it? I didn't think so. So, let's move on to the setup and, of course, we need drivers. After installing the drivers from the CD, go and find updates at the appropriate sites.