Sapphire teamed up with Zalman for the cooling solution for the GPU. The answer to this was the VF900-Cu cooler: an ultra quiet heat-pipe cooler with integrated fan. The base of the VF900-Cu is copper with an aluminum top, and in-between these plates are two heat-pipes. Each heat-pipe forms a half circle - thus when together creates a full circle. The heat-pipes pass through thin copper fins to create a large cooling surface. This setup proves to be a perfect match for quietness and effectiveness.

• Pure copper heatsink base and fins maximize cooling performance.

• Use of two high performance heatpipes maximizes heat transfer.

• Circular heatsink formed by aligning ultra-thin(0.2mm) fins, minimizes airflow resistance and maximizes heat dissipation surface area for excellent cooling performance.

• Fan installed in the heatsink cools not only the VGA chipset and VGA RAM, but all other VGA components.
   

    A total of eight RAM modules surround two sides of the GPU. Each of the RAM modules are covered with a blue anodized heatsink, and being just under the diameter of the cooling fan, these heatsinks will get plenty of air. With the RAM modules being covered, I wont be able to get a model number off them as I don't want to risk any damage to the card. Here are some of the specifications listed from the Sapphire website on the RAM. The X1950Pro has a 256bit memory bus width and uses 256MB of GDDR3 memory which clocks at 1,400 MHz. The maximum bandwidth per second is roughly 44.1 GB/s.

CF Bridge top

Under side

Getting ready

One Side Connected

    The Sapphire X1950Pro board is equipped with the new CrossFire internal connection system. This setup uses a two piece connection bridge to link the cards to create a CrossFire setup. Why two bridges, you ask? Well, to upset all the SLI users out there, the SLI bridge can only pass data one direction at a time over the bridge. It can either send or receive data but cannot send and receive at the same time. The CrossFire dual bridge setup allows the cards to pass data back and forth at the same time over the different bridges.

Installation and Setup:

CCC Main screen	Software screen	Hardware screen
ATI Overdrive	Top view	Bottom view

    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. What I personally do is compare the drivers on the CD with the drivers on the website, and then install the newest one. Once all drivers are installed it's time to move on to the testing phase.

Overclocking:

    I'm not going to venture too much into this area since I wasn't very successful. I was able to set the ATI Overdrive to the max setting on the GPU and RAM, and when I ran my 3DMark tests, the scores came in lower than stock. If anyone has a clue as to why this is happening, please post your answer in the VH forums.