Sapphire "Ultimate" x1600 PRO 256MB

Introduction:

    Sapphire offers a wide variety of video cards and motherboards, like that sexy white motherboard, The Pure CrossFire... MMMMMM!!! Back in 2001, Sapphire made a commitment to ATI, and now is the largest supplier of ATI graphic cards.

    Since Sapphire is releasing a new ATI video card, they have asked us to review their new Ultimate X1600 PRO with 256MB of RAM that they are currently debuting at Computex 2006. We had to keep the information to ourselves until today (8th), so now that we can bark, it's time to inform the peeps!

   The X1600 series of cards have been labeled as mid-ranged type cards with the price being well under $200, keeping this graphics card from being a budget buster. The X1600 cards are also CrossFire Ready, but what makes this card Ultimate compared to the others in its class? Let's take a look.

About the Company:

    Pioneers in a new era of how data is displayed and games are played, Sapphire shepherds the performance oriented with ground-breaking solutions to an environment that remains in a constant state of flux and ultimate evolution. For over ten years Sapphire has held true to its unwavering commitment, the commitment to deliver the most feature rich and soundly engineered products. Because of Sapphire's firm position on achieving excellence with each product that leaves our ISO9001 and ISO14001 certified factories, you can rest assured that your customers will recognize YOUR commitment to selling only the highest of quality components.
 
    "Sapphire is ATI's largest and best performing partner World Wide" Dave Orton, CEO ATI

    Since ATI announced its manufacturing & distribution relationships with ODMs and AiBs in June of 2001, SAPPHIRE has been THE key ATI Graphics Boards Supplier worldwide and now stands poised and ready to capture the mainboard audience of those who seek a stable platform for their mission critical operations.

Specifications:

RADEON™X1600 Pro Chipset Features and Specifications

    SMARTSHADER™ HD

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

• Shader Model 3.0 vertex and pixel sgader support:

  • Full speed 32-bit floating point processing

  • High dynamic range rendering with floating point blending and anti-aliasing support

  • High performance dynamic branching and flow control

• Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® 2.0

    Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering

• 2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes

  • Sparse multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable sample patterns, and centroid sampling

  • New adaptive anti-aliasing mode.

  • Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1)at all resolutions, including widescreen HDTV resolutions

    Temporal Anti-Aliasing

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

  • Up to 128-tap texture filtering

  • Adaptive anisotropic filtering algorithm with bilinear (performance) and trilinear (quality) options

    3DC+™ Advanced Texture Compression

• High quality 4:1 Normal Map Compression

• Works with any two-channel data format

    Next-Generation HYPER Z™ Technology

• Hierarchical Z-Buffer with Early Z Test.

• Lossless Z-Buffer Compression (up to 48:1)

• Fast Z-Buffer Clear

• Z Cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering

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

    Avivo™ Video and Display Engine

• New advanced video capabilities including high fidelity gamma, colo correction and scaling

• Dual independent display controllers that support true 30-bpp throughout the display pipe

  • Full symmetry on both heads

  • Each display controller supports display resolutions beyond 2560 x 1600

• Advanced DVI capabilities including 10-bit, 16-bit HDR output

• YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays

• Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time

• VIDEOSOAP™ noise removal filtering for captured video

• MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration

  • DXVA support

  • Hardware motion compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion.

• All-format DTV/HDTV decoding

• Adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing and frame rate conversion (temporal filtering)

    CrossFire™ Support

• Lossless Z-Buffer Compression (up to 48:1) Multi-GPU technology ready.

• Four modes of operation

  • Alternate frame rendering for maximum performance

  • Supertiling for optimal load-balabmcing

  • Scissoring for compatibility

  • Super AA for maximum image quality

Performance Specifications:

• Memory interface: 128-bit

• Memory Clock Speed: 800MHz

• Engine Clock Speed: 500MHz

• Pixel Shader Processor: 12

• Operating Systems Support Windows® XP / 2000

• Power supply of 350 (and up) watt is highly recommended for system stability

• 2D Display Modes: Resolutions, colors and maximum refresh rates(Hz) in 256, 65K or 16.7M colors.

    Extremely Silent Fan (max 22 dB(A))

• Intelligent fan rotation speed based on thermal surrounding