Radeon X1900-series roundup

PowerColor Radeon X1900XT 512MB:

Core Clock: 625MHz
Memory Clock: 1450MHz

PowerColor's Radeon X1900XT is the only Radeon X1900XT in this roundup, but it's a performance point that we didn't have the chance to look at in our Radeon X1900-series family preview. At a glance, you'd be troubled to find a difference between this card and the Radeon X1900XTX - that's because there isn't any physical differences between the two. In fact, the only aesthetic difference is the sticker on the back of the card.

The box is well presented with the cables, manuals and card each having separate compartments with adequate cardboard around the video card to protect it during transit. There are the same selection of cables as the previous two cards. The 6-pin power adapter is a little different to the one included in Club 3D's bundle and it should help to improve cable management, as the cable is a lot longer and you only need a single 4-pin molex required to power it.

There are no games included in PowerColor's bundle, but they have included a driver CD and a Cyberlink DVD Selection disk. The disk includes full versions of PowerDVD, PowerDirector, PowerProducer, Medi@Show, MusicMatch and Power2Go, along with trial versions of PowerBackup and PowerDVD Copy. Despite the lack of games, the bundle is a particularly good one because of the multimedia possibilities with the extensive Cyberlink software package.

Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX 512MB:

Core Clock: 650MHz
Memory Clock: 1550MHz

Sapphire's Radeon X1900XTX is the only card that we've looked at here that is particularly well-branded. The fact that Sapphire has only put a sticker over the original shell of the Radeon X1900XTX heatsink/fan combination doesn't really matter as what's important is that you can determine that it's a Sapphire product. It's got exactly the same feature set and clock speeds as the Radeon X1900XTXs from Club 3D and Connect3D - the differences are in the bundle.

Sapphire's box was packed well, but it's not as well packed as some previous Sapphire video cards we've reviewed. The card sits in the centre of the box with two cardboard supports above and below it containing the cables. Personally, we prefer the plastic-mould packing method that we've seen on the Radeon X800GT and Radeon X800XL cards, but that's not to say that this video card hasn't been packed well.

The highlight of the bundle is Sapphire Select, which contains four games on a single DVD, each with a one hour trial and the option to activate (or buy) the full version after the trial. There are two activation codes supplied with this Radeon X1900XTX, meaning that you can choose to activate the full version of two of the four games on the DVD. It's possible to buy the either of the remaining games too if you find that you've enjoyed the one-hour trial. The games included are Brothers In Arms: Road To Hill 30, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Tony Hawk's Underground 2 and Richard Burns Rally. Finally, there are two DVI-to-VGA adapters, manuals, PowerDirector and PowerDVD along with the same plethora of cables for the VIVO port.