HIS 1950XT - worth the money?

[Smudger]

Just looking at scan, and you can get a 512mb HIS Turbo 1950Pro for £126, which I'm very tempted by, but I also see a 256Mb HIS Turbo 1950XT for £159. The XT is obviously better, but it it £30-odd better? Would 256mb run the 22in monitor i'm planning on getting down the line?

[kalniel]

Can't you get the sapphire 1950xt for about 110 these days?

256mb is plenty for 1680x1050, certainly with the xt.

The XT is 25-33% faster than the pro, so it's worth paying up to 25-33% more

[Smudger]

You probably can get the sapphire for that much, but I heard the ventiliation on sapphire 1950s was a bit crud, and the HIS one is turbo'd up...

[cptwhite_uk]

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/119441 + http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/109713

= £117.56 delivered. This will be quiet and just as effective. Turbo means very little, and a performance difference you wouldn't notice.

[Smudger]

I see. Ideally I wanted to get it from Scan so I can get all the stuff in one box. Is that cooler good then? I see that the Powercolor XT has it, but was a bit concerned that it doesn't exhaust out of the case...
If it is any good, would the Powercolour be a worthy adversary for the Sapphire?

[Biscuit]

What games are you going to be playing on this monitor? Newer ones may require 512MB to run natively
Only problem i found when i had the sapphire is the memory does not overclock at all wheras most other x1950s are pretty good for this. Obv if your not going to be overclocking this isnt an issue.

Personally, for cooling fans i would go for the Zalman option if you where to buy seperately however the powercolour with that cooler will be fine.
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/110237
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=470199

These seems like a bit of a bargain if you are willing to try Nvidia instead
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=618011
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=364166


if you are willing to fork out 159... why not put another £20 in and really get ur moneys worth

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=545086

[Mithrandir]

Personally I think it would be silly to spend £159 for a 156mb x1950xt. I'd rather go for the Sapphire @ £104 or if you have the money go for the 8800gts series.

[Queelis]

Or even better: get a Sapphire, and an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 (11.74 @ Scan), gets you passive cooling! And if you mount any 120mm fan over it (like a Sharkoon 1000), it'll eat Accelero X2 and Zalman VF900 up.

[Biscuit]

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphi...=724&chart=317

If you wanna check out how the various cards perform. The 3d mark score is slightly biased towards the Nvidia, if you check through the different tests at the resolutions you have suggested (1600x1000) its does vary

[Biscuit]

Or even better: get a Sapphire, and an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 (11.74 @ Scan), gets you passive cooling! And if you mount any 120mm fan over it (like a Sharkoon 1000), it'll eat Accelero X2 and Zalman VF900 up.

And take up 3/4 of your case

[Andaho]

Hi guys, I like the conversation that's happeneing here because... I was going to get the PowerColor X1950XT but it shows the memory is under the standard for an XT at only 1400MHz? Would it be better to buy the saphire and arctic cooler seperatley? And how hard would it be to remove and fit the new cooler? - would I need to buy some heatsink compound?

[Mithrandir]

Would it be better to buy the saphire and arctic cooler seperatley? And how hard would it be to remove and fit the new cooler? - would I need to buy some heatsink compound?

I believe the AC would have some MX-1 preapplied (like on my freezer64pro CPU HSF)

[Queelis]

And take up 3/4 of your case

Well, if there are no PCI cards, then why not? Ofcourse, everything depends on the conditions.

[Biscuit]

Well, if there are no PCI cards, then why not? Ofcourse, everything depends on the conditions.

But if he ever did want to put a card in then he woudl have to go back to stock HSF wheras the S3 and VF900 are both extremely good and quiet performers (plus the vf900 cmes with a fan controller) and only take up 1 extra slot

I take it the nvidia suggestions where not taken seriously

never heard of the site b4 but...

http://www.e-tropolis.co.uk/ProductD...e=21097-00-20R

[No.72]

You can get 8800gts's (new) on ebay for £160 plus £7 p&p.

[Smudger]

According to the Powercolor site, their XT memory speed is 1600MHz (2x800)

http://www.powercolor.com/eng/produc...?ProductID=511

Still slower than the Sapphire though. This gets more confusing the deeper you go...

Edit: Plus the Powercolour uses GDDR3, whereas Sapphire's is GDDR4...