ATI Crossfire Video Card Review :: Sapphire X1600 Pro CrossFire

X1600 Pro
Brand	Sapphire
Model	X1600 Pro
Graphics Chip	RV515
Graphics Memory Type	GDDR2
Memory (MB)	256
Graphics Core Clock (MHz)	500
Memory Clock (MHz)	800
Memory Speed (ns)	2.5
RAMDAC Frequency (MHz)	Dual 400
Active Cooling on Graphics Chip	Yes
Heatsink on Memory	Yes
Video Capture	Yes
Ports
Dual Monitor Support	Yes
VGA Out	DVI-I, D-SUB
Video In and Out	S-Video Out
Package and Support
Printed Manual	No
Driver CD	No
Performance Tool Software	Overdrive
Major Games	N/A
Major Software	N/A
VR Glasses	No
DVD Player Software	N/A
Video Recording Software	N/A

X1600XT

• 90 Nanometer Low-K process
• 160 Million transistors
• 4 ROPs
• 12 Pixel Shader Processors
• 5 Vertex Shader Processors
• DirectX 9.0c
• Pixel Shader 3.0
• Vertex Shader 3.0
• Render to vertex buffer
• HDR
• Sparse Sample Multisample Anti-Aliasing
• Up to 6X MSAA, 12X with Temporal AA
• 16X AF
• 256-bit Ring Bus memory controller
• 600MHz core clock
• 400m

ATI decided not to require a compositing chip when operating X1600 in Crossfire mode. Instead of using a cable, ATI decided to use the PCI Express bus. As the cards will not likely saturate the PCI Express bus, even with two of them, this is a good choice. To operate X1600 in Crossfire mode, simply install the two cards, install the drivers and enable Crossfire.

The Sapphire X1600 Pro card is clocked at 500MHz for the core. This is the same as ATI's reference card and is pretty high for a mid-range video card. The X1600 series has 12 Pixel Shader Processors but 4 ROPs (outputted pixels) in a similar configuration to the X1900 cards which has 48 Pixel Shader Processors and 16 Outputted Pixels in a single clock.

The X1600 series doesn't require extra power above that provided by the PCI Express slot. The maximum power the slot provides is 75W. Sapphire's card is about 1 inch longer than the PCI Express slot, allowing an easy fit into any SFF computer. The cooling fan on the card is a 11-fin fan covering the video card chip. The heat sink surrounding the fan covers about 50% of the rest of the PCB of the video card.

Memory clock speed is 400MHz or 800MHz effective. The X1600 Pro has a 128-bit memory interface giving a total memory bandwidth of 12.8GB/second maximum theoretical bandwidth. The X1600 Pro has a 256-bit Ring Bus memory controller, enabling efficiency on the memory controller compared to other 128-bit memory controllers. It's not a true 256-bit memory bus, but it is better than a standard 128-bit bus.