Sapphire RADEON™ X1950 PRO, (512 MB) PCI Express Video Card

Good Points: Fast! Brilliant Graphics Quiet Big Fan for cooling and built in exhaust system Stylish design Easy to use drivers/software

Bad Points: Very large card Temperatures can be HOT Power Hungry Drivers are a bit touchy

General comments: The 'ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512mb' graphics card is currently one of the top of the range cards and is brilliant! Graphics are brilliant and I can set game settings to "HIGH"!, Battlefield 2142 looks fantastic, combined with 2GB of RAM and 64bit OS and it copes with a lot! (All depends on what other bits you have in your system) It's quiet when on idle, but the fan 'should' kick in to Fast speed when you begin pushing the card during gaming, this forces air over the chipset and with its built in exhaust system, instead of forcing the hot air out of the card and around the inside of your system, it forces the hot air out the back of your pc case, making the inside air cooler. But due to the card large cooling design the card is rather large and one of the most heaviest cards I have ever come across, not ideal for small cramped computer systems (check before you buy!), It has a nice design (from Sapphire), and makes any case look the part. Being ATI you can have two of these cards running using 'Crossfire', although I haven't tried this, I think that even myself with a large computer case would struggle to fit two of these monsters side by side - One of the problems being that due to their size the air space required to cool the top card is restricted and will eventually lead to overheating issues! - To overcome this some have forced apart the cards just enough to allow room, but put strain on the card contacts and the motherboards PCI-e slots, which is NOT recommended. (Bit of a concerning oversight by ATI!) Although early days this card is stated to become better given some more time when Direct X 10 is unleashed, haven't read into this but I'm looking forward to it. Regarding POWER... yes this card is exactly as I have stated... HUNGRY... The minimum requirement is around 600W, of "Stable" power (and that's just for the one card, you will need around 800W odd for Two cards to run. I used the word "Stable", due to the fact that it is most commonly believed that a 600W device will run on a 600W Power Supply Unit (PSU), unfortunately this is not the case as most PSU's advertised will run at 600W but that is their maximum output and most can not sustain such an output for a long period of time, instead they will usually run at a constant output of at least 80-100W below their stated maximum (I.e. a 600W PSU will run at around 520W odd), I may be wrong but this is the research I have been able to find). I found this out the hard way after blowing one expensive £100 PSU, another fact to include is, although the device you are going to power will require 600W, you have to include all the other hardware you have in your system,(E.g. Hard Drive, Floppy Drive, DVD drive, Motherboard, Sound Card, Fans, Lights, Multi-card reader, etc) all of these items require a set amount of power! After my expensive mistake I opted for an 800W PSU, although being 200W more than required I left myself enough leeway to allow for my other items in my system and a bit of Wattage to spare. Enough about power requirements, now on to HEAT, this card does pump out the heat and in a small PC room it can help to do a bit of energy saving too, it does come in handy to pump out the hot air to heat your room, It runs at around 50

Having already owned the same card i decided to stick with an item that is proven to work in the way i need it to.

You must have...because:She`s very cheap,fantastic work,easy settings,silently.....and more,more,more......I have (3 years)..never any problems....If you need take this!!!! Crossfire is POWER!!! (2xcard)

I have 2 of these cards and I am very happy with them, I can play Doom3 at the best quality with no problems at all, they have coped with everything I have thrown at them and done the job well. For the money these cards are awsome.

This can't compete with the newest higher end cards, but is still extremely powerful for the price and provides awesome visuals.

Use if you don't have the latest duo / quad core setup and don't want to spend a lot. Otherwise, I'd recommend at least an 8800GT.

This card is amazing. I had a few problems with gaming on my PC and decided that it was time for that long-overdue graphics card upgrade. This was easy to install, and I was very happy that it came on time, and that everything worked fine.

CPU: pentium 4 @ 3.2ghz
RAM: 2gb
GRAPHICS: x1950 pro
OS: xp pro
PSU: 500w

This is an excellent card, getting around 60fps on world of warcraft at full spec. Around 30-40fps on call of duty 4 full spec. This graphics card is easily overlclockable if you are into that as it comes with a decent default fan.

product very good, copes with Battlefield 2 no problem, the only problem encountered when this arrived, is that it didn't come with a power lead converter, this card uses a Pci power connector that isn't compatible with my PCU, still a short trip to Maplin's sorted that out, Very pleased with this card.

Increased 3DMark Score by 3000 !!! It needs at least 450 watt pcu and two power connector (adaptor supplied in full retail box). Only just fits in a midi case.