Up close and Comparison GDDR3<>GDDR4

Dollarshops was kind enough to send over the standard X1950 Pro GDDR3 512Mb version to include in our comparison.

The differences are quite noticeable:



The PCB layout is completely different between the two boards, both sport a 4-pin molex power connector instead of the 6-pin PCIe which most PCIe VGA cards now have.

At the backside you can more clearly make out which parts were moved about the PCB to make room and accommodate the GDDR4 memory chips:



The GPU on both cards is identical:



The memory, of course, not quite. The GDDR3 sample has these chips:



At the Infineon site these HYB18H512321AF-13 chips are not listed, the HYB18H512321AF-12 are 800Mhz chips, the HYB18H512321AF-14 are 700Mhz, leading us to believe the HYB18H512321AF-13 fit somewhere in the middle. Jetway configured them to run at 600Mhz (value obtained through Rivatuner/ATI Tool).

The X1950 Pro with GDDR4 has Samsung chips:



These K4U52324QE-BC09 are rated on the Samsung site at 1100Mhz (2200Mhz DDR); either Rivatuner and ATI Tool are incorrectly reading the memory speed at 800Mhz, or these chips are underclocked.

Let’s find out if there is a performance difference between the two X1950 Pro cards ->