PowerColor Radeon X1900 XT 512MB Review

Debuting at the same price as the Radeon X1800 XT first did a couple of months back, the US$549 priced Radeon X1900 XT is in a class of its own with no real competitor. We speculate the Radeon X1800 XT to gradually wane away as stocks deplete in the following weeks and months while its price slides to yet below the US$500 mark as the Radeon X1900 XT becomes the definitive successor with performance gains of up to 30%. That's an incredible performance gain for a minor core update, but when it comes down to pure numbers, we had expected even better performance than what we encountered considering it has three times more shader processors. Obviously, the bottleneck is not only at the shader processor, but elsewhere along the line that hasn't changed from its predecessors. Additionally, the success of the ATI's new top dog really hedges upon how forward looking game engines get and the more shader programs used displace conventional render routines, the higher the performance of the Radeon X1900 series. We for one can't wait to try it with Unreal Tournament 2007 and hopefully it becomes ATI's forte thanks to its architectural design inclinations.