LOSTCIRCUITS

The Sapphire bundle supplied with the X1600 Pro features a somewhat spartan selection of software comprising the Driver CD, WinDVD, and the selection of Sapphire Select games. The game selection contains Ubisoft's Prince of Persia "The Warrier Within" (2004), Brothers in Arms "The Road to Hill 30" (2005), Richard Burns Rally (2004) and Tony Hawks Undergound2 (2004) trial versions with a coupon for activation of the full version of one game within the selection. Running a price check on the games from online retailers like Amazon.com, we ended up with retail values between $5.99 at the low end (Underground2) to 16.95 (The Warrier Within), which is adequate for a graphics adapter in the low $100 price range. One thing to keep in mind, though is that in the case of Sapphire Select, one does not have the CD, meaning that the game can only be installed on a single computer because that is all the license is good for. Depending on the game it is still possible to simply copy the entire folder over to a different box.

The retail box we had was probably not the final version, some of the listed features were a Dual DVI Link and HDMI Compliance whereas the card featured a single DVI output. A High Definition Media Interface as defined here is not included. These things can happen, we are confident that the final retail box will have the correct info.

Update: In a press release Sapphire Technology announced today that they will release an HDMI compliant version of the X1600 XT and Pro in April. Unfortunately we were not privy to this info at the time of the original posting of this article earlier this morning!

       

The Bundle (click pictures for larger images)

The hardware bundle contains the Y-splitter for the auxiliary power, an s-video cable, an s-video to composite converter, a DVI-VGA adapter and a composite video cable. The printed manual fulfills the legal requirements of explaining the installation of the card in a system but otherwise it is essentially useless. This is something that Sapphire should be aware of by now and that will hopefully be amended in the near, rather than in the far future.

Other Peculiarities

The R530 chip contains a native PCIe interface, therefore, adaptation of the GPU to an AGP interface requires a bridge chip. Such a chip is found on the back of the card, covered in all pink thermal material wth a little window for the actual die surface. Curiously, the X1600 Pro uses GDDR2 instead of GDDR3.

       

AGP bridge ... pretty in pink -- and then we took it all off -- 2.5 ns GDDR2 memory for 400/800 MHz clock/data rate

Next Page:    => Test Configuration =>