LOSTCIRCUITS

Final Thoughts

Graphics adapters are getting increasingly complex and powerful and the R580 or X1900 XT(X) is the latest and most powerful contender in the current market place. Complexity comes at a price, though and an average streetprice of roughly $600 is high enough to preserve a certain amount of exclusivity for the inner circle of those who are willing and able to shell out that kind of money.

However, it is quite a handful that one gets in exchange, there is no denying that the X1900 XTX is the single most powerful graphics card out there. If that sounds like a broken record, then be it that way but the fact is, the Sapphire X1900 XT is the penultimate climax in the world of graphics adapters.

Evaluating graphics cards on the basis of frames per second is becoming more and more a moot point, moreover, with adaptive features that may change some of the quality settings on the fly, there is only a short time left until this type of metric will become plain and simply wrong because in the end, we will be comparing apples and oranges - depending on the one or other optimization strategy used by ATI, nVidia or any other graphics card manufacturer. In this context, it is interesting that ATI has several patents on reducing the image quality on the fly, but then, everybody else in the field has similar patents.

What we did not show is the level of possibilities of the R580 with respect to visual effects, and quite honestly, it is not possible to actually show these things in a still image. Probably the most impressive visuals are the rain effects in the Toyshop demo

What we didn't like - and this is nothing new - is the requirement of having to install DotNet and its associated anachronism of having to log back in every time the computer goes into a screensaver mode. It is an absolute conundrum how in the world anybody in his or her right mind could come up with this type of solution for a home computer. Quite frankly, even though this is the only real blemish that we could find with the X1900 XTX, that one would be enough to sway me to go with "the other" manufacturer - everything else being equal.

UPDATE: The reason for the required login is that DotNET creates its own user account. The workaround is to access the Control Panel\User Accounts and delete the DotNet account, leaving only the admin / primary user account in place.

Which still brings us back to the same old story that has been haunting ATI for the last half dozen years. The hardware is spectacular and hardly faces any competition at all at this point, but the driver infrastructure …..

In the end, though, there is still no doubt that Sapphire's X1900 XTX is one hell of a product and deserves our highest recommendation.

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