Introduction

Although PCI-Express has been around for a while now, there are still plenty of people out there that haven’t made the switch yet, and are therefore still using AGP cards. However, there is a problem here as a lot of manufacturers offer very few options for AGP gamers. Fortunately, Sapphire are not a company to let this lot down and have sent us their x1950 Pro AGP to let us see what it can do.

Features

• 36 pixel shader processors
• 8 vertex shader processors
• Up to 256-bit 8 channel GDDR3 memory interface
• Native PCI Express® x16 bus interface
• Plug-and-play (native) CrossFire™

Shader Technology

• Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware.
• Shader Model 3.0 vertex and pixel shader support:
  • Full speed 32-bit floating point processing
  • High dynamic range rendering with floating point blending and anti-aliasing support
  • High performance dynamic branching and flow control
• Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® 2.0

Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering

• 2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes:
  • Sparse multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable sample patterns, and centroid sampling
  • New Adaptive Anti-Aliasing mode
  • Temporal Anti-Aliasing
• Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1) at all resolutions, up to and including widescreen HDTV
• 2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes:
  • Up to 128-tap texture filtering
  • Adaptive algorithm with performance and quality options
• Improved rendering with higher subpixel precision and LOD computation levels
  • New rotational high quality rendering mode

3Dc+™ — Advanced Texture Compression

• High quality 4:1 compression for normal maps and luminance maps
• Works with any single-channel or two-channel data format

Ring Bus Memory Controller

• Programmable arbitration logic maximizes memory efficiency, software upgradeable
• New fully associative texture, color, and Z cache design
• Hierarchical Z-Buffer with Early Z Test
• Lossless Z-Buffer Compression (up to 48:1)
• Fast Z-Buffer Clear
• Z Cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering
• Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, up to and including widescreen HDTV

Avivo™ Video and Display Engine

• New advanced video capabilities, including high fidelity gamma, color correction and scaling
• Dual independent display controllers that support true 30 bits per pixel throughout the display pipe
• Full symmetry on both heads
• Each display interface supports display resolutions beyond 2560×1600
• Advanced DVI capabilities, including 10-bit, 16-bit HDR output
• YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays
• Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
• MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration:
• DXVA support
  • Hardware motion compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion
• All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
• Adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing and frame rate conversion (temporal filtering)

CrossFire™

• Multi-GPU technology
• Four modes of operation:
  • Alternate frame rendering for maximum performance
  • Supertiling for optimal load-balancing
  • Scissoring for compatibility
  • Super AA for maximum image quality

• Native CrossFire support simplifies setup by requiring no dedicated slave or master hardware
• 24-bit CrossFire connection enables high resolutions and refresh rates
• Supports the broadest range of platforms for both Intel and AMD