Sapphire Blizzard X1900 XTX water-cooled graphics card

Thermaltake to the rescue?

By Leo Waldock • Get more from this author

27th March 2006 13:17 GMT

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For the record, a conventional Sapphire X1900 XT, which runs at 621MHz/1.44GHz, can also be overclocked to 690MHz/1.6GHz on the same test system. We've never been convinced that the XTX premium of £40-50 is worth paying over the XT, and the Blizzard ups that premium to about £100.

sapphire blizzard radeon x1900 xtx

The Sapphire package includes all the company's usual bits and pieces, including cables, DVI adaptors, PowerDVD 6, PowerDirector 4 and the Sapphire Select game package that allows you to try four games and then install the one you prefer. That's all good stuff but the Blizzard succeeds or fails on the appeal of the Tide Water cooling system and its price, and this is where we have a few issues.

The X1900 is - just - better than the 7900 GTX. However, if you play specific games you may well find that the reverse is true. The Blizzard removes the main concern we have about X1900, ie. the noise, but it can do nothing about the fact that we have a personal preference for Forceware drivers over Catalyst.

We also prefer SLI to CrossFire as it's a more mature system and at present there are no plans to introduce a Blizzard X1900 XTX CrossFire master card so gamers will be stuck with a single graphics card unless they run a noisy air-cooled Master card alongside their Blizzard.

Funnily enough, the price is the least of our concerns as there are plenty of premium graphics cards on sale for £499 - £60-80 more than the Blizzard is expected to cost.

Verdict

Deciding whether you should buy a Radeon X1900 or a GeForce 7900 GTX is a tough decision, but on balance we would favour the Nvidia card because it's quieter and has better drivers. Blizzard changes that and means that we now vote for the X1900 provided you have no plans to run more than one graphics card inside your gaming PC. ®