An ATI Vendor has leaked some Radeon X1950XTX benchmarks, which are painting a rather nice picture for ATi's latest graphics card: the Radeon X1950. When two cards are coupled in CrossFire they, according to the benchmarks, are superior overall to a pair of GeForce 7950GX2 cards -- aka a Quad SLI system.

It's a shame the benchmarks were in CrossFire and SLI, as neither system shows consistent gains. Especially Quad SLI which has been shown to be detrimental to performance in some games. Both systems are processor limited too, so it really does not show us the true power of the card in question.

It would have been more impressive if ATi's vendor had leaked some single card benchmarks, or benchmarks against a card from the X1900 series to show how much better the X1950 cards be.

My only beef with the X1950 cards is that they have been designed by ATi as a stop-gap for when the next generation of GeForce 8 cards, codenamed G80, comes out. nVidia's G80 is rumoured to be released in September and will be fully Direct X 10, aka DX10, compliant. Secondly, as the G80 will be the a next generation part it will, undoubtedly, be the fastest card on the market, and ATi need the X1950 to make this gap smaller to remain competitive at the high end. That is, until ATI release their true next generation part codenamed R600, which is rumoured to be out in December.

So this product seems to be rather pointless as an upgrade; who would plan on upgrading to this when they know potentially faster, and DX10 compliant, cards are just around the corner. Although, for those who like to buy pre-built computers from the OEMs, and just want the fastest thing out, the Radeon X1950 might make a good choice. In reality though, for the computer enthusiast the best thing about the release of the X1950 is that X1900 prices will fall.