Diamond Viper ATI X1950PRO PCI Express 512MB Video Card

List Price: $209.99 Discount Price: $333.99

Features:

• Powered by the ATI RADEON X1950 PRO graphics processing unit (GPU)
• Compatible with PCI-Express x16 systems
• 512MB of on-board video memory
• Capable of connecting to DVI, VGA, component, S-Video and composite display devices
• Optimize your gaming performance by connecting two cards together on CrossFire-compliant motherboards

Customer Reviews:

No more peace [Posted on 2007-05-06]
This is actually a great card... amazing resolution and 3d... great support from ati.

The reason I rated 3 is because it's a real headache to me... simply put : THE FAN ON THIS IS UNBEARABLE... i feel I own a 1988 PC all of a sudden.

If you can bear the sound.. go for this card...
If you are like me and you want to enjoy a peaceful quite room... don't even think about this card. This is the noisiest device I have ever owned. Even noisier than my apple external SCSI drive (which is really loud)

Cross Fire [Posted on 2007-07-26]
This ATI X1950 in the cross fire configuration is super fast. The only thing I had to do was go on line and download drivers for Windows Vista. Otherwise the instillation went smooth and everything work the first time. I am enjoying the speed with my microsoft flight simulator. Graphics are great and smooth.

Should have been 5 stars but.... [Posted on 2007-11-08]
Ok, this card is ONLY DIRECT X 9.0. This will NOT play DirectX 10 games. I was told twice by tech support at Diamond that this was DirectX 10 compatible and it just isn't.

That being said... I also had to upgrade my power supply to beable to use this thing. Make sure you have about a 500 watt power supply. I think they recommend minimum 450 Watt. That was easy and cheap from New Egg. I have never built my own PC, so I'm a newby with the power thing.

That being said... It is awesome to max out Half Life 2, Red Orchestra, and Demo of Silent Planet and Call of Duty 4 without a single bit of hesitation and super great frame rates (IMHO). Yes, I would but this card again, but just be prepared for the power issues and that this is the old generation card (no directX 10 support).

Older is Better! [Posted on 2007-11-16]
Although the ATI X1#### series video cards have been on the market for a while, they're reliable and well worth the money for mid-range usuers. I originally purchased the Redeon HD 2600XT 512MB by Diamond, only to be extremely dissappointed. I expected the newer HD series technology to be impressive but found known issues to be annoying. Searching the tech support on amd.com, I realized my "black screens" and "loss of signal" while using a DVI connection are know, unexplained issues that AMD has yet to fix. For a few more dollars, I traded in the HD for this 512MB X1950Pro and I couldn't be happier. Great for video's and Battlefield 2. I haven't messed around with the clock speeds yet, but I shouldn't have to as it plays BF2 with all of the video settings set to their best quality.

However: The specs here on Amazon indicate a 420W PSU is the minimum. These are ATI specs and relate to the 256MB card, not the upgraded 512MB Diamond card. Ensure you have at least 500W w/ multiple rails. A single rail, 500W PSU will not be enough power and you'll more than likely experience "hangs" and/or "the blue screen."

This card is a lot more quiet than the HD card too and I don't even notice it. I recommend this card to anyone looking for a mid-range well priced upgrade.

Awesome card! [Posted on 2008-08-27]
This is a very nice card it can even handle Crysis on medium/high settings and on benchmarks it exceeds the specs for the 8800 series cards in all but 1 category. Even though the manufacturer states on the package that Windows 2000 is supported there are no drivers from Diamond Multimedia that will run it & tech support affirms that. But don't worry you can download the 2000 drivers from Visiontek, another card manufacturer for ATI. The main ATI tech support office told me this was the last generation card that supports Windows 2000 so don't miss out if you're still running an older OS, this card is well worth the price. FYI: Crysis is NOT 2000 compatible as far as I know, I run a dual boot system with both 2000 & XP as my reason for getting this card and I've never had a new Nvidia card, (4 in fact), that could do as well as an older ATI card.

Click here for more details and discount information...