Today we continue our analysis of solutions based on the RV570 core with a review of Sapphire’s Radeon X1950PRO Ultimate. The most unique aspect of the this video card is its use of a Zalman cooling system. Sapphire claims that this addition to the video card allows it to perform better, yet quieter, than competing video cards.

For this review, we will place the Sapphire video card against other competing X1950PRO cards that we have tested. For a deeper understanding of the RV570 core, please refer to our previous article here.

To differentiate their video card from other products, Sapphire has designed part of the card’s packaging to be semi-transparent plastic. The plastic allows consumers to peek into the packaging and actually see the card. It also allows Sapphire to show off the Zalman cooling system that this particular board comes with.

The Sapphire X1950PRO Ultimate comes clocked 5% faster than standard X1950PRO speeds. The GPU has a frequency of 580 MHz instead of the ATI default 575 MHz and the memory has a frequency of 1.60 GHz. The card also comes with 256 MB of GDDR3 memory.