Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro

The "budget high-end" card. It's based on the 80nm RV570 chip and has all the ingredients for a powerful card. In the end of 2006 I bought this card but had some difficulties getting it as it was barely available in the first few weeks.

All the X1900 and X1950 series are the successor of the X1800, which was launched too late due to problems. With the X1900/X1950 ATi was back on track compared to the GeForce 7 series. The RV570 and R580 cores are pin-to-pin compatible with the R520 (X1800-series) so manufactures could use the same PCB's and thus reduce design costs.