PowerColor Radeon X1950 Pro SCS3 – Silent cooling on show

Vote: Thumbs Down or Thumbs Up Our Rating: 8.5%       Manufacturer: PowerColor

The Package and Card

With no box we simply dived straight into the package which on the whole is pretty light. Cable wise we have PCI Express power connector, component-out, S-video, RCA and VIVO. We have a quick install guide, driver CD, Cyberlink DVD solution CD and a bracket to go over your second port at the back of the PC if you decide to use it.

Checking out the card is a pretty quick process as well thanks to the mammoth heatsink on the front which manages to take up the whole card. The whole setup is a great design, though.

For starters we have four copper heat pipes that go from the core and head outwards and upwards through the aluminum fins. PowerColor have also gone to the effort to make sure that the memory is cooled with little BGA heat sinks. We can also see the VIVO chip on the bottom right of the card, which is a good little bonus.

Like all X1950PRO cards we have our PCI Express power connector on the right of the card which is needed for the card to run.

Turning the card over its all pretty blank though up at the top we have our CrossFire connectors. However, you have to make note that, with this design, you are not going to be having much luck with CrossFire. The cooler well and truly shoots up above the card making it impossible to use two of these in a CrossFire setup.

I/O wise is pretty standard as well, two dual-link DVI connectors, along with out TV-out port which of course can also accept an incoming signal thanks to the presence of the Rage Theater chip.

While the package is a bit light the card quality really makes up for it; VIVO, silent, well designed and excellent quality make it a really standout card. Clocks are standard coming in at 575MHz core and 1380MHz DDR memory.