Dismantling The Card

Like most cards with single-slot coolers, the Sapphire X1950 GT was a breeze to take apart. The cooler was only affixed to the card by four screws. These screws are not spring-loaded but they hold a semi-flexible backplate which provides the necessary tension when fully screwed in.

When removed, the card was revealed in its full glory. The large RV570 package is in the center, surrounded by eight memory chips arranged in an inverted L. The power circuitry are all located on the far end of the card.

Here's a closer look at the RV570 VPU. While the "chip" looks large, the VPU itself isn't that big.

The VPU is merely the part covered by the white thermal paste. The rest is just the package.

As it does not have an integrated heatspreader, the VPU is protected by the large metal shim around the edge of the package. This helps prevent the delicate flip-chip die from being damaged during installation of the cooler.

Graphics Memory

The Sapphire X1950 GT comes with 256MB of Samsung K4J55323QG-BC12 GDDR3 memory. This is a 256Mbit FBGA lead-free part, giving the card 256MB of memory when eight of them are used. It's designed to run at 1.8V for both VDD and VDDQ.

The BC12 speed grade denotes a 1.25ns access time. This means this chip is officially rated for a maximum frequency of 800MHz. Since Sapphire is only running it at 600MHz, this gives the Sapphire X1950 GT quite good overclocking potential, as far as memory is concerned. Unless they really tightened the timings, it's very likely you can hit 800MHz on the memory clock without even trying.