Sapphire X1650 Pro 256 MB

The Card

The card comes with Sapphire's blue PCB which is a way to seperate their design from all others on the market.


On the back there is not much to see. Memory chips are on the same side as the GPU. The card does not need an additional power connector. All power is supplied through the PCI-Express bus.


Two DVI interfaces are the standard on today's higher end cards. Only the X1300 for example has one DVI and one analog connector. Using the included DVI adapter you can run an analog monitor on any of those ports.


Sapphire's X1650 Pro cooler is made from copper, which adds to the weight of the card. The Sapphire X1300 Pro OC Edition is the same card, with the same GPU and memory but can do with an aluminum heatsink. I assume that the copper was chosen to symbolize a more powerful card.


The fan sucks in air from above the fan and exhausts the warm air at the rear. Sapphire uses an LM63 thermal monitor in the card, which also controls the fan speed. When the card is cool, the fan will run slower than when the card is under load.