Sapphire X1650 Pro 256 MB

A Closer Look

Sapphire's cooler does not cool the memory. There is no contact between the memory chips and the cooler base.


I must say this is quite a thermal paste mess. The paste even covers some components, but this has no effect, since the paste is non-conductive.


This is the X1300 XT and the X1650 Pro side by side. As you can see it's the same PCB. Both cards share the same GPU and memory type so the performance differences should be almost non-existent.


The PCB number is exactly the same like on the X1300 XT, 109-A67131-00A.


Sapphire uses 1.3 ns GDDR3 memory from Infineon with the model number HYB18H512321AF.


After a lot of cleaning up, this is the GPU core. Unfortunately it does not have a product name marking, the GPU should be RV535 using 80nm technology.