Are you having troubles with your Sapphire X1950PRO 512MB AGP?

How's your Sapphire X1950PRO 512MB AGP?

  • Total voters
    61
EternityZX9 said:
I've done some more research on this card and reading up on the Sapphire forums this card NEEDS a single rail psu that provides 30 amps or a split rail (dual/quad rail) psu that provides 22 amps per rail. If you don't meet these requirements expect problems to happen now or in the future! Doesn't matter if you have a 600 watt psu...it needs the amps on the 12v rail that's all that matters!

Just a warning for all of those of you having problems this could likely be the cause.


Here's a link to a Silverstone Zeus 560 with 38 amp continuous SINGLE rail psu for $108 and a review by jonnyguru, looks to be an excellent psu if anyone needs to upgrade their psu like I do.

http://www.case-mod.com/store/silverstone-sst56zf-st56zf-zeus-series-560w-560-watt-power-supply-p-1973.html?src=fr

http://jonnyguru.com/review_details.php?id=30
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Yes, we were just discussing this several posts up, including my experience over on Sapphire's Forum. I see you came to the same conclusion as I did. Funny, just yesterday I was reading up about the Silverstone model you mentioned and that appears to be a great PSU, nice price as well.

I went with the Enermax Liberty 620W / 36a +12V which the Mods over on Sapphire's Forum recommended and going by their sigs, quite a few of them use it. Costs about $40 more than the Silverstone though.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/PSU/ELT620AWT/ELT620AWT.html
 
one of the sapphire supermods said the antec 550 should work seeing as its crossfire certifed for the 1900/1950s.
 
another-user said:
one of the sapphire supermods said the antec 550 should work seeing as its crossfire certifed for the 1900/1950s.
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Dude, I answered your post on the previous page ....


honestjohn said:
ATI's Approved Crossfire Power Supply List. It's alpabetical and your's is on top....

http://ati.amd.com/technology/crossfire/buildyourown2.html

.....and as far as figuring out sustained/continuous amps when combining dual rails, the braniacs over on Sapphire gave me that info and it's also stated on the Enermax site under specs. Mine was about 8 amps under the total amps if you add the two rails together. 22a x 2 = 44a - 8a = 36a. Haven't a clue how to figure it out with 3 rails. Sorry.
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i actually posted over their before i saw your post. even though it says its certifed, i thought it better to ask, seeing as the 1950 pcie's didnt seem to have hte problems these agp ones do.
 
I just bought the Enermax Liberty 500 from Newegg, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817194003

I'm running a p4 3.0 GHz with just some basic peripherals.

I'll give this a shot before I RMA the card back, what do you guys think? I'm hoping this solves the artifact issue when running 3D apps. Also note I'm not doing Crossfire, so I figure I can get away with the 500 Watt over the 620 Watt
 
another-user said:
i actually posted over their before i saw your post. even though it says its certifed, i thought it better to ask, seeing as the 1950 pcie's didnt seem to have hte problems these agp ones do.
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Actually the PCI-E cards seem to have many more problems than the AGP cards do, going by Sapphire's Forum and Guru3D's Forum. That's probably just because they have been around longer.
 
EternityZX9 said:
I've done some more research on this card and reading up on the Sapphire forums this card NEEDS a single rail psu that provides 30 amps or a split rail (dual/quad rail) psu that provides 22 amps per rail. If you don't meet these requirements expect problems to happen now or in the future! Doesn't matter if you have a 600 watt psu...it needs the amps on the 12v rail that's all that matters!

Just a warning for all of those of you having problems this could likely be the cause.


Here's a link to a Silverstone Zeus 560 with 38 amp continuous SINGLE rail psu for $108 and a review by jonnyguru, looks to be an excellent psu if anyone needs to upgrade their psu like I do.

http://www.case-mod.com/store/silverstone-sst56zf-st56zf-zeus-series-560w-560-watt-power-supply-p-1973.html?src=fr

http://jonnyguru.com/review_details.php?id=30
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I'm running the OCZ GameXstream 700W PSU (4x18Amps) w/ 4 hard drives, I have no issues here whatsoever.
 
Dakn said:
I just bought the Enermax Liberty 500 from Newegg, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817194003

I'm running a p4 3.0 GHz with just some basic peripherals.

I'll give this a shot before I RMA the card back, what do you guys think? I'm hoping this solves the artifact issue when running 3D apps. Also note I'm not doing Crossfire, so I figure I can get away with the 500 Watt over the 620 Watt
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Did you read my response to Pchs, that is one Power Supplies I mentioned. Has 22a on each +12v rail, and should work well as long as you don't go crossfire, which you said you were not doing anyway. Please let us know how it goes. Did you check the thermal pad contact from the mem chips to heatsink?
 
honestjohn said:
Did you read my response to Pchs, that is one Power Supplies I mentioned. Has 22a on each +12v rail, and should work well as long as you don't go crossfire, which you said you were not doing anyway. Please let us know how it goes. Did you check the thermal pad contact from the mem chips to heatsink?
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Ahh sorry, I'm at working fixing these p.o.s. Dell Laptops, missed your post! I havent checked the contacts but I will when I go home. I'm going to return the other power supply tonight. Thanks for the quick responses
 
I got mine today, and I have to say so far I like it.I didn't expect too much because I know I will have to rebuild sooner or later. But for what it is, a stopgap till I decide to upgrade, I like! Installed smooth without a hitch. So far running games great. I was concerned about my power supply, but no more. Consid:D er me a happy owner!
 
I don't mean to rehash your excellent psu input but I have an antec neohe 550 and need some clarification.

I too have been at the sapphire site and the gurus there seem to say that if your psu is xfire approved it will be ok. However the antec has 3x18 amp 12 volt rails and the sapphire site also indicates 22-30 amps per 12 volt rail. Does the antec have enough amps. I am running 2 HDs, a 120mm fan, and an xfi sound card on one 12v line. I am running a dvd drive, a dvd burner, and a 120mm fan on a second 12v line. My plan is to run a third 12v line to the sapphjre card (its in RMA land currently) and a line from the dvd burner line for the second molenex on the vid card.

Do you think this will work????

By the way I had the visiontek originally and had no problems. Only returned it to BB cause it had no temp sensor.

Thanks in advance for the input
 
wulf52 said:
I don't mean to rehash your excellent psu input but I have an antec neohe 550 and need some clarification. .... Thanks in advance for the input
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i posted about the antec neo HE 550 on the sapphire forums this afternoon and got this back.

"Heya,..

Whilst it "should" work, it's an Antec .. . If it's been certified as X-Fire then maybe it's OK.

GG"

and
"Heya,..

Yeah i know it's X-Fire certified .. what i was getting at was "it IS an Antec" .. cos there have been loads of problems with that brand."


sounds like it should work, but also sounds like it may be pretty hit and miss. i had alot of problems with my first 550, but this replacement drive has been perfect over the course of the last few months.
 
wulf52 said:
I don't mean to rehash your excellent psu input but I have an antec neohe 550 and need some clarification.

I too have been at the sapphire site and the gurus there seem to say that if your psu is xfire approved it will be ok. However the antec has 3x18 amp 12 volt rails and the sapphire site also indicates 22-30 amps per 12 volt rail. Does the antec have enough amps. I am running 2 HDs, a 120mm fan, and an xfi sound card on one 12v line. I am running a dvd drive, a dvd burner, and a 120mm fan on a second 12v line. My plan is to run a third 12v line to the sapphjre card (its in RMA land currently) and a line from the dvd burner line for the second molenex on the vid card.

Do you think this will work????

By the way I had the visiontek originally and had no problems. Only returned it to BB cause it had no temp sensor.

Thanks in advance for the input
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How's it going. Your Power Supply is Crossfire Approved so it's got enough juice to handle 2 X1950.

http://ati.amd.com/technology/crossfire/buildyourown2.html

Also when they said 22a per +12v rail, they meant for a dual-rail PSU. Yours is a tri-rail so you should be fine. Regarding your cable arrangement, sounds fine, although it's always better to have the vid-card on a dedicated cable, but I know that's usually not possible.
 
Hey quick Q, is there any compatibility issues with single rail vs multi rail power supplies (dual, tri, etc) and older motherboards, I'm using the P4C800-E Deluxe mobo.
 
I just got mine today and so far no big issues. In ATI Tray Tools the default fan speeds were pretty low. Like 50% at 60 degrees. When I was playing, at full load it would hit 61 degrees max I think. So I bumped things up a little bit. Also a note, this card is bigger than my X800AIW :D

DSC00021.jpg


Oh right, and im running the Antec NeoHE 550 and its fine. I got it for free at Comic Con 2006 for winning the Quake 4 tournament they had going :)
 
the only thing I'm disappointed about with this card is the hi-def playback, and one game... I just upgraded from a NVIDIA card 6800 GT which had no h.264 playback support, the main reason for this upgrade was to have high performance and h.264 support. This card supports it with Avivo, but 1080p vids still dont work too well... just as slow as the nvidia card did it. It seems to run .mkv files at 720p fine (Heroes :D ), if i dont have anything else running in the background. Anyone know how to make the video run better? I use one test file for the 1080p its the trailer to "Surf's Up", a movie about pengiuns, i use quicktime to run it... and i know quicktime isn't the best, but it's a .mov file. Now the only game that runs slow so far is Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, is it always running at an avg. of 22 fps? Oh and one more thing, Mission Impossible 3 was my DVD playback test, and I get a light green vertical line on the left side of the screen, it doesn't do that with superman returns, or little miss sunshine, what's up with the line? Just and FYI i did run DriverCleaner to rid my PC of all files nvidia. Last thing i promise, i havent had a radeon card in years, do the drivers always need to flash the screen black for a second at windows start up? Thank you for reading my problems...:)
 
The only thing I can answer of your questions is: yes, the Catalyst drivers always flicker the screen to black after the reboot following install. Prior to this flicker, the 2D display will be slow, after the flicker things are back up to full speed.
 
I'm running a DiamondMM X1950 Pro 512mb. No problems at all so far. (running default speeds)
The card was running around 50C idle until I removed the expansion slot bracket on the empty slot below it. Just doing that lowered the temps by 5C.

I play WoW/HL2/HL2 Episode One/AOE3/Far Cry/FEAR/UT2004. (was using a X800 Pro prior)

I'm using a Enermax EG651P-VE (24P) that supplies 36a to the +12v rail.

I'm happy with the upgrade. It allows alittle more detail running on the Dell 2407WFP I use.
Trying to hold off the system upgrade bug until around summer/fall. :p
 
Ok I recieved the Enermax Liberty 500W power suppply today, hooked it up, and everything booted up successfully. I first used a single connector line but noticed artifacts on the BIOS screen, so then I switch to two seperate lines, and the artifacts seemed to of went away. Windows looked fine, however when I went into ATI Tool and ran the scan, artifacts popped up and I recieved the infamous black screen of death. Going to RMA the card I guess, sigh

This maybe a dumb question, but how can I tell what's running on what rail? (I really dont know jack about PSUs lol)
 
well before u RMA that card... Make sure you are getting the power from two separate lines from the PSU. Don't split one line from the PSU and expect that to be enough juice. Best bet is to try and get one molex connector from one line, and another from another line. (the rails are somewhere in there, too bad they dont label that stuff) I dont have that set up, but I do have one directly from the PSU, and another one split at the highest point in the chain that goes to just my ROM drives, that way it has the best possible amount of voltage/wattage for the card. First try with 2 separate lines, and try ur ATi Tool.

I looked up ur Ati tool and also saw that it doesnt support the x1950 Pro yet, maybe thats just from the site i was looking at.
 
I'm using 2 seperate lines directly from the PSU, it still crashed in ATI Tool, also to note the BIOS screen was different colors than my old video card.. its red and white on this x800 and on the x1950 its a weird ass green/purple.

Now I also wanted to mention that my x800 seems to artifact a little bit when running at 80C, its only like 2-3 pixels though every 30 sec, which is why I wanted to upgrade the card. I'm beginning to wonder if its the AGP slot.

Of course it could be possible that I'm hooking this up wrong (not using both rails?)
 
My bios screen also changed colors, to that weird green, just try plugging in the modular things to different slot things on the PSU. If possible could u get another PC to test ur card? A friends PC maybe? Just to test that AGP slot. Even with the green bios screen everything else looks fine to me, are u sure its cooled properly? try leaving the PC's case door open while running the tests? I know these are like "duh" steps, but u gotta try everything, also have u gotten the new catalysts?
 
The bios thing I wouldn't worry about. I have same and it's a known issue. I guess I wouldn't call it an issue. When I saw it I was worried, but then found out alot of people who have these cards see the same thing and it doesn't affect how the card works. I'm not sure, but thought I read that ATI Tool does not support x1950pro.
 
Sorry, but have you tried to play games? I can't see why you would buy a card just to run ATI Tool. Are you talking about the overclocking utility on ATI Tool that made your screen go black? These cards donot take any overclock on the memory, or you will get the black screen you described.
 
I'm just running the Artifact Scanner, says OC is not supported, unless the scanner OCs the card.
 
Ok sorry, I went back to read some of your posts from yesterday. I'm not an expert, but am going by some things I read in different forums. Have you gone to Sapphiretech.com? Try there for some info, and maybe someone can help you there. One thing though, I had issues with ATI Tool before. Crashes to desktop, games freezing. Try running some stuff without it and see if that helps. I hope your card isn't borked, but at this point that's what it's sounding like. Good luck my friend!
 
The artifact scanner shouldnt show artifacts though right? Mine is showing hundreds right away, and then more and more until the video card crashes basically. Though its odd how the card boots up fine and can run Windows ok, should I hold off on the RMA? :/ Not sure what else to do\


Actually can anyone with this card run ATI Tool .26 and try the artifact scanner?
 
Why dont u try using rthdribl, (Real-Time High Dynamic Range Image-Based Lighting), its pretty intense, look for the artifacts yourself, see how that goes, heres a linko. rthdribl try uninstalling that ati tool and try this. It sounds like ur problems stem from that. I wont even try the ati tool now...
 
well I hooked the card back up and noticed red vertical lines on the BIOS screen.. reseated the card and the lines went away, but noticed red horizontal lines flickering.. not a good sign :(
 
Just an update, day two of my Sapphire X1950 Pro. Everything is still running smoothly. I adjusted my fan speeds a little bit more but things are good. I dont think I needed to adjust them but I was paranoid and did them anyways. Runs everything like a champ thus far. Most people have had problems after a few days so im not counting things out.

I think with this card I may stay with my S939 for a little longer. Just plug in an Opty 165 and also more memory. I cant run lots of things and Rainbow Six Vegas because I dont have enough memory! Im running 1GB now. Gonna bump it to 2.

Anyone have a good suggestion for a good 2GB DDR400 memory kit?
 
HK41251 said:
Just an update, day two of my Sapphire X1950 Pro. Everything is still running smoothly. I adjusted my fan speeds a little bit more but things are good. I dont think I needed to adjust them but I was paranoid and did them anyways. Runs everything like a champ thus far. Most people have had problems after a few days so im not counting things out.

I think with this card I may stay with my S939 for a little longer. Just plug in an Opty 165 and also more memory. I cant run lots of things and Rainbow Six Vegas because I dont have enough memory! Im running 1GB now. Gonna bump it to 2.

Anyone have a good suggestion for a good 2GB DDR400 memory kit?
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$240 - $40 (Rebate) - $10 (Coupon: EMC109OCZ2GBDDR) = $190 AR + Free Shipping

Product Link | Rebate :D

Approaching about one week on my card, running strong. Running F@H GPU about 24/7, Fan Speed @ 100%. Simply awesome card.
 
dfloyd70 said:
Sorry, but have you tried to play games? I can't see why you would buy a card just to run ATI Tool. Are you talking about the overclocking utility on ATI Tool that made your screen go black? These cards donot take any overclock on the memory, or you will get the black screen you described.
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That's not exactly true. The problem is that the current version of ATI Tray Tool has stopped a lot of people from overclocking the memory including myself, it even hoses Catalyst if it is also installed. I resolved this issue over on Guru3D.com through trial and error. This fix has worked for everyone so far. Unintsall ATI Tray Tool, Uninstall Catalyst Control Center completely, then re-intsall Catalyst Control Center and Memory Overclocking will now be possible with ATI Overdrive. DO NOT re-install ATI Tray Tool as this will screw-up Catalyst Control Center's ability to overclock memory.
 
I have not had ATI tray tools installed and ATI overdrive is greyed out for me. There have been people on other forums that say if they overclock the memory at all they get black screens.
 
I have the same problem EternityZX9 does. Will try a Corsair PSU once other people chime in on their PSU situations.
 
Well finally installed my Sapphire X1950 Pro AGP and everything is fine with the reference 6.9 drivers. I tried ver 7.1 but those drivers seem really buggy with the X1950 Pro cards.

I do have one issue with both driver sets; when ever I start any video I get a brief blue flash then a black screen with green horizontal lines before the video starts or exiting.(only last like 1 second) This is using Quicktime, PowerDVD, Win Media Player or VLC Media Player. Anyone else having this issue? Did not have this problem with the X800 XT PE vid card,
 
I imagine that the reason the specific drivers work a little better is because these cards are actually just PCI-e cards with some extra hardware to convert them over to AGP.
 
dfloyd70 said:
I have not had ATI tray tools installed and ATI overdrive is greyed out for me. There have been people on other forums that say if they overclock the memory at all they get black screens.
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Sorry to here that. The guys on Rage3D and Guru3D are all having equal success overclocking the memory and are posting their 3DMark Scores. What version of Catalyst are you using? 6.9 that came with the card, or the 6.12's? I'm using the 6.12's and have my Core at 621mhz. and Mem at 742mhz.

 
Hey John, I have you to thank for even having this card. I happened upon your post about it being up on newegg. Anyways, I am using the version from the AMD website that are specifically for this card. I'm wondering if I click the unlock buton on overdrive, Is that what I need to do? Sounds like a pretty stupid question, but I just noticed it today.
 
dfloyd70 said:
Hey John, I have you to thank for even having this card. I happened upon your post about it being up on newegg. Anyways, I am using the version from the AMD website that are specifically for this card. I'm wondering if I click the unlock buton on overdrive, Is that what I need to do? Sounds like a pretty stupid question, but I just noticed it today.
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Exactly. You need to unlock it first. You're welcome and good luck. Just make sure you overclock in steps and your power supply is up to it. A guy over on Guru3D trashed his card overclocking it, then bitched that he had a bad card.
 
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