Moving on from AGP

GJSNeptune

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Mar 31, 2004
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I'm looking for a PCI-E card to finally move away from AGP. Are these video cards overkill for this setup?

ASRock 4CoreDual
Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz)
512MB XMS2 DDR2-675 (hope to get a 1GB kit sometime)


I'm having trouble deciding between:

BFG 7900GS
($171 shipped with $30 MIR)
ASUS X1950 PRO
($161 shipped)
 
Get the 7900GS, you could probably overclock it so it has the speed of the X1950. Also I used to own the 7900GS it can run most games on high if that's what your going to do with your PC.
 
The only downside to the X1950pro is that it doesn't overclock worth shit....other than that, it's a good card.

Really though, either one is more than enough (if not overkill) for your system...
 
spend your money on more ram and a new cpu first. You definatly need those before a gpu upgrade.
 
I'm looking for a video card, but thanks.

EDIT: I'm open to suggestions of less powerful cards as well. I'm coming from an x800 GTO AGP.
 
I'm looking for a video card, but thanks.

EDIT: I'm open to suggestions of less powerful cards as well. I'm coming from an x800 GTO AGP.

You aren't going to see any difference buying a new card with only 512mb of ram in your system. At LEAST buy another 512mb stick. I promise it will be worth it.

I mean c'mon.. its $25.. (even a matching set)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145538

Evga 7900gs $150
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130056

Total comes to about $175. $4 more than you quoted with the bfg card.
 
X1950 Pro is a far better card, and can be found for quite a bit less than that on NewEgg unless the custom cooler is what grabs you.

List

Your CPU has some life left, especially if you OC it.

Getting your RAM up to a least 1 GB would be a very good idea.
 
Not a bad idea. Kinda thinking about staying with Radeon since I already have Catalyst display drivers installed. I'll think about it.

I've read that Sapphire's support has been faltering though.
 
I've read that Sapphire's support has been faltering though.

Wouldn't know about that part. I have had my card since February and it has been running just fine. I am not a real intense/heavy gamer but it does what I ask of it when I do get into games at times. I have played the new "DIRT" game on it and it runs just fine.
 
Can't OC. This motherboard is complete trash when it comes to overclocking.

I have the same motherboard and it takes my e4300 from 200 to 290 FSB (1.8 GHz to 2.62GHz) with no problems. Not as high as the CPU would go, of course, the MB is known not to exceed 295 FSB, but still a nice speed bump. It's giving my 6800GT AGP a new lease on life until a decent midrange DX10 card appears. I have FSB unlinked from RAM and PCI timings.

Of course, I have no idea what a P4 820 requires that the MB may not offer--I came straight from an Athlon XP-M.
 
I have the same motherboard and it takes my e4300 from 200 to 290 FSB (1.8 GHz to 2.62GHz) with no problems. Not as high as the CPU would go, of course, the MB is known not to exceed 295 FSB, but still a nice speed bump. It's giving my 6800GT AGP a new lease on life until a decent midrange DX10 card appears. I have FSB unlinked from RAM and PCI timings.

Of course, I have no idea what a P4 820 requires that the MB may not offer--I came straight from an Athlon XP-M.

How exactly do you OC with it? Its options are vague. It's a PD, although I'm thinking you typed P4 out of muscle memory or something. :D
 
How exactly do you OC with it? Its options are vague. It's a PD, although I'm thinking you typed P4 out of muscle memory or something. :D

Ha! I thought it was a Pentium 4 D, not just a Pentium D. D for D'oh?!?:D

Anyhoo, here's how I did it.

1. Hit F2 to enter BIOS during boot.

2. You start on the Main tab. Arrow right once to the Advanced tab.

3. Hit Enter on first item. Change from Auto to CPU,PCIE Async.

4. Arrow down one item to CPU Bus Speed. Now here's where it probably stumped you. If you hit Enter like you did on the above item, nothing happens. If you hit left or right arrow, nothing happens. If you hit Page Up or Page Down, something happens but not the right thing. If you read the fine print on the far right hand column, you discover that you're supposed to change this particular value with the +/- keys on your numeric keypad. Just hold down the + key until you get as high as you dare to try.

Again, scuttlebutt on this board is that the bus tops out at around 295, regardless of the fact that it claims to go to 340. I set mine to 290 and had no problems. I don't know about how well the board allows you to adjust voltages, because for such a minor OC on my E4300, it didn't need any more juice. YMMV, but have fun!

When I've managed to transition from DDR to DDR2 and AGP to PCI-E, I'll retire this board for a 650i SLI and run my CPU up to 3.2 Ghz like the big boys, but for now the difference over my Athlon XP-M at 2.3Ghz is astounding, so I can't complain.

One other note, it auto detected my DDR 400 RAM as DDR 333, so I set that manually as well.
 
Sweet, thanks for the tutorial.

Ordered a 512MB stick of XMS2 675 and a Sapphire x1950Pro 256MB. I was a little unnerved when I saw an open box x1950Pro 512MB for like $10 more. :(

Will get it tomorrow. Hopefully my girlfriend will insist she watch some Gilmore Girls reruns so I can have some alone time with the computer. :D
 
I just got an x1950xt from the same BFG 7900gs oc you're looking at. The GS doesn't run anything released in the last few months at high. Overlord chugs on it, Dirt, Lost Planet were playable on low and a few mediums(textures, lighting). Even overclocked over 600/1900 it was't fun. It just lacks the raw shader power for newer titles. Older game are fine though(high-medium). Forget about playing most games in Vista as well, performance is almost halved.
 
Are you talking about the x1950 or the 7900? I already ordered an x1950 Pro, and it should be here today actually. Would like to know how much power it draws.
 
Are you talking about the x1950 or the 7900? I already ordered an x1950 Pro, and it should be here today actually. Would like to know how much power it draws.

ATi recommends a 450 watt PSU with 30 amps on the 12-volt rail, but notes that this is with a fully-loaded system. 26-28 amps will probably work. Note also that many PSU's claim to have multiple 12-volt rails and divide up the amps between them, but the back end is actually one source. In such a case (find a review of the PSU from someone that checks this aspect, such as JonnyGuru or [H]), you can add together the figures for the 12-volt rails to get the total capacity.
 
I have an Antec TrueBlue 480W, which is from when Antec PSUs were top-notch.

If you have the newer 2.0 (TruePower II) version, it will probably work. If you have the older one, it's pretty dicey--that model only carries 22 amps on the 12-volt rail. It dates from a time when power draws on the 12-volt rail were substantially lower, pre-SLI/Crossfire, pre-75+ watt video cards. I think that back then, the CPU actually ran off of the 5-volt rail, while now it's on 12-volt? Not sure--anyway, you might have trouble unless you have very few drives installed--maybe even then.

Edit: Any luck with OC'ing your 820?
 
Got the x1950 Pro running right now. Seems to be running fine, although would it falter if it wasn't getting enough amps or would it not work at all?

I didn't have a video card until today, so I haven't tried OCing yet. I wanted to make sure my new RAM and video card worked properly. I'll probably try it the next time I boot up.
 
I pushed my CPU to 220MHz and I got RAM errors. I reverted to stock speeds and memtest86+ detected no errors for as long as I ran it. Probably won't OC, at least not during the summer.
 
If you have the newer 2.0 (TruePower II) version, it will probably work. If you have the older one, it's pretty dicey--that model only carries 22 amps on the 12-volt rail. It dates from a time when power draws on the 12-volt rail were substantially lower, pre-SLI/Crossfire, pre-75+ watt video cards. I think that back then, the CPU actually ran off of the 5-volt rail, while now it's on 12-volt? Not sure--anyway, you might have trouble unless you have very few drives installed--maybe even then.

Edit: Any luck with OC'ing your 820?

I think you may be right about the low 12-volt rail. Some of you may remember my thread(s) about choppy gameplay where it seemed like it was something other than the graphics card. Kinda like a jolt in the graphics as I move around, especially in FEAR Combat and Far Cry. I mentioned I had smooth gameplay at one time, probably when my power supply was younger, so I'm starting to think it's my power supply. It's probably about four years old now.

I had a Sapphire X800 GTO before, and I had the same jolt. Surely the X1950 Pro requires more than the X800, so could both have been under-amped? I know it's not the NIC because Far Cry has the same jolt.

Unfortunately I don't really have the money to get a new PSU. The only good news is that I have my old Abit NF7-S v2 board that needs a home someday, and I could use my TrueBlue 480W for it. Plus I think it would be good to have an actual PCI-E power connector instead of using an adapter.

What might you guys recommend? I know the importance of a quality power supply. I just need one that isn't too expensive.
 
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