x1950 Pro AGP: ATi throws AGP a bone

Uberbob102000 said:
i dont think most cards (excepts 8800 series) will even saturate a AGP 4x
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If you scroll back a couple of pages in this thread to where a few of us first purchased the x1950pro agp, you'll see my benchmarks with an AGP 4x motherboard. Considering my numbers were quite a bit off in benchmarks from the AGP 8x variants, I would say that the x1950pro saturates the 4x bandwidth. If anyone with this particular combination can prove this otherwise, then I would stand corrected.
 
It is very possible your CPU and bus have alot to do with the lower benchmarks, but the AGP 4x could be it aswell.

Interface speed beyond, say, PCIe 16X only matter right now when dealing with SLI... dropping to dual 8X can have a penalty, but the 8800GTX is very fast... and we are only beginning to understand how fast that thing really is and what effects it's performance.

AGP 8X is probably sufficiant for a single fast card with alot of on board memory, but the margins are getting pretty slim now. It would be interesting for you, on your 4X board, if it is possible to overclock the AGP frequency and see if it raises your numbers.
 
I found this pretty interesting....



it has been one of the best guarded open secrets in the PC industry that PCIe does not add anything over AGP when it comes to gaming. Reasons are found in the entire infrastructure of the PC configuration with bottlenecks in the memory subsystem and the host bus between the CPU and the chipset and, no to forget, in the software itself. As pointed out in a number of earlier articles, texture compression and limited vertex counts in "coded" applications do not require the amount of bandwidth hyped up by the PCIe promoters. In so far, there is really nothing much that we should expect in form of a performance hit when moving back to an AGP system.
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The whole review is HERE

Discuss...
 
Crosshairs said:
I found this pretty interesting....




The whole review is HERE

Discuss...
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Interesting. Ran the entire benchmark testing on a 300W PSU. Wish they stated which one it was exactly.
 
Pooty81 said:
Interesting. Ran the entire benchmark testing on a 300W PSU. Wish they stated which one it was exactly.
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I belive they state the name of it at the begining when they mention the PSU...

If you read near the end, they also state that they had problems though when they tried to use some DVD playback features which they attribute to the weak (18 amp +12V rail) PSU as it also happened when trying the same system with an X8XX series card...

Whatever the case, IMHO there just is no substitute for a Decent, "Quality" PSU... ;)
 
can someone who has this card+HDCP display+XB360's HD-DVD USB try to play HD-DVD discs? does it come out as 1080p?
 
wizzard0003 said:
I belive they state the name of it at the begining when they mention the PSU...

If you read near the end, they also state that they had problems though when they tried to use some DVD playback features which they attribute to the weak (18 amp +12V rail) PSU as it also happened when trying the same system with an X8XX series card...

Whatever the case, IMHO there just is no substitute for a Decent, "Quality" PSU... ;)
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Oops. I missed it. Good call. and for everyone's fyi about their supply.

single 12V rail, max 18A, peak 19.5A.
which kinda confuses me.. unless they mean max continuous 18A with a peak spike of 19.5A...

the tech specs on my current 520W psu say 35A max, 26A continuous.. no confusion there... I'm hoping/pretty sure I'll be okay.. my comps pretty low power.. i think my old old dell with a 250W PSU uses more power than my current custom built rig... gotta love athlon 64s.. although I think the new core2 duo's are pretty low power aren't they?

hmm, makes me wonder, i've seen posts of people running the x1950 fine on 350W psu.. and others with 600W psu's having issues, considering the specs on the 600W psu people have posted didn't meet the 22A dual rail, or 30 A single rail recommendation.. but I doubt those 350W supplies met the recommendeations either..I wonder if those having issues are using P4's and those that are fine are using single core athlon 64s.. quite a difference in power consumption, as seen here http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/7417
 
Pooty81 said:
Oops. I missed it. Good call. and for everyone's fyi about their supply.

single 12V rail, max 18A, peak 19.5A.
which kinda confuses me.. unless they mean max continuous 18A with a peak spike of 19.5A...

the tech specs on my current 520W psu say 35A max, 26A continuous.. no confusion there... I'm hoping/pretty sure I'll be okay..
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If I have any problem when I get my card I'm simply going with one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817104019

Something like this can move with me from build to build and ensure adequate power for the VGA no matter what "System" PSU I may use... ;)
 
How do you overclock the X1950PRO from Visiontek? All I get is a blank screen no matter how much I overclock. (tried ATiTool and Rivatuner)
 
If anyone has the PowerColor version, I was wondering how quiet the fan is? On the box it even lists "silent cooling." I'd be interested in getting this card if it is significantly quieter than my X850XT which sounds like a jet engine.
 
speculative said:
If anyone has the PowerColor version, I was wondering how quiet the fan is? On the box it even lists "silent cooling." I'd be interested in getting this card if it is significantly quieter than my X850XT which sounds like a jet engine.
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I just installed mine about a few hours ago and I love it. The PowerColor X1950PRO replaced a BFG 6800GT OC with an Artic Cooling 5NV Silencer. I had the AC 5NV Silencer for a year and a half and I was very happy with it, much better temps than the stock BFG cooler (another jet engine) and a TON quieter. I've only had the X1950PRO running for a few hours now but its not much different (noise) than what I had before.

The downfalls are the fan takes an extra slot and it pushes the hot air down towards the motherboard and not out the side like my pervious 5NV Silencer did. If you have good airflow through your case you should not have a problem.

The PowerColor X1950 PRO AGP uses an Arctic Cooling Accelero X2 cooler. Do a search on the web for reviews of this cooler. Most reviews I've seen are very positive.
 
Got about 9250 on 3DMark05 w/ my 3000+ Winchester @ 2.4 and stock Sapphire 512MB
 
Crosshairs said:
I found this pretty interesting....

The whole review is HERE

Discuss...
Click to expand...

hahahah just now i couldnt for the life of me find out why my keyboard wasnt working...
then i realize the cat is under the computer with a suspicious look on his face :p. hes also playing w/ my new 8800GTS box. Man this cat is wierd.

anywho, to the subject at hand:
The thing about AGP is, as i understand it, it has 2gb/s of bandwidth down, but none, or little, up. As such....
[and now he just pounced dead on into a wall.... my god....]
As such, I couldnt see any form of SLI or crossfire being developed on an AGP bus.

And I've been singing this tune for aageessss now.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
hahahah just now i couldnt for the life of me find out why my keyboard wasnt working...
then i realize the cat is under the computer with a suspicious look on his face :p. hes also playing w/ my new 8800GTS box. Man this cat is wierd.

anywho, to the subject at hand:
The thing about AGP is, as i understand it, it has 2gb/s of bandwidth down, but none, or little, up. As such....
[and now he just pounced dead on into a wall.... my god....]
As such, I couldnt see any form of SLI or crossfire being developed on an AGP bus.

And I've been singing this tune for aageessss now.
Click to expand...

ok i couldn't resist.... maybe its your singing thats freaking out the cat :)
 
MrWizard6600 said:
hahahah just now i couldnt for the life of me find out why my keyboard wasnt working...
then i realize the cat is under the computer with a suspicious look on his face :p. hes also playing w/ my new 8800GTS box. Man this cat is wierd.

anywho, to the subject at hand:
The thing about AGP is, as i understand it, it has 2gb/s of bandwidth down, but none, or little, up. As such....
[and now he just pounced dead on into a wall.... my god....]
As such, I couldnt see any form of SLI or crossfire being developed on an AGP bus.

And I've been singing this tune for aageessss now.
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Here's your sign. :rolleyes:
 
honestjohn said:
Interesting Review up at Tom's Hardware comparing the high-end AGP cards including the Sapphire X1950 Pro, Powercolor X1950 Pro, BFG 7800GS OC, 7600GT, and my personal favorite the Radeon 9700 Pro, I remember it well and I still get misty eyed after all these years.....

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/10/agp-platform-analysis/index.html
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Why an XP2500+, atleast use A64 3000+~3200+ since that is what we are mainly using right now, or that is what I'm seeing. Also, if someone is buying this I'm pretty sure they going to overclock their proccessor too, so imo, the review sucks because it is severly crippling the full potential of the X1950Pro.
 
Just thought I'd post my 3d Mark 05 and 06 scores since I got my Powercolor in yesterday... Here is my system specs:

P4 3.0 @ 3.4
2GB G.Skill PC4000 @ DDR456
Powercolor x1950pro
Corsair HX520W PSU

3D05: 7670
3D06: 4124

This is at stock GPU speeds (575/1370) so hopefully I have decent headroom. This card runs smooth and very cool: idle temp is at 35-40C with load temps up to 50-55C. I love the cooler on it and I'm sure I will be able to get some decent clocks. It seems the Sapphire card has been giving people lots of problems and am very glad to get the Powercolor :)
 
Yeah you'll see a 8.5k 05 score and a 4.6-4.7 06 score.

If I might suggest something, what is holding up your OC on the processor? Investing in an after market cooler or if you have one ramping that OC up to 3.8 or 3.9 would net a large increase in performance. I gained about 900 points just swapping out a 3.2 to a 3.9 OC.

Finally, your card should OC pretty well, I am getting 552.5/1652.5 with the vision tek, that might give you a starting point :)

Grats and enjoy
 
YoNeX said:
Why an XP2500+, atleast use A64 3000+~3200+ since that is what we are mainly using right now, or that is what I'm seeing. Also, if someone is buying this I'm pretty sure they going to overclock their proccessor too, so imo, the review sucks because it is severly crippling the full potential of the X1950Pro.
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Yeah, that's what I meant by interesting. If you read the whole thing he said he's going to be changing to a higher-end CPU.
 
John, do you happen to play GTR 2 , GT Legends, or rFactor? you have a very similar system to mine, and i was wondering how this card performs in those games
 
that's a pretty graphic intensive game eh? play smooth? ATM i have an X800XT-PE, and it plays all my racing games pretty well, but i wanna turn ALL the eye candy on, lol, hopefully the 1950 pro will let me do that
 
Stratman said:
that's a pretty graphic intensive game eh? play smooth? ATM i have an X800XT-PE, and it plays all my racing games pretty well, but i wanna turn ALL the eye candy on, lol, hopefully the 1950 pro will let me do that
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How's it going Stratman. Yeah it is. Prey uses the Doom3/Quake 4 Engine and the game runs really smooth with all the setting maxxed at 1600x1200. Funny thing though, when I first loaded Prey the first thing I was all ready to start swearing at the my X1950 Pro because Prey would crash and lock up on startup. The problem turned out to be a conflict between Prey and ZoneAlarm. Apparently Prey uses some kind of cheat protection for online games called Punkbuster so while loading ZoneAlarm stops some kind of proccess and locks up the game. Have to disable ZoneAlarm to play it. As far as your racing sims go, I don't think you'll have a problem turning everything up. Hope you like Candy.:)
 
honestjohn said:
That's one aspect of this card I never looked at. I can tell you that there is a big fat sticker on the box that says "HDCP Ready".
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the HDCP rom on this card supports up to 1080i, fyi

This is what resulted in my problems trying to go to 1080p, which is 30hz vs 60hz refresh really only difference. So to fix this I had to bump the default to 75hz and walla back to my LCD recognizing the signal as true 1080p. at 60hz it basically did some down coversion of the resolution to what appeared to be 1280x1024 or maybe 1600x1200, but it had a good 3-4 inch black border around the screen and of course it was blurry as hell.

Now at 1080p its crystal clear and I'm enjoying the hell out of it!
 
uh... hdcp shouldn't have anything2do with 1080i/p. it's merely active if there's a ICT flag, of which there aren't any HD-DVD/BluRay titles w/ICT enabled yet.
 
LOL the fact that is dual slot and has the heated air exiting the case is exactly why I would consider this card! All the other cards are venting to inside the case which just heats up ambient and makes every other component work that much harder! Honestly you have issues with space that a dual slot card won't work?
 
i have a Shuttle SFF SN95G5 v3.

86_WebImage_WebImage_200612191525_2

^the AGP port is on the RIGHT. so i can't buy an AGP solution with an exhaust. i'd basically have to cut the ENTIRE corner out.

and if i wanted to get somn like the powercolor where the hs takes up dualslot but it doesn't require an exhaust face plate, i need to cut out a hole on the side of the case, which defeats the purpose of a SFF in the first place (space & silence requirements).

plus, i don't even game as much on this sytem. i use it as my media player client (hence space&silence) to play a variety of video/audio stuff stored in another room. anyway i wanna' buy that HD DVD USB XB360 accessory to play HD DVD. i doubt HD playback will heat it up as much as gaming does.

PS i currently use 9800xt and idle is 80-90°C. so i'd take anything over that =D.
 
JediFonger said:
i have a Shuttle SFF SN95G5 v3.

86_WebImage_WebImage_200612191525_2

^the AGP port is on the RIGHT. so i can't buy an AGP solution with an exhaust. i'd basically have to cut the ENTIRE corner out.

and if i wanted to get somn like the powercolor where the hs takes up dualslot but it doesn't require an exhaust face plate, i need to cut out a hole on the side of the case, which defeats the purpose of a SFF in the first place (space & silence requirements).

plus, i don't even game as much on this sytem. i use it as my media player client (hence space&silence) to play a variety of video/audio stuff stored in another room. anyway i wanna' buy that HD DVD USB XB360 accessory to play HD DVD. i doubt HD playback will heat it up as much as gaming does.

PS i currently use 9800xt and idle is 80-90°C. so i'd take anything over that =D.
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Based on that go with the much cheaper Sapphire or even cough visiontek... Both can be had for just over $200. Those are single slot solutions and would meet your needs.
 
newegg doesn't have it and the places i've found from sapphiretech.com or google is charging $300+ for it.
 
Allstarshop.com has it in stock (Sapphire card) and they are charging $250 for it. I just ordered one that should be coming in today.
 
Johnny78 said:
Allstarshop.com has it in stock (Sapphire card) and they are charging $250 for it. I just ordered one that should be coming in today.
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Congrats on your card Johnny. For future reference though, we've been putting In-Stock posts in this thread....for Allstarshop see post #277. Although, it never hurts to mention things twice as people usually don't read through all the pages in threads like this.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1123442&page=15

Let us know how the card works out for you. Enjoy.
 
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