X1950xt Agp

Liqourice

Found this article:

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38288

Looks interesting to me really. I was thinking about a X1950 Pro but if this isn't to much more expensive I think I'll go for that instead.

Unless anyone has anything negative to say about it.

DudeBoyz

I think that is the cooler that actually takes up THREE slots - well, 2.75 slots.

The Sapphire X1950 Pro 512meg AGP is a single slot solution.

So, that may be something to take into consideration. If you have 3 slots to spare, more power to you.

Also, I'm not sure what the cost diff will be. The 512meg Sapphire is like $229 at Newegg or some such places. Not sure what the other card is.

Enjoy, whichever you choose.

Dark Lord

269.00 for the xt at newegg, 20 bucks cheaper then the HIS ICEQ 512meg pro.

__________________

DudeBoyz

Single Slot Sapphire 512 meg AGP X1950 Pro is $224.99:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102071

3 slot Gecube 256 meg AGP X1950 XT is $269.99:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814241049

Not sure its worth the extra cash, especially since it's only a 256 meg card.

Liqourice

Well, for now it seems like it's not avaliable in Sweden yet and ordering it from abroad will make it to expensive so I'll see.

I do have room for it, no doubt about that, so that's not an issue for me. The question if it performs that much more than the Pro to merit the price difference?

DudeBoyz

Doesn't seem to perform all that much better from what I have read, but I haven't seen full reviews and benchmarks of the card.

I can't understate how helpful the 512 meg of RAM on the card is if you want to do 4x and 6x Anti-Aliasing at 1280x1024 and above. Lots of benefit at 1600x1200 with 6x, for example. The extra memory also helps with the larger textures used in newer games.

I'm sold on the benefits of the 512 meg of video memory since I do try to game at 1600x1200 or around there and like being able to do Anti-Aliasing.

So hopefully they will have a 512 meg version of that card so they can do fair comparisons on speed.

JohnDoe47

Does anyone know of any UK dealers or a release date for the UK? As for the 512mb of memory...i don't need it for my DVI flat panel CRT with anti-glare and anti-static and my minor resolution of 1024x768 @ 85Hz lol.

Dark Lord

heres a little mini review some one did on Hard OCP.

Gecube X1950XT TEC Turbo Fan 256 MB / Overclocked / Core 675 Mhz. / Memory 1600 Mhz. effective

3DMark05: 9818 (edit: background apps disabled)
3DMark06: 4860

Gainward Bliss 7800 GS+ 512MB Goes Like Hell Ed - returning for refund / Overclocked / 20 Pipe / Core 603 Mhz. / Memory 1550 Mhz. effective

3DMark05: 8611
3DMark06: 4513

Here are some other benches just for reference .......

Visiontek X1950 Pro 256MB (my 1st X1950 Pro) - returned for refund

3DMark05: 8756
3DMark06: 4034

Sapphire X1950 Pro 512MB (my second X1950 Pro) - sold for $50 more on Ebay

3DMark05: 9119 / OC'd to HIS - 9261
3DMark06: 4232 / OC'd to HIS - 4356

HIS ICEQ3 Turbo 512MB (x2) (when it worked, third and last X1950 Pro) - refunded after 2nd bad card

3DMark05: 9231
3DMark06: 4390


"Well the Gecube came at 4:00pm yesterday afternoon. Didn't have a chance to play with it though until 6:30pm. My wife has a pretty nasty case of Pneumonia at the moment and I am Mr. Mom to our 5 and 8 year old kids. I have also had a nose/throat thing going on myself which is why I'm typing this at 2:45am. I was hacking up a lung and the first thing I thought of was you guys. But enough about me.......

OK, here are a few my not so quick impressions of the Gecube X1950XT. The first thing that struck me even before getting to the card was the Box it came in. It's friggin huge with a very nice picture of Ruby I might add. (I dig redheads) Reminds me of the good old days when men were men and graphics cards came in suit cases. Anyway, after opening the box I could see why, a friggin huge box for a friggin huge card. The pictures really don't do it justice and I think if I put it on top of my FX 5200 (tweener card) it would probably crush it. It's a genuine AGP/plus 2 PCI-slot cooler and luckily I only have one PCI card at the moment and have plenty of room. The next thing I did was to examine the card to see if everything was attached properly and to my horror I immediately noticed they did not have any ramsinks attached to any of the memory chips and that there is about ½ inch of clearance between the memory chips and the cooler. So at this point I had visions of my 2 faulty HIS cards dancing around my head.

Next, the install. Took 5 minutes and even as big as the card is, it fit fine and had plenty of clearance on all sides. Now for the part you've been waiting for, the performance. This is probably going to disappoint you as it did me briefly but it is not a whole lot faster than the HIS X1950 Pro ICEQ3 Turbo, at least on my rig anyway, but at least it works! The default clocks on the card are 648 Mhz. Core and 700 Mhz (1400 mhz. Effective) for the memory. I have only done a few runs of 3DMark05/06 so far and here are the results and comparisons.

HIS ICEQ3 Turbo 512MB (when it worked) Core 620 Mhz. / Memory 1480 Mhz. effective - $289
3DMark05: 9231
3DMark06: 4390

Gecube X1950XT TEC Turbo Fan 256 MB / Core 648 Mhz. / Memory 1400 Mhz. effective - $269
3DMark05: 9526
3DMark06: 4683

The next thing I tried was to see how far I could push the card and to be honest I didn't have much considering the memory does not have any ramsinks as I mentioned before. I first used ATI's Cat.7.3 Overdrive but that did not allow for memory overclocking as the slider only went from 701-702 Mhz. So I loaded up ATI Tray Tools. After a little trial and error I found stable clocks of 675 Mhz. for the core which is actually the recommended maximum by Gecube and they're right, pushed it up a few notches to 683 Mhz. and the GPU shut down. As far as the memory goes, I was pleasantly surprised and managed 800 Mhz (1600 Mhz. effective). Artifacts began appearing around 850 Mhz. and decided to back it off a bit since perfromance gains are nominal. I'm actually pretty amazed I could overclock the memory at all. For testing stability I ran ATI Tray Tools 3DRenderer for 3 hours with maximum temps reached 70c which is normal and given as the average temp under 3D load by Gecube. I also bumped up the FAN speed to 90% with ATI Tray Tools with no noticeable noise from my already noisy case. Overclocking results below.....

Gecube X1950XT TEC Turbo Fan 256 MB / Core 675 Mhz. / Memory 1600 Mhz. effective - $269
3DMark05: 9763
3DMark06: 4860

I'd love to see what this card could do with a better CPU and a socket 939 motherboard in dual channel mode.....

Enough of that, now how about gaming. Haven't had much time unfortunately but I tested it with Prey, Quake 4, Doom3 and my son's Marvel Alliance. Graphics quality is outstanding as is the X1950 Pro. Gaming at 1680x1050 whenever possible and with everything maxed and getting decent frame rates. Speaking of framerates, how do you shut the counter off in ATI Tray Tools. Everytime I load the thing I forget. One thing I noticed almost immediately was, I'll call it “perceived speed. Everything I played just “felt” faster. It was most obvious in the various Ruby Demos. Before she was walking fast, now she's almost running and movements appear much more fluid and realistic.

So am I happy with the purchase. Hell yeah. It's $20 cheaper than the HIS X1950 Pro ICEQ3 I had, it's faster, although not by much, but most importantly the bloody thing WORKS!!

Now for all you guy with working X1950 Pro's. Keep'em, They're great cards and I wouldn't even think about upgrading to this one unless you have money to burn. For those sitting on the fence right now about buying the Pro. Jump off and buy THIS card.

Well, that's all for now and of course I'll be doing some more tweaking so see if I can squeeze any more performance out of the card. I'll keep you posted."

__________________

DudeBoyz

Some people are just waaaayyyy too obsessed with overclocking.

JohnDoe47

I just found it for sale in the UK and already purchased one happy days
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/125754

Dark Lord

i think im going to order mine in the next couple of days.

__________________

Liqourice

Hmm... maybe I can order it from there!

Still nowhere in Sweden where I can buy it. It just isn't avaliable.

DudeBoyz

I guess I'm one of the few that needs the space that a single slot cooling solution provides. I still use add-in cards for sound and a few other things. Must be the reason why.

I'm glad that option is available for those that have the room.

Hope it provides you with some blistering AGP performance!

Enjoy,

DB

JohnDoe47

Gecube radeon x1950xt agp

This card has absolutely no potential. When i received this card one of the fans was positioned bent so as the fan spun fast it would touch the heatsink and sound like a lawnmower.

Secondly the default clock speeds of this card is 500-1180, so i overclocked to the instructed speeds of 650-1350 and when i ran an artifact test with ATT i had about 2500 errors.

Thirdly during the artifact test the core temperature would reach extreme levels of 85 degrees and then crash even with the slower default core clock of 500.

As far as im concerned this gpu is a con, please buy what I recommended to my mate in the first place...an HIS Radeon X1950PRO. one for the superior cooling solution by arctic cooling and two for the overclocked performance it gived.

Thanks. Nick.

Dyre Straits

Nick0323:

We aren't GeCube here. You should be addressing the company that you got the card from if there's a problem. Unloading on our members here is ill-advised.

Just try to keep your posts constructive and informative. There's no reason to go ballistic with our members. If you truly want to vent this way, use the Flamezone for it. Thanks!

(Please take a few moments to edit your above post for the sake of our members. Thanks again!)

__________________

Dark Lord

well i can see your problem already. the gpu scales its clocks in 2d/3d mode.

you just OCd the hell out of that card.

__________________

JohnDoe47

650-1350 is the default speed of the xt mate. you have to overclock it as it isnt set by bios. why make a card that cant run at the default speeds or more to the point why say a card has certain speeds when it isnt set by default???

Dark Lord

500/594 are the cards correct speeds in 2d mode. it ramps the speeds upto 648/700(1400) automaticly when 3d mode starts.

so if you OCd the card to 648/700 in 2d mode, you probably just ocd it to around 796/806 (1612) in 3d mode.

__________________

Dyre Straits

Listen to Dark Lord. He knows what he's talking about. If you use something like ATT and have it show constantly the memory timings and core speeds during 3D gaming, you'll see he's correct.

At least give it a shot.

__________________

DudeBoyz

So if someone used ATI Tray Tools and set the clock speeds, that would be for what mode? 3D or 2D?

I don't overclock, and my Tray Tools always lists 580/702 (580/1400) and doesn't seem to differnetiate between 2D and 3D in terms of labeling.

Thanks

Dyre Straits

From the Desktop you'd be setting the 2D speeds. For those cards that ramp up during 3D gaming, you then 'should' see the 3D speeds listed.

I was seeing the same type of response from an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU. It would only ramp up to the full speed when I went into 3D mode.

__________________

DudeBoyz

Crazy multi-speed cards..

Oh well.

Anyway, I just let the card do its thing and don't mess with the clocks. Hopefully it won't go BOOM that way.

Thanks

RaveneR

not really crazy, even my fx5900xt is using that method, 1. it saves power, 2. it saves your card as it doesnt have to work at high heat all the time.

anyway, newer processors uses that method too, especially laptop models, as my Core Duo T2300 is clocked at 995Mhz during idle, and revs up to 1662Mhz during load.

Dark Lord

ya, even my A64 uses something like that if i turn it on. drops the clocks down to 1ghz or something like that when its idle, and then bumps them back up when needed.

__________________

JohnDoe47

So is an artifact test not 3d?

Dyre Straits

If you set the speeds to 3D speeds, then ran the artifact test, it boosted the speeds to beyond the normal 3D speeds. You have to set the speeds in 2D to the lower 2D speeds. The card will then ramp up to the 3D speeds when a 3D app is started.

In order to see if the card is indeed faulty, you should be using the default speeds for now.

__________________

Dark Lord

what dyre said

500/594 are the correct clocks in 2d mode.

when 3d mode starts, the clocks ramp up by 150/100 to give you a 3d speed of 650/700

what you did was OC your 2d speeds to 650/700 in 2d mode. when 3d mode started, it ramped up those speeds by 150/100 and gave you clocks of 800/800. speeds well beyond what the card should be operating at.

__________________

DudeBoyz

I think all you have to do is set Power Savings above the minimum to get Cool and Quiet to go full speed all the time.

JohnDoe47

It still overheats to 85 degrees and cuts out.

RaveneR

most probably you might have burnt something when the first time you overclocked it