X1950 Pro AGP is coming!

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: honestjohn

Originally posted by: hcnestjohn
The x1950pro agp is a great video card, everyone should get one !!!
Don't forget you will need a good PSU 20A@+12V no less !!!

Just a heads up people, if this guy gives you any advice on any of the new Video Cards don't listen, he doesn't own any of them. This twisted little pricklet has been trailing me around the internet ever since he was banned from Guru3D (twice) for trolling an X1950 Pro thread. His latest bit of insanity was signing up to another Board with my username, copying my signature from OverclockersUK and then linking to my posts on Guru3D. Oh yeah, he also added his own moronic comments to them of course trying to infuriate users and trash me. I had to join Toms Hardware as "I_AM_Honestjohn" just to report his posts and what he was doing. see link below. Since then he has signed up for HardForum and Rage3D with variations on my username.

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware...GPftopic-230804-days0-orderasc-25.html

Auric, thanks very much for the heads-up. It's nice to have friends. Obviously Guruboy / hcnestjohn doesn't.

I think most of us gathered that from his one and only post....20A on the 12V for a x1950Pro....yeah right like that will work :roll:

 

[honestjohn]

The Gecube X1950XT is difficult to find in the US. Just NewEgg and some of the small e-tailers. NewEgg has the best price for $269. As far as the Open Box goes, I'm sorry but I don't have any personal experience with it. Don't think I would go Open Box if I were you. It only has a 15 day window to return the card. See below ....

This is NewEggs Policy

Open-Box Items
Return for refund within: 15 days
Return for replacement within: non-replaceable

This is our Detailed Open Box Item Return Policy. Newegg.com often sells items that are listed as "open-box." Because these items are sold at greatly reduced prices, they bear this limited 15-day refund-only return policy through Newegg.com. Such items can only be returned within 15 days of the applicable invoice date. Newegg.com cannot provide replacement service for these items, as their stock is limited. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of these items is with the buyer. These items have been tested for functionality, but may have superficial physical defects including (but not limited to) scratches, dings or dents. Should these items prove defective following their purchase, the buyer (not the manufacturer, distributor, or Newegg.com) assumes the entire cost of all necessary servicing or repairs, unless otherwise required by law. These items are not covered by any 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

 

[Assimilator1]

Originally posted by: hcnestjohn
The x1950pro agp is a great video card, everyone should get one !!!
Don't forget you will need a good PSU 20A@+12V no less !!!

No way ,would be a waste for my socket A/X800XT rig

honestjohn
Hasn't any forum given you that idiots IP add?

 

[honestjohn]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1

Originally posted by: hcnestjohn
The x1950pro agp is a great video card, everyone should get one !!!
Don't forget you will need a good PSU 20A@+12V no less !!!

No way ,would be a waste for my socket A/X800XT rig

honestjohn
Hasn't any forum given you that idiots IP add?

Now that you mention it yes I finally found someone who helped me out with this and it was none other than your Anandtech Forum Moderator so hopefully I will have the little turd out of my jockeys shortly.

 

[Pugnate]

I can't believe this thread is at NINE PAGES!

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: honestjohn

Originally posted by: GEOrifle
[How runs your X1950XT AGP ? It's good perfomer?

I posted the below on another forum .....

OK, here are a few my not so quick impressions of the Gecube X1950XT TEC/Turbo-Fan 256MB AGP. The first thing that struck me even before getting to the card was the Box it came in. It's huge with a very nice picture of Ruby I might add. (I dig redheads) It reminds me of the good old days when men were men and graphics cards came packaged in boxes the size of a small piece of luggage. Anyway, after opening the box I could see why. The card was massive, taking up the AGP slot plus 2 PCI slots. 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. Luckily I have plenty of room in my case. 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 3/4 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 in my head. Luckily my worries were unfounded.

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 this card works CPU bottleneck and all! 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 the results are below. Note, you can't expect the same performance from this card as you would get from the PCI-E card. The PCI-E X1950XT's generally have their memory clocked at 1800 Mhz. - effective as the default.

Gecube X1950XT TEC/Turbo-Fan 256 MB AGP / Gecube Recommended OC - Core 675 Mhz. (default is 648 Mhz.) / Memory 1400 Mhz. effective

3DMark05: 9617
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 hope for the card 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 all night long with maximum temps reached 72c 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 AGP / Core 675 Mhz. / Memory 1600 Mhz. effective

3DMark05: 9818
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. Tested so far using Prey, Quake 4, Doom 3 and my son's Marvel Alliance. Graphics quality is outstanding as is the X1950 Pro. I'm gaming at 1680x1050 whenever possible and have all game settings maxxed. Everything plays smoothly and haven't encountered a glitch yet. One thing I noticed almost immediately was, I'll call it ?perceived speed. Everything I played just ?felt? faster with movements appearing much more fluid and realistic.

So am I happy with the purchase. Hell yeah. It's cheaper than my old HIS X1950 Pro ICEQ3 was, it's faster, but most importantly the bloody thing works!

.....and as 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 instead. Although if we were talking bang for the buck, I guess I would still recommend the Sapphire X1950 Pro 512MB AGP.

http://www.gecube.com/products-deta...6&prod_id=65116

Just for reference, here are a few other cards I've recently owned .....

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

3DMark05: 8756
3DMark06: 4034

Sapphire X1950 Pro 512MB (my 2nd X1950 Pro) - sold on EBay for $50 more

3DMark05: 9119 / OC'd to HIS ICEQ3 Rev.1 - 9261
3DMark06: 4232 / OC'd to HIS ICEQ3 Rev.1 - 4356

HIS ICEQ3 Turbo 512MB Rev.1 (when it worked, 3rd & 4th X1950 Pro) - refunded after 2nd bad card

3DMark05: 9231
3DMark06: 4390

Gainward Bliss 7800 GS+ 512MB Goes Like Hell Ed - ordered right before X1950XT was available - returned for refund / Overclocked / 20 Pipe / Core 603 Mhz. / Memory 1550 Mhz. effective

3DMark05: 8611
3DMark06: 4513

Edit: Just an FYI for people with similar specs sp they know what to expect.

Gecube scores have gone up a bit because I was running out of Hard Drive space so I just scrapped my PATA IDE drive and put in a 500GB SATA Drive today, also got rid of my crap ram, and put in some good G.Skill stuff, Had $300 in Birthday money to blow, so I figured what the hell. I can use the drive in my next rig.

I was hoping for more, but the only way that's is going to happen is to go PCI-E. Anyway, after installing SATA Drive and better memory I almost hit 10,000 in 3DMark05 anyway. Still not bad for an old socket 754 board.

Gecube X1950XT TEC Turbo Fan 256 MB AGP / Gecube Recommended Overclock - Core 675 Mhz. (default 648 Mhz.) / Memory 1400 Mhz. effective

3DMark05: 9812
3DMark06: 4789

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

3DMark05: 9957
3DMark06: 4982

What temperatures does your GeCube X1950XT cards idles and max out? Mines runs quite hot, idle runs around the high 50"s, (55-58), and in full load goes between 80-92, is hot as hell. Even though it doesn't artifact, sometimes during gameplay, the monitor shuts off and even pressing the PC's reset button, it won't restart, making me to press the Power Button to turn it off and back to turn on. Don't know if it's heat or power related. My PSU is an Antec SmartPower 2.0 500W with 12V1@17a and 12V2@19 making a total of 36A on both lines, but don't know either if is better using the PCI-E to Molex Splitter or using the PCI-E connector directly to the PSU, confused. Also I have only 2 HDDs, 2 Optical drives, 2 80MM regular Fans, and my CPU and a Floppy Drive.

 

[honestjohn]

Originally posted by: evolucion8

What temperatures does your GeCube X1950XT cards idles and max out? Mines runs quite hot, idle runs around the high 50"s, (55-58), and in full load goes between 80-92, is hot as hell. Even though it doesn't artifact, sometimes during gameplay, the monitor shuts off and even pressing the PC's reset button, it won't restart, making me to press the Power Button to turn it off and back to turn on. Don't know if it's heat or power related. My PSU is an Antec SmartPower 2.0 500W with 12V1@17a and 12V2@19 making a total of 36A on both lines, but don't know either if is better using the PCI-E to Molex Splitter or using the PCI-E connector directly to the PSU, confused. Also I have only 2 HDDs, 2 Optical drives, 2 80MM regular Fans, and my CPU and a Floppy Drive.

Mine idles at 40-42c and 61-63c under 3D Load and I'm running mine off the PCI-E connector straight to the PSU, no splitter. Did you plug in the seperate Molex Connection for the TEC Cooler which was hidden under the TEC Cooler. I didn't read the manual as usual and skipped this important step initially. Funny thing though, I could still overclock the card and my MAX temp was 73c.

If you have everything plugged in properly, then yeah, it could be your power supply. You just can't add the +12v rails together to get sustained continuous ouput. You need to know how many watts are dedicated to the +12v rails and then divide by 12.

 

[evolucion8]

What I did was to solve this was putting a desk fan to blow air directly to the videocard and motherboard, and disconnected the 2 80MM fans and the problem is gone for now. Which are the environment temperatures where you live? I live in a tropical weather and the temperature is around the 80-90F. The card still running hot, but not like before, rarely exceeds the 80C. I connected the videocard using a PCI-E Power connector directly to the PSU, this PSU is modular so I can add or remove cables. I will have to change my case and then my PSU just in case.

 

[honestjohn]

Yes, but did you plug in the TEC Cooler itself. You need 2 power connections. 1 PCI-E for the card and a Molex Connection for the TEC Cooler, unless this is what you meant by 2 8omm fans, FANS work without Molex connection though. Only the Peltier will sop working if you don't plug in the Molex.

 

[evolucion8]

Yeah I did. IN the manual says that if you use the PCI-E to Molex Splitter, is not necessary to conect that hidden conector, but if you use a PCI-E connector, is necessary to connect the hidden conector. But by the experience you had with the product, you said that even when you did't connected that thing, it never exceeded 73C, so connected lowered the temperature by 10-13C. In my case doesn't do a difference? Could that be defective? How Can I know if it is working?

 

[honestjohn]

Originally posted by: evolucion8
Yeah I did. IN the manual says that if you use the PCI-E to Molex Splitter, is not necessary to conect that hidden conector, but if you use a PCI-E connector, is necessary to connect the hidden conector. But by the experience you had with the product, you said that even when you did't connected that thing, it never exceeded 73C, so connected lowered the temperature by 10-13C. In my case doesn't do a difference? Could that be defective? How Can I know if it is working?

Sorry I don't know. Because there are other factors such as air circulation in your case as well as your room temperature to take into account. However, if you saw no change in temps with or without the TEC plugged in, it really has to be defective.

Unless of course it's being under powered, and I don't have a clue how the TEC would react to that.

 

[evolucion8]

If the peltier doesn't work, the GPU simply will burn out. The peltier without power will act as an insulator and will burn the GPU in seconds. That's why I can't believe that is defective, but also the overheating can mean that the PSU is not strong enough to feed it, which even though is enough for the GPU, probably is not enough for the Peltier, after all ATi recommends a 450_Watt PSU with 30A on the 12V line, but it doesn't say nothing about a card with a Peltier which consumes a lot of power. http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling/showdoc.aspx?i=2921&p=2 <<There you can find more information about how this works and blah blah blah. I need a PSU then

 

[apoppin]

it is being *discounted*

$169 at MicroCenter for the 512MB version

i guess AMD IS feeling the pressure from nvidia's new DX10 lineup

out with the old

good deal

http://www.microcenter.com/byos/byos_si...roduct_results.phtml?product_id=256486

 

[honestjohn]

Originally posted by: evolucion8
If the peltier doesn't work, the GPU simply will burn out. The peltier without power will act as an insulator and will burn the GPU in seconds. That's why I can't believe that is defective, but also the overheating can mean that the PSU is not strong enough to feed it, which even though is enough for the GPU, probably is not enough for the Peltier, after all ATi recommends a 450_Watt PSU with 30A on the 12V line, but it doesn't say nothing about a card with a Peltier which consumes a lot of power. http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling/showdoc.aspx?i=2921&p=2 <<There you can find more information about how this works and blah blah blah. I need a PSU then

What happened with my card then? I din't read the manual, so I didn't notice the extra molex for the TEC cooler. Used it for quite sometime that way, even overclocked it for a period of time. I was running the card with just the PCI-E Connector powering the card. So, I guess I woould have to assume the Peltier was operating, just not at full?

We really should start a new thread by the way. This is the X1950 Pro thread and I believe this is what is referred to as Hijacking.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: honestjohn

Originally posted by: evolucion8
If the peltier doesn't work, the GPU simply will burn out. The peltier without power will act as an insulator and will burn the GPU in seconds. That's why I can't believe that is defective, but also the overheating can mean that the PSU is not strong enough to feed it, which even though is enough for the GPU, probably is not enough for the Peltier, after all ATi recommends a 450_Watt PSU with 30A on the 12V line, but it doesn't say nothing about a card with a Peltier which consumes a lot of power. http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling/showdoc.aspx?i=2921&p=2 <<There you can find more information about how this works and blah blah blah. I need a PSU then

What happened with my card then? I din't read the manual, so I didn't notice the extra molex for the TEC cooler. Used it for quite sometime that way, even overclocked it for a period of time. I was running the card with just the PCI Connector powering the card. So, I guess I woould have to assume the Peltier was operating, just not at full?

Probably didn't ran at full, but enough for it.

 

[evolucion8]

I also saw that using ATi Tray Tool can make my videocard run a bit hotter, or sometimes misconfigure the fan rotation speed depending on temperature reading, now only using CCC runs much cooler, but now I'm not gonna be able to see the GPU Temp in the game like ATi Tray Tool, I wish there's an app that can do that, ATi Tray Tool no matter if you Disable all things like Timing Editor or Direct3D settings etc, they still appearing on the main window interfering with CCC on 3D Settings, oh ah heck.