X1950 Pro AGP is coming!

[Munky]

Werent there some overheating voltage regulator issues on the x1950pro using aftermarket cooling? That may be the reason the Accelero version is not available.

 

[honestjohn]

Decided to goto the horse's mouth so to speak. Called Sapphire USA Sales Office and I asked them 3 things regarding the X1950 Pro AGP.

Number of Pipes = 12 Pipes
Amount of GDDR3 = 256MB

When? = The card has been delayed until the end of December, beginning of January.


Guess I'm going to have to wait for the Diamond 512MB. Damn. Other manufacturers probably thought that no one was going to shell out $286 for an AGP Card so they stuck with the 256MB.

 

[Cenarius]

Originally posted by: munky
Werent there some overheating voltage regulator issues on the x1950pro using aftermarket cooling? That may be the reason the Accelero version is not available.

VR-Zone found some very hot running VRMs when they reviewed the PCIe version, but blamed it on the ATI board design rather than the cooler.
http://vr-zone.com/index.php?i=4190&s=6

 

[t73]

Originally posted by: sum1

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Amazon has update:

Availability: This item will be released on January 15, 2007

In case anyone's wondering, that?s the Diamond Viper ATI X1950PRO AGP 512MB.

Still no word from Powercolor? I?m hanging out for that because of the Accelero X2 cooler. It was originally supposed to be available mid-November.:frown:

Nor for the Sapphire..

 

[blues02]

So how much faster should this card be than a 7800GS AGP? The thing is I do my gaming for the most part in Windows XP, but everything else in Ubuntu Linux. ATI's drivers and performance is crap compared to Nvidia in Linux however. For example my Athlon XP 2200+ with a 6600GT card beats my main rig in Linux frame rates performance for the most part. If the Windows performance difference is going to be minor then I'd probably be better off upgrading to a 7800GS card instead, but if the X1950 is a lot faster, which I would think it would be with over twice as many pixel shaders and faster memory, then I'll just hold off for that.

Edit: I just read on Toms Hardware that in some cases the 7600GT is faster than the 7800GS! Is this true?


Thanks for any replies.

 

[zcubed]

as far as the 7600gt thing. a properly overclocked 7800gs beats an overclocked 7600gt everytime. i tried this myself in the same machine. and as for the x1950 pro agp it will smoke the 7800gs in everything. especially the 512mb version which is what im waiting for. i need to see benchamrks first cause ill never be able to recover over 200 on my 7800gs and dont want to spend more than 300 on the 512 version. if it performs just slightly better than the 7800gs then ill probably avoid it since the x1950 pro has overclocking issues anyways.

 

[honestjohn]

FYI - Here's another place with the Sapphire X1950 Pro AGP "512MB" listed. (512MB - Contrary to Sapphire Sales Dept)

http://www.upgradenation.com/Sapphire_A...1950PRO/100171/partinfo-id-640140.html

 

[Athlex]

My 2¢:
Just bought a Visiontek X1950Pro AGP at best buy (B&M) last week. The card is nice and fast, a noticable improvement over my previous EVGA 7800GS (430MHz) particularly in Oblivion and Titan Quest. My only gripe is noise, Visiontek's box brags about it's quiet <27dB cooler, but it's the noisiest fan in the system by a long shot including a 120x38mm case fan! Unlike most newer video cards, it's just a 3-wire fan with no PWM, so it runs at full speed all the time. I haven't used an ATI card since my 9700 and ATI's Catalyst control center bites, but that's not a huge deal.

Anyway, great card if you can find one. If a 512MB card comes out in the next couple weeks, I'll probably swap that one in and return the Visiontek, but so far I'm glad I upgraded.

 

[blues02]

Originally posted by: zcubed
as far as the 7600gt thing. a properly overclocked 7800gs beats an overclocked 7600gt everytime. i tried this myself in the same machine. and as for the x1950 pro agp it will smoke the 7800gs in everything. especially the 512mb version which is what im waiting for. i need to see benchamrks first cause ill never be able to recover over 200 on my 7800gs and dont want to spend more than 300 on the 512 version. if it performs just slightly better than the 7800gs then ill probably avoid it since the x1950 pro has overclocking issues anyways.

Thanks for the tips. I think waiting for the X1950Pro is the best bet. I just wish it would come out so I can finally play Oblivion at a decent rate.

 

[Cenarius]

Athlex, your post was worth more than 2¢ to me because
a) you already had one of the fastest factory OC 7800GS cards, yet you found the X1950 faster, and
b) you didn?t find the fan as quiet as the manufacturer led you to believe.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Athlex
My 2¢:
Just bought a Visiontek X1950Pro AGP at best buy (B&M) last week. The card is nice and fast, a noticable improvement over my previous EVGA 7800GS (430MHz) particularly in Oblivion and Titan Quest. My only gripe is noise, Visiontek's box brags about it's quiet <27dB cooler, but it's the noisiest fan in the system by a long shot including a 120x38mm case fan! Unlike most newer video cards, it's just a 3-wire fan with no PWM, so it runs at full speed all the time. I haven't used an ATI card since my 9700 and ATI's Catalyst control center bites, but that's not a huge deal.

Anyway, great card if you can find one. If a 512MB card comes out in the next couple weeks, I'll probably swap that one in and return the Visiontek, but so far I'm glad I upgraded.

I reported that week ago, and I returned mine because of it.

Yep, there's no way to control fan speed, even modifying BIOS tables will not do the trick. Zalman's fan mate is incompatible with it too...

VisionTek did something wrong there.

 

[honestjohn]

Originally posted by: honestjohn
Decided to goto the horse's mouth so to speak. Called Sapphire USA Sales Office and I asked them 3 things regarding the X1950 Pro AGP.

Number of Pipes = 12 Pipes
Amount of GDDR3 = 256MB

When? = The card has been delayed until the end of December, beginning of January.


Guess I'm going to have to wait for the Diamond 512MB. Damn. Other manufacturers probably thought that no one was going to shell out $286 for an AGP Card so they stuck with the 256MB.

Never quoted myself before, anyway guess what....

http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/products/products_overview.php?gpid=168&grp=2

Sapphire has now changed their product page for the X1950 Pro from 256MB to 512MB. So much for going to the horse's mouth. Guess I was talking to the other end when I called Sapphire yesterday.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Athlex
My 2¢:
Just bought a Visiontek X1950Pro AGP at best buy (B&M) last week. The card is nice and fast, a noticable improvement over my previous EVGA 7800GS (430MHz) particularly in Oblivion and Titan Quest. My only gripe is noise, Visiontek's box brags about it's quiet <27dB cooler, but it's the noisiest fan in the system by a long shot including a 120x38mm case fan! Unlike most newer video cards, it's just a 3-wire fan with no PWM, so it runs at full speed all the time. I haven't used an ATI card since my 9700 and ATI's Catalyst control center bites, but that's not a huge deal.

Anyway, great card if you can find one. If a 512MB card comes out in the next couple weeks, I'll probably swap that one in and return the Visiontek, but so far I'm glad I upgraded.

are you sure your's isn't defective? ... i can't hear mine over my CPU fan
[i can notice it when graphics get intense]

 

[postmortemIA]

how it is defective, when I have reported exactly same problem.

 

[honestjohn]

Well, found another e-tailer with the Sapphire X1950 Pro Card listed today and again confusion with the specs. The Card was listed as having 256MBs, but in the description it said 512MB which looked like a direct cut & paste from Sapphire's site. Emailed them for clarification and below is the email I received back, and yes they changed their listing from 256MB to 512MB and thanked me for pointing it out to them. So all signs continue to point to the Sapphire being 512MBs and it looks like we're not going to need to wait for that Diamond Card.

http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/product.asp?pid=16749&sid=V9TCKWFHDXGV8K88XR3JU828QV57EN25

Email from Allstarshop:

Hi John,

Thank you very much for pointing out our typo. We contacted Sapphire and verified that the X1950 PRO AGP is 512MB. We have corrected our typo. The ETA is mid of next week. Thanks again for visiting allstarshop.com.

James
Allstarshop.com

 

[AgonxOC]

Schweeet the Sapphire one is 512 MB.... Cant wait.... I will soon unleash the Power of Dothan...


Alex

 

[blues02]

How is www.allstarshop.com? I've never heard of them before. They seem to have the memory and chip clocks reversed or something though. 580Mhz Memory and 1400Mhz engine clock? I'm guessing the chip is really 580 and the memory is 1400Mhz?

 

[wizzard0003]

Originally posted by: blues02
How is www.allstarshop.com? I've never heard of them before.

That's where I bought my BFG Asylum FX5900 in my sig. (Many Moon's Ago). I didn't have any problems with them. Shipping was fast and price was right...

Never had to return anything though...

\\//_

 

[Canterwood]

These cards are starting to finally show up now in the UK.

Overclockers.co.uk basically got greedy and price gouged by putting the card up to £205, so they got the finger from me.

Ebuyer.com stocks the Gecube 256mb version for £145 which is very reasonable, and its probably who I would use right now.

Not much variety atm, but Gecube seems a good card with a decent single slot cooler.
512mb versions haven't arrived here yet, but are coming.

Glad to hear most of you are enjoying your new cards.

 

[postmortemIA]

I've seen on rage3d that X1950Pro 512MB has been selling on diamond's website
http://www.diamondmm.com/allgraphics.php
price - $299

 

[Assimilator1]

(yea I'm late in)

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: EvanAdams
good reviews of this thing had better focus on CPU bottlenecks.

if you got P4~3.0 ghz or ~A64-3000+, there is no bottleneck worth mentioning .... the x1950p aint no G80

even a 2.4 P4 should be 'fine' IF you turn up the resolution, details, AA/AF to offload more work to the GPU.

1 thing ,cranking up res etc doesn't 'offload' work from CPU to GPU, the CPU bottle neck is merely hidden ,especially if average FPS scores are used.(maybe you were being ironic?,if so I missed it).
That's fine as long as the CPU is powerful enough to keep the minimium FPS above the 25-30FPS threshold.But if it can't then you will still get slowdowns at the 'CPU intensive' moments in a game regardless of grx card or resolution (within reason).

But I agree that a P4 3Ghz or A64 @2GHz should be able to do that

DrJ & others

Best way to check if your CPU is going to be fast enough using your current graphics card is to set the resolution & details to the absolute lowest it can go & do a benchmark measuring minimium FPS for the games you want to play.
Doing this will give a light load on the GPU (except maybe Oblivion & similiar spec games?) & show the speed your CPU is capable of.
To confirm that the CPU isn't being held back by the GPU at low res's you can retest at higher & higher resolutions ,the average FPS scores should drop off as you go higher as more load is put on the GPU.The min will quite possibly stay the same, up to a point depending on game & your current grx card.

Canterwood
I see OcUK have dropped their price to £153


Personally I've only just upgraded my 9700 Pro for an XT800XT PE (£92) so I'm in no hurry to upgrade again.Next upgrade for my main rig will be a total rebuild & the X800 will go in my 2nd rig.
Good see a faster AGP card coming out though :thumbsup:

 

[Canterwood]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
Canterwood
I see OcUK have dropped their price to £153

Yeah, but its out of stock till the end of January at the earliest so it means nothing.

Ebuyer is still cheaper and has stock too.

 

[Farmer]

ZZF lists the Diamond 256MB version and the Sapphire 512MB version for $238.00 and $249.99 respectively.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=326860

Both are out of stock with no telling when they will come. I'm really wanting to get one.

It's either the X1950Pro, or the PCI-E X1950XT with a $50 S754 PCIE mobo (essentially around $300), plus the X1950XT runs hotter than the X1950Pro, but my 6800U is just giving too many problems installed on an nF3 board.

 

[Noema]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1

1 thing ,cranking up res etc doesn't 'offload' work from CPU to GPU, the CPU bottle neck is merely hidden ,especially if average FPS scores are used.(maybe you were being ironic?,if so I missed it).
That's fine as long as the CPU is powerful enough to keep the minimium FPS above the 25-30FPS threshold.But if it can't then you will still get slowdowns at the 'CPU intensive' moments in a game regardless of grx card or resolution (within reason).

Yeah, I've never understood why people think that cranking the resolution is going to make the CPU problems dissappear. As if they are going to get higher fps at a higher resolution than at a lower one.



If you are CPU limited your frame rates suffer at low resolutions because the GPU will be able to handle that easily, and will this make the CPU limitations transparent. If you raise the resolution / AA and so forth to the limit which the GPU can handle so that the bottle neck is the GPU (and the bottleneck becomes apparent regardless of the CPU), then your frame rates suffer, making the GPU limitations evident. If you had unlimited GPU muscle, then you'd get crap frame rates at ANY resolution (if you are CPU limited) because that would make the limitations of the CPU evident at any resolution. It's not that the workload is offloaded to the GPU...it's simply that at higher resolutions your frame rates suffer because of the GPU, long before the CPU limitations are made evident. Which would be made evident if the GPU limitations are removed. If your CPU can't output more than 25fps, you won't get more than 25fps at any resolution. If you are not GPU bound at higher resolutions, you will still be CPU bound, thus no more than 25fps. If you are GPU bound, well, you won't be getting more than 25fps anyway.

 

[Assimilator1]

Yep ,though
If your CPU can't output more than 25fps, you won't get more than 25fps at any resolution
True for min FPS ,but average FPS may rise because their maybe some scenes in a benchmark which require a lot less CPU power & allow the GPU to flex its muscles a bit.
In those situations you'll get higher average scores but playabilty won't be any better (unless you had a too slow GPU or too high res previously of course) due to the min FPS remaining the same.

What i did forget to say is that many benchmarks only record the average FPS (excluding Far cry) ,so to record min FPS you need something like FRAPS

Canterwood
True enough ,ebuyer happens to be my favourite online PC shop ,despite occasional problems with them.....