older cpu's with newer AGP cards

[38ruk]

Well i have to put my foot in my mouth alittle bit and show this article . All the benchmarks were done on a 2500+ barton amd chip , and when mated with the newer cards VS the 9700Pro that it had in it , it showed some markable gains over the original 2500+/9700 setup .

Ive been asked by people with almost that same setup and have told them that they might not see much improvement due to the cpu bottleneck , well in some ways im right ,but in more important area's im wrong . The reviewer says the cards are bottlenecked by the cpu , but not before giving a nice boost over the original 9700pro .  

To any of those people , I'm SORRY , i based my advice on an experience i had with a 9800pro and x800pro i had on a 3200+ amd, where i saw very little improvement going from one to the other.

Now the review doesnt give a clear picture of what the new cards are capible of, cause they are waiting for the cpu but .... the 3dmark benchmarks are mostly gpu intensive so that might show you the differences between some of  the new agp cards .

[Dux]

Link, please?

Looking for a new AGP card for an older CPU myself...

[CheeseHead]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/10/agp-platform-analysis/

Here's where I got some info, I can't wait for part 2 when he tests  these cards on the higher-end AGP systems.

I just received my X1950 512Mb Sapphire today, I'll be installing it this weekend.

~CheezHed {Shillelagh Squadron}
Supermicro X5DAE motherboard
Dual 2.8Ghz Xeons
2GB RAM

[38ruk]

Yep thats the one , i cant believe i forgot to paste the link sorry !!!

[Dux]

Originally posted by CheeseHead
I just received my X1950 512Mb Sapphire today, I'll be installing it this weekend.

That's the one I've been thinking about, Cheezhead... let me know how you like it.

[CheeseHead]

Dux...

Well, she's installed. I see I have much to learn about it. First off, I have a 460 watt PS, and only 2 12v rails, one at 15a, the other at 16a. The card runs excellent on this config, contrary to the 22a per rail recommendation. So, that quenches my big fear, thinking I'd need to drop another $150 on a good PS.

Next, it came in clocked at 581, with a memory of 702.  it idles at 40C. My 3dmark2005 score was 4743 (1024x768,noAA).

It came with ATI's overclocking program, so I gave it a whirl. I've never overclocked anything before. The program said I could run at 621 clock, and 756 memory. It hung during the 2nd video test. So I turned the memory down to 736, and it ran fine. Score was 4912 (1024x768,noAA).

I only had 2 points of reference as far as games with FPS that I could compare. The first was AH, where I saw no difference. My point of reference was sitting on the runway in offline mode, 1280x1024, 512 textures, everything checked, FPS cap set to unlimited. I averaged 57-63fps. (Ground view was set to 3mi, I forget the other settings, but they didn't change when I tried the new card) It didn't budge with the new card. Not sure if the game prefers a powerful CPU over a video card, I'm going to post this somewhere where Skuzzy can see it. I also have to check on the AA, I know we could turn it on a while back, but that isn't an option anymore. I guess the fine line is do you crank up the game resolution, or do you use a lower resolution and turn on AA, which is more eye-appealing? We'll see...

The other game was Company of Heroes. I averaged 24fps with my 9700 Pro, I got 32fps with the new card. The system test went from Poor to Good. I don't think it's my CPU that's the bottleneck in that game, it's my RAM, I only have 1GB, and CoH uses 960Mb of it! So when I get some more cash I'll be adding another gig, that should dramatically help that game run.

I was hoping to see a huge gain in AH with this card, I went from a 325Mhz, 128Mb card, to a 621Mhz, 512Mb card. You'd think the change would be noticeable. Maybe Skuzzy can shed some light on it.

I'll post again when I find out more.

~CheezHed {Shillelagh}
Supermicro X5DAE motherboard
Enhance ENS0246B 460watt power supply
Dual 2.8Ghz Xeons, hyperthreaded
1GB DDR266 RAM
Sapphire X1950Pro AGP 512Mb overclocked at 621Mhz, 736Mhz GDDR3 memory(1472Mhz effective)
Seagate 120GB, 160GB, 300GB HD's
Sound Blaster Audigy 2
Klipsch Promedia 4.1 400watts
Samsung 48xCD burner/DVD player
Pioneer 109 Dual Layer DVD burner

[Krusty]

If you're short-changing the PSU, don't overclock, period.

[Eagler]

FYI
when I went to a 7800 gs co, my psu was borderline on the 12v rail. I only had issues in AH, IL/FB and Tiger Woods 05 when I had the graphics set to high and alot of action  was taking place. The card then strained on the low amperage and studders/freezes would pop up. If it got real bad, it would lock up or reboot. Switching out the psu, eliminated that issue

[eagl]

cheesehead,

See how much additional eye candy you can get.  Add in some FSAA, maybe bump up the resolution, maybe even try 1024 textures.  You may not get any framerate increase but you should be able to get better image quality without a framerate sag.