Holy Crap! AGP Radeon 1950 Released!

[HeadRusch]

Amazing.......looks like us old AGP bastiges finally have an upgrade path if we aren't ready to shell out for Core 2 Duos just yet.

Firingsquad just did a review on the Radeon AGP 1950 part.....basically, finally a high-end GPU for AGP systems. Destroys the Nvidia parts, and of course smokes the bejeebus out of 6800 technology like I got.

I might even be able to get one of these and get playable framerates at 1920x1080........best part? Price around $200 bones.

Niiiiiiceeee..

[rob316]

AGP is still kicking and screaming .


Rob

[Scotty L]

Very nice performance for $200. Would like to see it vs. a 7900GT for curiosity's sake, but nice to see ATi still catering to the minority. :)

[Daekwan]

I never even knew AGP was dead.. shows how much I've kept up in the computer world..

lol

[ChrisFB]

Sweet, had no idea. Thanks for posting this. I really thought I had nothing available to me without a completely new build.

[Scotty L]

bump! :D

If you find any news or release dates for this card please post

[DrCrawn]

I need HDCP! Anyone know?

[Broccoli]

nice was hoping for something like this so I don't have to upgrade my MB and CPU

[mrpergo]

They are HDCP compliant.
I read it in several places but can't find it now.
I bought the Sapphire X1950Pro 512mb to replace an X800Pro.
I think this card should give me another year before I upgrade the whole system.
Just replaying a few games now to see the eye candy I might have missed :)

[joewagner501]

mrpergo, where did you find the Sapphire for sale? I only found the 256mb PowerColor version available at newegg. Nobody else has them in stock.

[Scotty L]

CompUSA has a Visiontek for $229 shipped after MIR

[mrpergo]

zzf and allstarclub.$249.00 free ship

[Garlor]

Its good theyre still making AGP for those of us with older systems. I will be upgrading to PCI-E pretty soon. Looking forward to the ridiculous performance jump from my Radeon 9000 Pro to my Geforce 8800 with DX10!

[Gamedev123]

That's not a performance jump ... its a whole new performance continuum!!!

Like upgrading from a PentiumII 500Mhz, to 2.6Ghz core2duo.

Expect your eyes to bleed.

;-)

[joewagner501]

I upgraded from an X800 to the X1950 this weekend and have been very impressed with the performance increase. On top of the increased speed the bios part of the boot screen now shows up on my DLP. Sounds minor but being able to get into the bios without having to use a second display is very very nice. Especially for tweakers like me.

[Ra Power]

Shhhh-wheat! I'll be getting one of these if for nothing more than MSFS X. :)

[HeadRusch]

Supposedly this one card is enough to drive a 1080p monitor in most games if you leave the AA turned off on the real performance hogs (like FEAR)...at 1080p the lack of AA might not really matter (it doesn't to me playing HL2 at that rez, when I did play it anyhow).

Can anyone tell me if this card has the nutz to get 1080p done on most games at least in the 60fps ballpark?

[HeadRusch]

I decided I'm gonna get one of these and forget about upgrading my box anytime soon, for the little PC gaming I do now anyhow.

Question: Does anyone know if the bump up to 512megs of ram is worth it for any reason whatsoever on THESE cards? I was gonna just go to the Egg and buy what they had...I saw the 512 meg board runs slower than the factory OC'ed 256 board, and can't seem to find a review of the 512 versus 256 boards anywhere..??

[mrpergo]

someone just did a review with a 256 and a 512. I think it was in a post over at rage3d.
The 512 wins :) especially with memory hungry games.

[ChrisFB]

This is a massive thread on the AGP x1950 Pro at those forums. Probably start at the back. No idea if it's good or not but seems like a good place to look for info with 350 replies.
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33870757

[ChrisFB]

Here's the PowerColor product the original review (now gone from the web and first post I think) spoke about.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814131035

[HeadRusch]

Unfortunately the only version of the 512 card I could find was a Sapphire, and Sapphire's are ****. I owned a Sapphire Geforce 2 and it was garbage, and the reviews on the Sapphire 1950 are also not very positive.

Sapphire and LEadTek are off my plate fo rbuying.

So I decided to settle for the Powercolor, which Newegg now has in stock (wasn't in stock yesterday I dont think). I almost bought the Overclocked HSI version...but it was almost 80 bucks more after the rebate on the Powercolor, so frankly it wasn't worth it for the 5fps I'd gain.

i'll oc this one myself and see what happens...

[Foddon]

Sapphire and LEadTek are off my plate fo rbuying.

Ditto on LeadTek! I bought one of their cards off of newegg last year and it failed out of the box. After doing all the troubleshooting possible, I got a replacement from them. It worked for a few months, then the exact same problem crept up. Never again.

[ChrisFB]

Unfortunately the only version of the 512 card I could find was a Sapphire, and Sapphire's are ****. I owned a Sapphire Geforce 2 and it was garbage, and the reviews on the Sapphire 1950 are also not very positive.

Sapphire and LEadTek are off my plate fo rbuying.

So I decided to settle for the Powercolor, which Newegg now has in stock (wasn't in stock yesterday I dont think). I almost bought the Overclocked HSI version...but it was almost 80 bucks more after the rebate on the Powercolor, so frankly it wasn't worth it for the 5fps I'd gain.

i'll oc this one myself and see what happens...

The Powercolor looks like a great buy. The original review posted was excellent. I want to buy it but I'm traveling all next week. Maybe I can send it to a friend's.

[HeadRusch]

The powercooler at $220 after rebate is definately worth it for me, because it lets me game at 1080p, my monitors native spec. That doesn't work so well with the 6800GT even overclocked, not with modern games.

Even a game like Half Life 2, which is supposed to fly on a 6800GT, struggles a bit at 1080p with some AF turned on....I know for some games it wont matter, but I decided that this is the fastest card on AGP right now, in benchmarks it destroys my 6800GT, and at a couple hundred bones it'll buy me life in a system that has otherwise aged pretty well. (3.4Ghz P3 Northwood).

I just hope my power supply is up to the challenge...its an Antec Trupower 430...never given me problems and solid power on the leads (tested myself), but I dont know how many amps on the 12v rails and someone said that for the 512meg version the card wanted THIRTY AMPS on the 12v rail? I hope they mean two connectors (which the 512's require) at 15+ amps EACH, I dont even know any current PS's that do 30amp on a single 12 v rail.

Is that 30 full amps? Thats enough to kill a man!

PS: Firingsquad had their review up of the 512meg AGP part....as expected at ultra high resolutions it beats the 256meg cards, but it only does so by a handfull of frames per second.

ALSO: I was wrong...the Sapphire 512meg card was not $80 more...it was only $20 more (or $40 after the powercolor rebate), the problem is the stock cooling on the card is being grilled in egg user reviews, so figure $20 bucks to replace the cooling.

The $80+ card was the 256 meg Hisense board that is factory overclocked. I never really understood the concept of paying premium for factory overclocked cards, when the end user was likely capable of doing the exact same overclock at home on their normal, average boards..<shrug>

OH YEAH..and two more benefits to snagging this card over my 6800GT. (Besides blistering framerates at high rez, as I dont need to run AA at 1080p...these cards can accellerate H.264 decoding (not sure how well though) and it comes with a component breakout cable.

One thing I wanted to do with my old game PC was hook it up to my 65" RPTV, but never could becaues it didn't support any kind of breakout box, I'd have to buy a transcoder, etc, etc. At least now I have the option if I wanted to run some Monoprice components to my bigscreen.

Tho...my main PC monitor is 37".....I'm not sure I need the RPTV into the mix anymore :P

[jflail2]

Can anyone who has picked one of these up comment on their PSU? I have a 450w psu, but no idea what's being pushed on the 12v rail, so I'm worried I'll end up having to upgrade my psu as well.......in which case I'll just save for a complete system upgrade later this year.....

[mrpergo]

I think it depends on what your running in the puter. 3 HD's a couple of DVD drives ect.
Some guys are having luck with 400w and others are freezing up.
My 400w went out before I got the X1950 so I upgraded to a 600w and no problems.

[fnbaldtaco]

I recently got the visiontek 1950pro agp and so far so good replaced my x800pro im running the msi 450 psu and have been playing burning crusade maxed out at 1920x1080p :)

[Low Roller]

Yessss!!

...On second thought, I still might stick to my 6800 until Crysis comes out, and then do a rebuild. Its good to have options, though.

Thanks for the tip, HeadRush.

[HeadRusch]

I received my Powercolor 1950Pro AGP from NewEgg yesterday, but probably wont have enough time to install it until this weekend.

I broke far away from PC gaming after I got my 1080p because the 6800GT just couldn't push most games...I played enough Counterstrike single-player and other older games like UT2004, which run fine at 1080p with a 6800, but Fear was a slideshow, Battlefield 2 was very rough, etc......nice to finally have the horsepower to make more modern games playable.

[ChrisFB]

That's pretty much how I am looking at it. Displays are not going beyond 1080p for a while unless you want one of those high res 30" desktop displays (it would be nice). Resolution has been a BIG driver in video card horsepower as both quality of picture was increasing as well as resolution of said picture. Things should stabalize a bit more at least for my needs and with the 8800s out it looks like they have nearly doubled in power from the previous gen.

[HeadRusch]

I can't see the uber-high rez 30" monitors catching on until there is a reason to have a rez that high.....gaming is already in a huge law-of-diminishing-returns phase when it comes to resolution. Before with 4:3 analog monitors, 1600x1200 was the "magic rez" the same way 1024x768 was before it. Oh yeah, and they're priced obscenely high.

I dont really need a gigantic display with hyper-tiny desktop icons. At 1080p, my 37" monitor is perfect........icons are readable, etc, etc.

I think the new standard is 1920x1200, which is going to be the logical 16:10 choice for most widescreen flatpanel PC displays going forward.

If you hook up to a 1080p TV, then even better as you'll get the ever-so-slightly lower rez, but pick up a few FPS of performance.

[HeadRusch]

Just a FYI, I pulled out the 6800GT and popped in the ATI 1950Pro. Haven't overclocked the ATI at all (heard you dont get a huge performance boost from O/Cing the card, but may try later on). So far no PS issues.

Have noticed improvement in framerates in games. Example, at 1080p my 6800GT couldn't keep a solid framerate on Half Life 2 Lost Coast demo with HDR enabled....it would fluctuate all over the place. This card can do it, tho enabling HDR definately puts a performance hit on certain areas, where I can see the framerate dip into the 30's or less.

Turning off HDR in the demo yields as expected very high framerates.

Will be trying more games during the course of the week, so far I really like the card. While its no 8800GTX, its also got that extra "oomph" to make 1080p gaming a reality on AGP systems.