AGP - X1950 Pro experiences

[Mussels]

I had a HIS X1950 Pro AGP Turbo card for about 4 weeks. I could not get any higher on drivers than 7.6. It ran fine for 4 weeks untill one day I came home from work went to my pc (in the mood to play a little bf2) Loaded up the game spawned on Wake island.. And the artifacts were bad real bad I will dig up some screen shots for you if you want. I rebooted all of the standard stuff. Removed the drivers and tried to put them back on and I couldnt get above a 4-bit desktop. I RMA it and sold the new one went to Sapphire. PCIe

This is how bad the artifacts were.

thats overheating GPU or ram for sure. Some 'dead' cards also exhibit that behaviour, without being hot at the time.

 

[grunt_408]

I ended up building a whole new rig.. Sold the old one gave me enough to build half the new one

 

[Mussels]

Lol this just keeps sounding worse... The card looked so good when I bought it!

I didn't realise my board was designed for DDR1 memory... How ignorant of me. I want to get a new MoBo at some stage, but I'd obviously want to upgrade, so I'd get one that supports a Socket 775 multi-core processor. Problem here is, that's going to cost a bloody lot, because I'll need the new board, and a new processor. Given, I could sell the stuff I have now for a reasonable amount. But it's still quite a financial setback. I'd get a board with PCI-e aswell, but again that means buying a new card. *sigh*

are you interested in overclocking? if so, 775 is a lot cheaper than it may first appear
The E21x0 chips are dirt cheap, and just by changing the FSB alone you can get quite impressive overclocks (3GHz from a 1.8GHz CPU on stock cooling has been done)

 

[grunt_408]

^^^^^ I agree even on a tight budget you can get a good result out of a cheap CPU

 

[Widjaja]

Lol this just keeps sounding worse... The card looked so good when I bought it!

I didn't realise my board was designed for DDR1 memory... How ignorant of me. I want to get a new MoBo at some stage, but I'd obviously want to upgrade, so I'd get one that supports a Socket 775 multi-core processor. Problem here is, that's going to cost a bloody lot, because I'll need the new board, and a new processor. Given, I could sell the stuff I have now for a reasonable amount. But it's still quite a financial setback. I'd get a board with PCI-e aswell, but again that means buying a new card. *sigh*

Sorry to point out the reality, but it was better to give you the kick you in the guts instead of saying it was going to be fine by doing this or that which 'might' fix the problem.

Well you've already got the ram, see if you can RMA that POS of a GPU for a PCI-E version.
Buy a new motherboard and CPU then flick the old ones off.

Preferably Intel C2D since they OC like mad.
Unlike my AMD.

 

[Mussels]

if you decide on new hardware, feel free to ask us for advice.
List your country of origin (trust me on that, for prices/local deals) your budget, and what hardware you already have/willing to keep (some people like to keep the old system, others hate reusing parts)

 

[bubblesnout]

Oh trust me, my artifacts are much worse than that screenshot They cover the whole screen, and remain there when I get back to my windows desktop.

I'm not an overclocker, no. I've honestly never done it. I'd get another Socket 478 Motherboard, but because the cpu I have right now is the best socket 478 intel that was made, if I'm going to have to buy new stuff, I might as well upgrade, if you catch my drift. So a socket 775 is a good call. I reckon I could sell my cpu for a decent price, as I haven't had it that long, and they can be kinda tough to get your hands on.

I live in Australia. I'd like to keep as much of my current hardware as possible! lol

 

[Mussels]

i'm aussie too you can PM me later and i'll give you links to some good online stores.

With overclocking those E21x0 chips, its some simple math.
These chips are 200 FSB
E6600/Q6600 are 266
E6550/E6750/E6850 (latest series) are 333

So all you gotta do is turn the FSB from 200 to 266 or hopefully 333 (luck depending) for the easiest free performance boost ever

(The logic being that if you buy a 333 "1333 FSB" capable motherboard and ram, then ONLY the CPU is overclocked and everything else is guaranteed to run at that speed)

 

[Widjaja]

Oh trust me, my artifacts are much worse than that screenshot They cover the whole screen, and remain there when I get back to my windows desktop.

I'm not an overclocker, no. I've honestly never done it. I'd get another Socket 478 Motherboard, but because the cpu I have right now is the best socket 478 intel that was made, if I'm going to have to buy new stuff, I might as well upgrade, if you catch my drift. So a socket 775 is a good call. I reckon I could sell my cpu for a decent price, as I haven't had it that long, and they can be kinda tough to get your hands on.

I live in Australia. I'd like to keep as much of my current hardware as possible! lol

You'll keep everything except the most expensive parts.
The GPU, CPU and motherboard.

It's always the way isn't it?

 

[Mussels]

i PM'd bubbles with a list of aussie e-tailers and some good hardware to look at
(E2180 i think, 2Ghz stock. Asrock 4-core SATA-II mobo)

Cheap, he/she can use the old DDR ram for now, and either PCI-E or AGP card that comes back in warranty will work.

 

[Widjaja]

Is the AsRock one of those AGP/PCI-E boards?
If so it would be a safe bet just incase a AGP comes back.
On the other hand I heard those motherboards aren't very good oveclockers.

 

[Mussels]

the asrocks can OC to a small extent. On this board, i've reached 4GHz with a P4D CPU (3GHz stock) but around 4.2 the FSB was high enough the IDE channel corrupted and killed the OS.

That said, its 100% stable as long as you dont need to change voltages. These E2x series are fine going from say, 200 FSB to 266FSB (boards official limit for the higher model CPU's) on stock volts, so they pair up nicely.

 

[bubblesnout]

he/she

He

Here's the AsRock MoBo you suggested, which looks nice. http://www.itestate.com.au/products_detail.asp?code=PD00005018

I take it that it has 2 DDR2 ram slots, and 2 DDR ram slots, yes? So If I wanted to use 4gb of ram, I would use the DDR2 ram I have now, and get 2 DDR chips as well? (Not that I really need 4gb ). It has 2 IDE connectors, so that makes that easy. No onboard graphics, so I'll have to RMA my x1950 before I start using the board, but apart from that I think it's all good.

 

[Mussels]

no you cannot mix DDR1 and 2 - on that page it does say "*DDRII and DDR are supported separately "

No onboard, but it does cover the uncertainty of what RMA card you get. go for PCI-E if you can, and if not... AGP still works out.

 

[bubblesnout]

Oh right, so I can only have 2GB, either DDR2 or DDR1. No worries. There's nothing I would really need 4gb ram for for quite a while anyway I suppose. I'll apply for an RMA when I get home, so I can check out my serial number, product code, and all that jargon. I think I'll look at a Core 2 Quad as well. I can pick one of them up for about $375 AUD.

 

[Mussels]

you can go 4GB, if you get 2x 2GB sticks of ram. expensive now, but a good option in 6 months or so.

Quads are awesome, but they wont overclock in that motherboard. Just throwing that out there.

 

[bubblesnout]

Just FYI, I was talking with a HIS Support person, and was told to downgrade to the Catalyst 7.6 drivers for this reason:

"There is a defect on AGP card in the drivers after version 7.6 . ATI is correcting it for the coming driver."

Believable?

 

[Mussels]

i'd beleive it. until the drivers come out and we see it ourselves, its certainly possible.

 

[Widjaja]

Possible. . . . .
Take a look at this funky ensemble

Just from not enabling Geometry instancing in Colin McRae DiRT.
Only game which has done this.

Anyway try ot 7.6 if you haven't and tell us what happens.

 

[grunt_408]

Holy crap man that is unreal. It sort of looks like one of them old stealth jets lol

 

[Widjaja]

And just for comparisons sake, here's what the garbled screen is supposed to look like.

So as you can see the word DiRT turned into the stealth fighter without geometry instancing.
Yeah it was a shock to see the messed up screen pop up after re-installing DiRT again.

 

[grunt_408]

It is a cool game that I have the demo.. I will get the full game one day

 

[bubblesnout]

I downgraded to 7.6, and now a few of my games tell me my drivers are out of date, and they won't play. Haha, goody. But as far as I've seen so far, they seem to be ok. I'll send an e-mail to ATI and ask if this is actually the case.

 

[Widjaja]

Wow didn't take long for the drivers to become obselete.

 

[VeDz]

This card is legendary, it will never die! Mine hasn't let me down yet. Paired with a C2D @ 3.5 you can still play many games at max setting. Stable as heck, I even stressed it soo much as it hit 89 degrees. No artifacts then etc. I have the HIS 256 model with the reference cooler and not the cool looking one, but still works awesome.