Sapphire ATi/AMD Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB AGP

[oliver]

Hi,

So i got a radeon 9500Pro 128mb on my AMD Athlon XP 2500+ @2.6Ghz with 2GB of ram on raptor 75GB (next week in raid0/1).

I noticed that Sapphire brought out a nice ATi/AMD Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB AGP which would allow me to keep my current system, and I get to wait a nother year before I upgarde again. (to PCI-e with AMD64 on an AM3! socket and skip DDR2 etc).

So ... first does this card work properly under linux? (I think so yes, I saw an Asus review of it but it got ~ fps rate on Doom3. I get about 15/20fps in doom3 myself. I know gaming is for windows and such but did notice in windows review this card could get 150FPS in doom3.

And secondly, you recon I should do this 'upgrade' for 200E (the same I payed for my 9500Pro FOUR years ago)?

Oliver

[Michael]

The X1950PRO AGP should be supported by the latest fglrx drivers.

However, I am thinking that an overclocked Athlon XP will be a bit of a bottle-neck for the X1950PRO.

[oliver]

The X1950PRO AGP should be supported by the latest fglrx drivers.

However, I am thinking that an overclocked Athlon XP will be a bit of a bottle-neck for the X1950PRO.

That kinda sucks. it's not just a little overclocked though


2500+ = 11x FSB 166 =1833 MHz
2600+ = 11.5x FSB 166=1917 MHz
2800+ = 12.5X FSB 166 =2083 MHz
3000+ = 13X FSB 166 =2166 MHz
3200+ = 11x FSB 200 = 2200 MHz

for example are the standard ratings for the bartons out there. I got mine running at 2600MHz which is 'off the charts ' Im guess around 3500+.


I did some simple math with http://freya.pelagiris.org/~josmith7/rc5calc.html and compared the results with an amd 64 at 2600mhz and the barton at 2600mhz compares about equally.

So .. how is that bottelnecking it? I know i'm being overly defensive here as it's not the answer I'm seeking But if you truely say that the CPU is going to be a heavy bottleneck, then I suppose the only other option I would have would be the X1650 at 120E, which is almost half the price. But will it last me a nother year or year and a half?
For 80E I could get an X1300 but uhm, I'll almost match that when I OC my current card by a 100Mhz. Either that, or the difference isn't that big (the 1300's don't perform that well I think).

Since most opengl apps (and wine too) use 100% CPU time all the time anyway, it's hard to tell where the bottle neck might be coming from.

The 1950 does hold a higher resale value I think after that time (or a gift for friend etc).

[Michael]

I remember the old Athlon XP number scheme, but I haven't touched a Barton in two or three years.

Well, the X1950PRO drivers currently have bottlenecked performance when compared against NVIDIA on Linux. So with the current drivers it may work out fine, but once AMD fixes their game you may start to see bottlenecked performance.

It's your call, oliver.

By chance, are you using an Abit NF7-S motherboard?

[oliver]

I remember the old Athlon XP number scheme, but I haven't touched a Barton in two or three years.

Well, the X1950PRO drivers currently have bottlenecked performance when compared against NVIDIA on Linux. So with the current drivers it may work out fine, but once AMD fixes their game you may start to see bottlenecked performance.

It's your call, oliver.

By chance, are you using an Abit NF7-S motherboard?

A7V880, pretty nice one I must say, but it does have it's limitations and problems.


I tried OCing it to 2.7Ghz or more but that just won't work, so i'm 'stuck' at 2.6 for the moment.

The 2500+ Barton mobile was 'legendary' actually. it could clock over to very high speeds (mine for example is 700Mhz OCed, not to mention running at a 200Mhz FSB).

Edit:

I went ahead and ordered it. All benchmarks give me 2* or more performance increase easily over the X1650. The X1650 again is quite faster then the X1600 and the X1300 isn't even comparable, yet the X1950 is 'only' 2x as much as the X1300.

If the CPU really turns out to be a hefty bottleneck, I'll get a used S939 AGP mobo, i'm sure there's always someone out there looking to upgrade, and use that for a year or 2, though I really hope that won't be nessecary .