Problems with 1950 Pro AGP and Serious Sam 2

Do you have the newest game patch? I have a recollection of SS2 having problems with Ati cards on launch, but they fixed it in a patch supposedly.

Where did you get your x1950 PRO AGP?

SLAVA: OC UK - This was after a number of previous buyers had stated had good it was.

Cleeve: I have tried with no AA and AF - it doesn't appear to matter what I set them to. I'm running the same tests that I did with my 6800GT which didn't stutter, even at the high settings, just low FPS as expected when turning up quality/res.

I've just replayed Doom 3 and ROE at 1600/1200 with high quality and there was only three areas where the FPS went below 30 - the rest was smooth as silk. I'm 2 thirds the way through Quake 4, which I have for a while but only just played, and again smooth as silk except for 1 instance.

I've not tried any other titles as yet, SS2 was one of the few I could fine information on how to run benchies on and now I'm trying to see what I got for my money but stuttering does not help.

Thanks for the assist so far.

Slava: I normally keep them tidy, I have separate partitions for games, and use DK. However cannot remember If I did so after installing the latest round of patches.

I will check when I'm back home at the weekend and update the post accordingly. It is strange that it did not have the same affect with my 6800GT if it proves to be the case.

This is mighty weird. Care to be more specific? And what was that about the pipes? That just sounds outright wrong...

Quoting the rewiew of X1950 PRO AGP at www.firingsquad.com

"ATI’s Radeon X1950 Pro AGP isn’t a cut down or detuned version of the PCI Express variant of the X1950 Pro. Feature-for-feature, nothing’s been changed <...>

The Radeon X1950 Pro is based on ATI’s 80-nm RV570 GPU. RV570 sports 36 pixel shaders and eight vertex shaders, and runs at 575MHz core/690MHz memory."

Who is talking about "pipes" on the X1950 PRO AGP?

Are you talking about the different pipe count on X850 PRO and X850 XT PE perhaps?

I don't know it all..(techy stuff)
But I do know this.. you can read all the reviews
and do all your homework..
The bottem line is what you see in your rig..
When you change something ,, is it better or worse ??
Easy ...right ..RIGHT
As far as pipes
x850xtpe has 16
x1950agp has 12 ,but does more per pipe line
Something like that....
To me.. its the bottem line ..better or worse
Is it worth the $$$ ..yes or no
I returned the x1950pro agp back to BB..
For game play the x850xtpe is better by being smooth and fluid..
For benchmark #s the x1950agp scored higher
The x1950pro agp had higher highs (good) and lower lows (VERY BAD)
My old x850xtpe was in the "sweet spot"..
Benchmark #s can blind you ,, and max fps can fool you..
But its the min. fps that mess you up bad....chop chop ....
People brag about the max fps..
But CRY out loud about the min. fps........

OK..
Your right
The x1950pro agp is a BIG PROBLEM !!
STAY AWAY FROM IT !!!!!!!!!!!
It will stutter under load !!
x850xtpe doesn't have that problem in my PC
My bottem line....

I can go with that !!!
6.5 is the fastest for x850xtpe
6.12 works well too....

Most likely
but you'll need to check this out for yourself...
The x1950pro just didn't cut it in my pc
To bad ,, I was hoping for the best..
But to be 100% honest it just was not any better than my 850xtpe
And at times it was much worse...
I could not think of one reason to keep it .......

First and for-most, going from nVidia to ATI and vise versa, will lead to issues. Even if you uninstall the nforce drivers via "add\remove programs" there are always .dll's that are left behind and crap in your system registry. What you should do is download and install DriverCleaner Pro, remove your ATI drivers, boot into safe mode and remove all ATI and nforce drivers. Then update your DX9, re-boot and install ATI drivers.

"pentium 3 450mhz, 256mb ram, x1950pro" hahaha

When I said "If it isn't performing at least as fast as the X850 XT, there's a problem", that would be referring to something like a 450 mhz CPU. A CPU that slow is a huge problem for gaming.

The AGP X1950 PRO makes alot of sense for people with fast Athlon XPs, fast P4s, and Athlon 64s with an AGP slot. But if your CPU is under 2 ghz, you're wasting money on a hiugh end card like that.

Wich i call a fast AGP system.

don't say it isnt cleeve

That is the big issue here. The card will kill your little X850XT in so many ways, if it wasn't being bottlenecked by your CPU. As simple as that. I have no clue what your 3D mark scores were, but I can guarantee that they were no where near an A64 score. So please refrain on bashing the card. It tried, but your CPU said NO!

Your right.. its being bottlenecked..
The x1950pro agp is useless to me ..
Thus a wast-of-money..
I gave-it a shot !!!
I'll just put that $$$ into a new PCI-e system

x850xtpe
3dmark03 13200
3dmark05 6920

A 3200+ IS a fast AGP system.

I thought someone said it was 450 Mhz... I was thinking an old P2 or something.

An Athlon XP will or will not bottleneck an X1950 PRO depending on the game. Certain games, like Oblivion, prey, and NFS: Carbon will fly with an X1950 PRO over other AGP cards.

I'm not talking 250fps, I'm talking where it counts: in the 25 - 60 fps range, at high settings (1280x1024 and over with AA), the X1950 PRO humiliated the 7600 GT on an Athlon XP 2500+ in Oblivion, NFS: Carbon, and Prey.

in my experience, the 7600 GT is right on par with the X850 XT.

That review would be much more interesting if it showed the settings the games were played at...

By the differences, i'd bet it was a low resolution. Higher resolutions would be closer and bottlenecked by the videocard, not so much the CPUs...

I have updated my signature to include system details and as you can see it is unlikely to be down to bottlenecking.

I ran benchies with 3DMark03/05/06 which all showed improvement, not as high as I hoped but still good.

Doom 3 is a definite plus as I can run at 1600/1200 with high settings getting 40FPS+ majority of time. If I'm not mistaken this uses OpenGL which is an Nvidia stong area and only recently ATI have improved in this.

Before buying this I did review Tom's, obviously it was the PCI Express version of 1950 Pro but didn't expect much difference for AGP, and I waited for comments from other buyers before committing.

I'm going to look at DriveCleaner Pro which I expect will go some way to solving this. I will also consider re-installing SS2 and testing with sound dis-abled. I'm also going to test other titles I have to see if they exhibit any issues.

I will provide an update on Saturday once I have completed this.

Did you use, I think its Drivercleaner, or some utility like that to clean every trace of the Nvidia drivers off before installing the ATI card?

If not completely clean both sets of drivers and start with fresh install of ATI drivers. See if that helps.

That's a fair argument, execpt for the fat that these cards are known to be high res, AA, and AF killlers. They strive for it. This case, the CPU would be the bottleneck.
And funny enough, Toms just put up a nice article an how badly the XP can limit this card.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] -analysis/

Lol. I wrote that article dude.

You can't use it against me!

I think it shows that on a relatively older processor about half the titles will be bottlenecked... on graphics intensive stuff, the X1950 PROs took a big lead.

I expect to see that lead grow with the Athlon 64 3400+ I'm using in the next article.

I ran the game highest (dont have sm3 so no hdr) @1280*960 on my x800gto and it ran perfect, super smooth

No it was a response to p05esto.

I dont know much about the athlon xp's but should be enough to play ss2?? right?

But the x1950pro would not be bottlenecking i never said that.

Yes, I'm telling you it would at least half the time, and especially when AA & AF are used.

That was the result of the testing.