Warning: Don't Buy a Sapphire X1950 Pro

agp or pci-x, these card has overheating and many other problems. the frame rate is good for most games but it can hardly run heavy load games more than 10 minutes. the cards shuts itself when temperature reaches 65 degrees C, making system effectively hang. you have no option but reboot.
it cannot complete company of heroes performance test.

Is this a known problem or just in your experience? I don't think they would sell something with issues like that. I almost bought one of those and I started kicking myself for not getting it but I feel better now.

BTW PCI-X is a server socket used mostly for RAID cards and NIC's, what you're referring to is PCI-e.

well my msi flavor is idling @42*C and full load@60ish *C.
but the cooling solution is the ati's reference single slot hsf.

It's a some what know problem. I was looking in to this card and found that sapphires forum was full of black screening complaints. Most where from OCing but many where at stock running under load. The issue is with the power regulators over heating not the core form what I've read. This also prevents any real OCing an volt modding. If you look at sapphires x1950pro extreme it has a large heat sink over the Vreg.

I recently purchased that particular card for my system as it seemed like a good deal, and an upgrade from my X800GTO. I can honestly say I have had no problems with it. I have an AOPEN case, not fancy at all, have two stealth 80mm case fans, and I run ATITOOL so that if the card goes past 50 degrees C, the fan will go to 100%. Some may say that is loud, but when I play games, I don't hear it anyway. I play Company of Heroes at max settings and it runs very well, no heating problems like some of you have described. Perhaps try ATITOOL to control the speed of the fan?

By the way, I like the idea that it is a single-slot cooling solution. But, the true test will come this summer when the ambient room temperature goes up.

Hope you get the issues solved quick and to your satisfaction.

I have the plain ATI version, idles at 40, full load 64 is the highest I have seen. Stock cooling.
No problems, rock steady.

Say again about that testing thing!

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that...

Sorry. What I meant is that you said the the sapphire x1950 pro they sent me for testing. I was wondering how you get to do that.

You're a fuking liar.

if its not more graphic intence then oblivion with 1 gig of graphical addons i dont doubt it since i can play oblivion in 1920x1200 with everythign cranked to absolute max at 50 frames.

ruleworld has made his 'statement'
He's not interested in our questions, heheh. Well he's not replying anyway!
Maybe his case is hot and his PSU is wimpy...?
Regards

always said

people with under 50 posts....are not to be fully trusted


Probally a paid Nvidia shill

Hey Enforcer22, I just noticed you said you were in the 60's during load. I have an Antec P-180 Case and my CPU temp while at load is around 54 degrees C, so I dont think my case cooling is to terrible, but I have an Arctic Cooling Accelro X2 on my X1900XTX and the ATI CCC shows me at 88 - 92 degrees C during load, and has done that for a year now and I have never had any problems, so I am just curious is to if that is the same program you read your temps with and if you use stock cooling or not?

Best,

3Ball

Yes i sue stock cooling and i use the drivers to read my gpu temp.. my cpu only runs about 30 some c during load though. didnt mean to be confusing about which i was tlkaing about. Sometimes it gets in the 40c rang. I have a lian li case from my sig and its pretty decked out with fans. i drilled a 120mm in the side for a bit more ar flow also.

YES, Nvidia paid me to say that I own a X1950 XT and it's the best $250 that I've ever spent.



actually that would mean you are on Amd's pay roll

is it possible that this guy has a defective card and should cash in his warranty? I mean not being able to run a game for more than 10 minutes sounds really bad

I have a PowerColor pcie x1950 pro card. It comes with a special cooler (ARCTIC COOLING). I have not had a problem with it even after playing Oblivion for several hours. My room can get as hot as an inferno and I have not paid any attention to the cooling of my case which means there are cables all around it.

It idles at 45 right now. I have not checked it after playing for extended hours but it never gave me any trouble and is absolutely silent. It is as silent as the passively cooled 7600 gt that I before it! I could not hear the fan's noise over my Athlon64 3000+ stock fan while my ear was next to it.

All that said, since I bought the card I have not played heavy 3d games a lot. Using the VIVO played ps2 games for a while and now mostly playing ancient 2d games like Disciples II so maybe I have not put it under enough pressure to pass a judgment.

I had a choice between ASUS and Sapphire for my x1950Pro, i chose ASUS. Fortunately they changed the stock heatsink with a brick instead of just putting a sticker saying 'ASUS' over it. Stock temps are 44C and never goes over 60C even when playing bf2 for hours.

I would check your heatsink and make sure it is seated properly and has adequate thermal paste aquired. I seem to remember reading a while back many mobos and graphics cards having little or no paste from factory oe the sink getting knocked around.

? Did I miss some sarcasm? Are you saying you can play Oblivion at 19x12 with all sliders maxed and average 50 fps outside? You must be running crossfire X1900's to manage that.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page5.asp

Firingsquad uses max in game settings in their high end review, and averages less than 30 fps at 16x12 in the outoors. Shoot, they average less than 40 fps at 10x7. Their testing is in line with what I see on my X1950XT.

it must be 192x120

Minim3 is another x1950pro user living a pipe dream


He also averages 40-45fps outdoors in Oblivion at 1280X1024 with HDR plus all sliders maxed 100% out with the exception of the grass slider at 50%

Also the only shadows he doesnt have turned on are the character shadows and grass shadows, shadow filtering is turned on high.

thats odd. I have a very similar system to yours.
E6400, asrock dual vsta, 1gb ddr400, msi x1950 pro 256mb (pci-e).
and I get 40-45fps average at 1280*1024 with hdr.


If anyone wants to see the pics he emailed to me because he is to chicken sh1t to post them up on here then give me your email address and I will send them to you.

Its a good damn laugh because the location is near the top of a mountain where everyone who has played Oblivion knows the the performance picks up outdoors when you near the top of a mountain. There are also just a few trees scattered around as he is not even in the forested areas as I asked him to do so.

To top it all off he was dumb enough to post pics of his sliders and a few of them were at 25-50% instead of 100% as he claimed to top it off tree canopy shadows were even disabled.

I have that same card and I am wondering what are you using to get you GPU temperatures, what software are you using ?

Hold on and I will show you how I cooled both my X1900XT and now my 8800GTX.

With the X1900XT I used the Accelero X2 fan and had two low flowing 120mm fans placed under the card. With an overclock of 730core and 1660mem I idled at 38c and loaded at 52c after hours of gaming.

Stock I would idle at 53c and load at 85c!


My 8800GTX which is known to run hot idles at 49c and loads only at 56c even with its overclock which is just friggen awesome for being on air.

very, nice rob, now perhaps you could go to the gold coast north of anvil. very few trees but i find it is much more demanding than the great forest. don't know why but my frame rates a few fps lower on average over there.

anyone else fine the same?

I've had one in AGP now for a couple of weeks and have had no problems at all. In fact a very impressive card! Temps generally in the 40-50's, I can hear when the cooling fan changes speed. Been playing Oblivion at 1280x1024, everything maxed, no HDR, 4x AA and get 30-50 fps. From what I've seen in other forums it is a picky card when it comes to power. Seems those with good PSU's don't have issues. Seems if yours is running hot time to open up the case, some new fans and upgrade that PSU!
DC

Those pics are coming up, I am now waiting on slow photobucket to upload them.

Ok,ok, talking in very general terms. Might be better to say "very playable FPS". I'm using NGO's drivers. How do you post attatchments?. RobsX2 I've put together some screens in pdf format. I'd email it to you if you'd like.
DC