AGP: From 7800GS OC to X1950PRO

Hell yes, for $30 I'd go for it if you have a decent system (3 Ghz P4 or any Athlon 64) and would like to use more AA & AF at higher resolutions.

Here's a review showing the difference:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] -analysis/

Well, it's faster than a 3 Ghz P4... so it should be fine.

Well worth the $30 for sure.

I say keep it if you use or plan on using linux. NVidia has better linux support.

Yup, Nvidia has nice Linux support.

But if you're gaming box will never see Linux, it's a non-issue. Ati's Windows drivers are excellent.

Yeah, and you're soooo bipartisan.

To the OP: don't listen to this troll. He spends all his time looking for opportunities to flame ATI.

The X1950 Pro is a huge improvement, the GeForce is crippled. Had the same 7800GS and I went through 4 different X1950 Pro's trying to get one of them working before I gave up and went to PCIe.

Having said that, for $30 go for it. It might have been just a quirk with my mobo: they work great for some people, and don't for others.

Actually, CoH is one of the 2 games I play mostly. I absolutely love CoH. The other game is NFS:MW (I've already finished NFS:Carbon).

So that kinda worries me.

In the forums you linked, they say it's a programming technique that only allows nVidia cards to properly render the shadows. This is one game. I wonder how many other games are only perfectly functional with nVidia cards. Anyone?

UPDATE:

I did some reseacrh on those threads that s4fun brought to the table, and it looks like the COH has NO problem with the X1950 PRO... it has a problem with the older SM 2.0 Ati cards.

The X1950 PRO is a SM 3.0 card, and has no problem at all with COH. From the threads that s4fun linked to:

" am using an ati x800xl video card and the game will only let me select low quality shadows."

"I have a X850XT myself so high quality shadows don't work since my card doesn't support Shader 3.0."

"I *WAS* going to get an NVIDIA card to replace my X800GTO, but if this is the kind of stunt they're pulling, maybe I won't. It looks as though Shader Model 3.0-compatible videcards (the X1### series by ATI) don't have a problem with the shadows. I should've figured, with the "NVIDIA - the way it's meant to be played" video that I have to see every time I play the game (unless I use -nomovies), that something like this would happen."


As far as crashing, that's an isolated issue on the COH forum as far as I can tell. Could be caused by the guy's PSU as much as anything else, hell. One guy who can't get his computer to work proves nothing, from what I can see alot of people are RECOMMENDING the X1950 PRO on those forums.

Here's a benchmark showing the X1950 PRO humiliating the 7800 GS in COH and NFS, by he way...

http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/i [...] mitstart=6


Anyway, you have to watch out what the fanboys like s4fun will tell you. Both Ati and Nvidia cards are solid in general, but the brand-huggers will claim their hated enemy brand is terrible from the rooftops without doing any real research.

He's probably never played COH, just went to their forum, did a search for 'X1950 PRO', and copied the links he thought were negative enough to serve his nefarious propeganda without actually reading them.

Funny that the two threads you linked to don't demonstrate the problem you're talking about. Maybe you can find some more for us, then...

I'm not pissed off with anyone, but *we're* the partisan fanboys with misinformation? rrrriiiight...

What information?

I'm not sure what your problem is s4fun, are you mad because I've actually taken the time to read the links you provided?

I'm interested enough to bother checking your links out, so that if it was valid I could steer COH'ers clear of Ati cards. As I said already in my first post of the thread: "it's relevant to you if the Ati drivers don't get along with a specific game you're really into, you should look into it. "

That makes me a fanboy in your books, does it? Doing a little research makes me partisan, huh?

Don't start flinging your accusations because your info doesn't check out...

For shits and giggles, I went to the COH technical assistance forums and tried a couple searches with the following words in the title... Radeon, and Geforce.

Radeon returned 13 posts in the technical assistance forum

Geforce returned 12 posts in the technical assistance forum

Basically, what we're seeing is people having a problem with a game in a support forum, like some people always will. Is it suggesting that the game won't work with Radeons AND Geforces? Or that lopsided towards one company over the other? That's not the conclusion I'm getting. Some people are having trouble, and that's a shame, but that's the reality of playing games on the PC. THere's no smoking gun here in the hands of one video card vendor, to be sure...

Sorry you're having trouble with it s4fun, but while it might be easy to blame your videocard, you haven't really demonstrated anything to suggest it's the Radeon's fault. What you've demonstrated is that you're having trouble with your machine.

Well, off to lunch. Have fun without me lads!

I build all my machines. I have 6 machines right now, 3 using nVidia and 3 using ATI boards. The ATI video cards simply always had more issues. If I couldn't get things to work, the ATI card would be in the dumpster already, but I give them the benefit of the doubt and get them to work, but it is never smooth or painless. And I'm just saying, marginal gain over a 7800gs for tremendous pain, is not worth it. If it weren't for the fact that the nVidiots at the corporate level decided to screw the AGP users, I wouldn't have bothered with the x1950 pro AGP.

Somewhat meaningless maybe, but not totally. If there was a problem with Ati cards specifically, I think it's reasonable to expect that reflected with a disproportionate number of complaints on the COH boards - not happening.

But I certainly invite anyone who'se interested to visit the relic forums and check it out for themselves. See if the actual content is justifying s4fun's accusations.

I don't see the Ati X1950 PRO failures there that you do on those forums, dude - I think the one thread that mentioned it by name was started by you...

Sure, but how can you be so damn sure that these problems (which seem to be FAR from the rule, more like the exception with COH) aren't arising from a poorly coded game engine or any other number of variables? And some of the people with problems will have those problems not due to hardware but lack of information or an improper setup. In the PC world, it is not as black and white as you think my friend.

The more I read your posts, the more I think you should be gaming on an Xbox 360, not the PC.

lol, more conspiracy theory! I love it.

Believe it or not - I get no compensation of any kind for hanging out here. I was on these boards before I was a journalist.

As far as influencing, I'm guilty of the same thing you are - posting an opinion on a forum.

As for policing - I'm not even a mod, s4fun. How exactly am I policing anything by posting my opinion?

From what I can tell, all that transpired here was me reporting my findings of some links that YOU posted!

As a result of investigating your info, you have now accused me of influencing, hyping, and policing... nice.

Apparently folks, if anyone but s4fun you shares their experiences on this forum, and those experiences aren't the same as s4funs, that automatically makes them a member of the Ati thought police.

Dude, you ought to get a grip. Seriously.

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they are NOT out to get me. But seriously, you have to be deaf, blind, and mute not to see some serious conflicts of interest. I can't pin it down, doesn't mean people shouldn't be warned. And who but a thought police would decide for people that Linux is a non-factor? How do you know the board won't end up in linux box a few years down the line? There are some things ATI is good at, but there a bunch more things that ATI has gotten messed up, if you want to ignore those, pretend they don't exist, jump thru hoops like a trained chihuahua to make all the work arounds work, well then you are the delusional ones.

If crash, error, warning logs are enough to stand up to scrutiny, then nothing ever will. The problems are real. Just like ATI's driver don't do "Fixed Aspect Ratio Scaling". Even ATI admits to that themselves. But it is nonetheless still a problem they should fix given that some version/variant of laptop drivers provide it, it really shouldn't be a stretch that the x1950 pro should be able to do, given that they all have scaler in the chipset. But that is not valid problem either by your standards, because some guy's monitor can do it so then it should be up to everyone else's monitor to do it. The same for ATI lacking a quick and dirty color calibration wizard like the way nVidia has, because we should all have to do color calibration like snooty photo nazi's do with those high falutin fancy Gretag Macbeth doohickies. Cover for ATI all you want, problems are problems, whether you want to believe them or not.

As for the crashes and errors, there is definitely more than one person experiencing them. Just look into those links a bit or search them, you'll find plenty people running into the problems.

As for the various problems, who is to decide what is relevant? You want everyone to suffer tunnel vision? Maybe the OP thought about it, maybe they didn't but it is not for us to limit them. And to borrow your analogy, who said Californians don't do go to Minnesota? And even if they don't who to say don't like to go up to Tahoe for skiing? As for cars, AWD rules.

Yes, but because a small handful of people have problems with Ati and Nvidia cards does not indicate massive sweeping failure. From those forums difficulties definitely seem like the exception, not the rule.

but once again, I invite anyone intersted to visit the relic forums and see for themselves. I've seen people RECOMMEND the X1950 PRO on those forums... so it's hard to believe that the problems you experience are as widespread as you claim.

What are you smoking? I'm the one asking the OP - and other users - how they plan to use their cards, and making a recommendation based on that.

You on the other hand - are making sweeping judgements based on your OWN preferences. You don't seem to care that the OP isn't using his gaming box on Linux but insist that it's relevant because you think he should upgrade with Linux in mind?

Or to use my analogy, why do you feel it's your right to tell Californians they HAVE to buy a car for Minnesota?

Whose forcing their views on whom?...

Newegg reviews are hardly a reliable source and I think you know that. Every video card on newegg will have a comment about how someone is having a problem with it.

I'd put more stock into visiting the COH or even THG forums and getting a general consensus from people who actually own the cards, frankly.

My criteria for a 'wide spread' problem would be that it is statistically significant. When there are problems of this magnitude there is usually a buzz about the problem, in many cases it is investigated and reported on.

For example, the early overclocked 7900 GT cards had a reputation for being problematic. The manufacturers admitted a problem, there was sufficient statistical anomaly in the amount of RMAd cards for the media to report about the issue.

I would even stretch my definition to include cards about which there is a significant bad buzz about in the community. For example, the early releases of the 512mb Sapphire X1950 PROs had some bad experiences associated with them, and more than a few people were talking about it on the forums.

Does that mean all 7900's and X1950 PROs are bad? Obviously not.

On your own, you are not statistically significant.

Another thing that isn't statistically significant is one man's bias against a company. You say all X1950 PROs are bad, yet you only point to your personal experience to justify that. While you personally might indeed have a bad card, as a reasonable human being I have trouble accepting that all X1950 PROs are bad when I see many more positive experiences about them than I do negative.

What might be statistically significant would also be a tech support forum demonstrating an unusually high amount of problems with a card. Once again, we see on the COH forums that you supplied links to: that is not the case. So how can you claim that all X1950 PROs are bad for COH in good conscience?

I can guarantee you that someone, somewhere, with any type of video card is going to have a problem of some kind. To assume it's the card's fault and not the PSU, OS, drivers, other hardware, a cooling issue, or the software itself is very nearsighted.

Compounding the problem is that newbs often assume it's their video card if they have a problem with their game. So they go straight to the foums and ask: "Why is my Radeon or Geforce causing problems?".

On the opposite side of the coin, you claim Geforces are near flawless because you have personally had good experioences with them. But in doing so you are ignoring everyone else who is habving a bad experience with them, and they're representing themselves on forums just like Radeon owners.

You complain that statistics are irrelevant, well my friend there's really no other way to know if a particular video card is worse than it's peers because ALL cards have problems of one kind or another on somebody's system. So we have to measure the differences whichever way we can.

It's not a great situation, but it's the nature of the PC beast. I'm willing to pay that price rather than go proprietary with a PC like an Apple, myself.

Yep. And plenty of people having problems with Geforces, and Vista, and patches... etc.

Statistical significance is what we're looking for. As I said, when everybody is having problems in equal proportions, there is no statistical significance there... that's just the PC world, imperfect as it is.

Otherwise we can concluder that all PC hardware, OSs, and software is crap - because there is a small amoutn of people out there who have a problem with everything on the market.

People constantly come to this forum with graphics card issues and apart from the Sapphire AGP X1950 PRO, all has been pretty damn quiet on the X1950 PRO front (except for you, that is).

This is just from a quick googling.... Lots of folks are whining....

http://www.hardforum.com/showthrea [...] 435&page=5
http://www.planetamd64.com/lofiver [...] 29491.html
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/har [...] 26047.html
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33878199
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/for [...] 70782.html
http://www.rage3d.com/board/archiv [...] 78199.html
http://www.driverheaven.net/ati-gr [...] zes-2.html
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=436994
http://www.rage3d.com/board/archiv [...] 79271.html
http://www.rage3d.com/board/archiv [...] 79556.html
http://www.rage3d.com/board/archiv [...] 76909.html
http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com [...] -here.html

The best that can be said for the x1950 pro is that your odds are about like crapshoot.

Let's google the 7900 GS too, while we're at it:

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/har [...] 26904.html
http://www.hardforum.com/archive/i [...] 33562.html
http://www.overclock.net/nvidia-co [...] ooler.html
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=241688
http://www.overclock.net/nvidia-dr [...] ocing.html
http://www.xfire.be/?x=journal&mod [...] m&id=17941
http://www.bjorn3d.com/forum/archi [...] 10981.html

etc, etc.

We have proved we can use google!

Hell yes. Had many Nvidia cards in my life, starting with the legendary Geforce2 MX. Great cards, all of 'em... (except the godawful FX series).
In fact, I believe my X1900 XTX is getting replaced with an 8800 GTX very soon.

To be honest, I've never understood the big problem with installing the .net framework. The worst thing about the early catalysts to me was the startup time, it's worlds better now and it's been completely eliminated in Vista.

I test graphics cards in all sorts of games when I write articles for Tom's and I've not yet to date come across a big problem with either Nvidia or Ati drivers, although I've had minor annoyances with both. But that's the nature of the beast. maybe I'm just a hard guy to upset.

For your info, that hardforum poll is SPECIFICALLY about the Sapphire AGP X1950 PRO... which I've already mentioned.

You really have to start reading these links before you fire them off, bro...

Newegg only moderates swearing, dude... whoever told you otherwise is wrong.

*Sigh*. If you weren't so obsessed with brand fanaticism you could see that what I'm doing is striving to be nonpartisan unless sufficient evidence warrants it.

I have nothing against the 7900 GS - they're in my recommended buyer's guide for chrissake - I'm simply demonstrating that with ANY card, people will have a problem. That's the PC world!

But this is, sadly, beyond your ability to understand.

Happy gaming to you too, bro.

Peace!

That's a little too broad, but I think most people would agree that Ati has poor LINUX driver support.

Their Windows drivers have been pretty good foir a while, but I've said it before: if you're into Linux, Ati cards are probably not a good idea for you.

80 degrees does sound quite hot for sure though, is that idling or under load?
Under load that wouldn't be a huge deal, but at idle that'd be pretty crazy high...

And you run the Cleeve Groupie Application department, and give way Cleeve Groupie Gold Stars for filling out paperwork. Ain't that just precious. Your nose brown again, go get Cleeve to help you wipe that off.