Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)

Waymon

Ray, I think that's a good idea - let's see how much better a score we can get with max overclocking. Let me know and I'll revise the chart. -rich

Abuzar - thanks for the rofl - I knew it had to do with laughing somehow!

 

Yeah now I want to get Bioshock, the whole thing. Don't really want to pay for it though. *sigh* I guess just gotta wait for the price to come down lol.

 

Abuzar

Don't wait. Buy it on ebay - follow this link: bioshock on ebay That's the way I buy most of my games. You won't be the first one to play it, but you'll save a lot of money.

I might have to buy my gecube that way. There's an ebay store that tried to get $369 for the gecube, but got no action and is now trying it again at $299. That's $30 over newegg when they had it, but still not too high. Ebay emails me whenever a gecube auction opens up.

Right now there's a bioshock for PC auction with 3 bids - high bid is $12.50. It ends in an hour. It looks like the game usually goes for about $20.

I usually watch a few auctions in My Ebay to get an idea of what the item typically goes for. There can be quite a variance. Right now I'm tracking my beautiful x850xtpe that I paid $500 for two years ago, with an 8 megapixel fill rate (the gecube is 10.) Since they are practically giving it away now, I might later put it in my 3rd computer and replace the old, old 9800 that I also paid $500 for, about four years ago.

Anyway, the x850xtpe just went on a Buy Now basis for $139, and within a day or so, on an auction basis, for $59. Some dude got anxious and overpaid I think - rich

 

Guess how much I paid for my X1900 GT? 85 bucks, that's right 85...

 

$85???????

Ok, dude, don't hold back. Where did you get it at that price? On ebay?

Or was that a one time deal from a buddy? and I'm not going to be able to find it that cheap.

Because, hell, between that information, and between Travis picking up that new mobo for $65, all of a sudden the gecube doesn't make sense. Maybe.

Look at your great 3dmark numbers.

If that's the way the dollars work out, then why would I consider paying about $85 for a psu, and another $300 for the gecube?

Why don't I just get another mobo like Travis for around $65, put my ddr400 memory in, move my cpu over, and get a PCI-E graphic card the way you did, for $85?

Abuzar, am I going to be able to buy it anywhere near that cheap??

 

I got it from newegg bro. The deal is gone though, but if you look on ebay there is ONE card on there, follow it and see what happens.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ATi-Radeon-X190...ryZ40158QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

EDIT: Also you can get it for about 90 if you use google product search, but I'm not sure about how reliable those stores are.

 

Abuzar: oh there are ways my friend, there are definitely ways...
Rich: Just bear in mind the risks involved with getting PC parts off ebay, I've seen perhaps a dozen threads on the site over the past year saying "I bought new memory and now my PC doesn't work, even if I take it out!" - "where did you get the memory from?" i ask, "ebay" is usually the response. Granted, if you don't know what you're buying you nearly always lose, but I always say "don't buy it if it hasn't got a warranty"
EIGHTY FIVE dollars Abuzar. You don't deserve to beat my score! At the current rate of exchange I paid $680 for my card, and it's only 16 months old!

 

Wow sam, 680! You can get an ultra for that! But anyways, this is kinda off topic but I just wanted to say that I got a Crysis Beta key from matt so I guess maybe I should post some more stuff up here later on. What do you think? I could probably do it this Saturday...

But just by judging how its played so far, I get about 35-40fps on all low settings 800x600, which isn't bad, because low settings still look pretty damn good for that game. If I crank it up to all medium at 1280x960, I get around 15-20fps. Its pretty laggy, more than I would want anyways. I hear that the demo will be a lot more optimized, so I guess we can expect for the frame rates to go up quite a bit.

 

Yeah, I played the Unreal Tournament 3 Beta Demo, and the frame rates are 15-20 at 2560x1600, slightly better at 1920x1200, but I'd only call it smooth at 1680x1050. Trouble is, although I'm sure the full game will be more optimised, the demo only ships with medium quality textures...

 

Really? Why only medium? The Crysis beta only goes up to high settings, and then theirs ultra high, but they're disabled. I hear that the demo will feature DX10 (unlike the beta) and destructible environments (also unlike the beta), but in order to use DX10, you have to have the settings on ultra high.

 

Judging by the odd way in which they load (when the game first starts it looks terrible, and progressively over the course of 5 or 6 seconds all the textures start to appear properly) I'm guessing the textures aren't optimised yet.

 

Harvard, I'm running an E6320 @ 2.11ghz (vs 1.86) with 2gb of Corsair XMS2 DDR II 667.
With regard to the Gecube, check out ebay.co.uk and see if anyone will post theirs to you. There's always a few on there. I got mine (UK postage inc) for £104, (or about $210) and that was a good few months ago now. Some are going on there for £80, worth consideration - I did put nearly £40 worth of cooling on mine though!
That said, in some ways I wish I'd never bought my X1950. I should have just stuck with my 7800GS and saved a bit longer and then gone straight to PCIE, but then again, we've had some good discussions on this forum due to that card and there have been some fun moments of discovery with my system scattered amongst the pain and anguish.
We must all know now though that AGP is finally dead, and the X1950XT I think is it's slightly out of tune swan song. I can be re-assured though that I will be able to tell the grandkids with pride about an ancient socket called AGP that was really the birth of 3d accelerated graphics forefather of all their holographic VR and that I, at one time, had the most powerful of them all!
But anyway all bullcrap aside, Harv, If you can find my very first posts about this card, (I think they may be around sheet 11-13 perhaps?) one of the things I go on about is the fact that this card really is overkill for the vast majority of AGP systems out there. Although it would play all my old games beautifully, my 3.2ghz P4 (at 3.44) didn't tax it fully, and I couldn't run Dirt (which I really wanted to play!) because the cpu was so limiting. I ended up moving to a Core 2 system with an AGP card - think about how silly that sounds!
If you can afford to take the hit in one go, my advice would be go PCIE. You could get the Gecube, then get an ASrock board like me, then get your core 2, ram, then G/c and a new mobo, but it's a lot of fannying around and will cost more in the long run, even if you are selling your old bits.

 

hmm: http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...l=4&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2

Looks like he's playing it pretty well...

responding to what sam said about the textures, I get the same thing. But, that was only when I played the beta for the first time, now it seams to be ok. No more texture loading problems.

 

So, I thought I'd take Waymon up on his 'Max O/C' challenge. My cpu is a couple of mhz off it's fsb limit at 300 = 2.11ghz. As the RAM is effectively underclocked I tightened the timings from 4-4-4-12 to 3-3-3-11, and set the Gecube to 735/855: Here goes!



Well that made a difference! I reckon there's a bit left in the g/c, maybe 740/870, so I think I could hit 6000, only 18 points away. I might enter it into a 'Fastest AGP Rig' comp!

 

Wow! Thats a pretty nice score! You have a C2D which helped you out a lot I bet though. I can run my gecube max a 702/846 stable. When I do the ATi Tool's "scan for artifacts" I get some after about 5 or 6 minutes with the mem at 855.

Btw, I have kingston value ram pc3200. Will it really make a difference if I oce that? Also, how would I? I've never thought about over clocking the ram, never thought it would make that much of a difference. I do understand the timings and stuff though, just not to sure how to tweak it.

Also, macerm, how did you get that graph in ATi Tool?

 

Nice score! That's definitely the fastest AGP system I've seen.

 

I updated the p.35 chart with Mike's numbers. We are short a few RAM numbers.

I agree with you Sam, Abuzar shouldn't be pushing your numbers with a $90 card versus your $670 card. I looked up fill rates, I get 6900 on the 1900gt versus 10400 on the 1900xt.

Some of the charts are showing 10400 for the x1950xtx, and I know gecube isn't an xtx - it's an xt - but I have a feeling it is up around 10000 also.

 

I'd be surprised if the 1950XT-X has the same fill rate as my card, it's a good 30% faster. As for the X1950XT I'm not sure.

 

Well at least my CPU score kicks all your asses. *sigh* I guess you can't have it all. Although I want to see what 2 GB more of RAM will do to my system. That is if I every find some pretty good but cheap ram. I can't pay 110 for the same kind of RAM I already have, too expensive.

 

Sam, I was talking about the gecube x1950xt. If you're saying your x1900xt at 10400 fill is about 30% faster than the gecube x1950xt, then that would put the gecube at about 7000 fill rate, or about the same as the x1900gt that abuzar has. But my x850xtpe with 256mb is rated at 8300 fill. However, everything I have read (not only that - look at the 3dmark scores of Travis and Ray which are about double mine - and their cpus are the same as mine) points me in the direction of believing that the gecube card is significantly more powerful than my x850xtpe.

Would you say it is because of things other than raw fill - ie shader pipelines, etc. Or is it perhaps true that the x1950xt gecube is indeed a 10000 fill card, more or less the same as your card?

Look at Mike's (maccerm) numbers with the gecube? Could he be at virtually 6000 with a graphics solution 30% slower than your card, Sam? I doubt it! It would appear to me that the only thing holding him back is the pci-e interface versus the antiquated agp interface. How do the two cpus compare, yours and his - (see the chart above.)

Mike, (maccerm) you are indeed flying, dude! For a slightly out of tune agp swan song, it sounds to me just like Paul Potts singing opera! What's your cooling solution - your gecube barely hits 55, and Travis with the tec is at 70. That extra 15 degrees has to give you a lot of extra overclocking headroom.

Ray, with your water cooling, you're getting 702/846, why is Mike able to push his to 735/855?

Also, Mike, I do remember your earlier posts about being cpu bound. I have the same p4 3.2 that you had.

So guys, that brings me back to my new idea, stimulated by Abuzar's cheap x1900gt cards on ebay.

(Sam I do hear you about having to be careful about bad ebay products. I think I am a little safer with a graphics card, since it is a complete subsystem that really should not pollute the other parts of the computer even if it turns out bad. As long as they will let me send it back if it is DOA, I think I am comfortable with that.)

Guys, if I were to pick up the ASrock mobo, and the x1900gt pci-e card, (fill about 6900 - I think about 30% less than gecube) I could move my p4 over and my ddr400, and I would be in it for less than $200, versus the gecube and new psu for about $400. I would be on a faster interface than agp. What kind of performance does everybody think I would get versus Ray and Travis at about 4400 3dmark6 (again if I put a x1900gt pci-e card on an ASrock mobo and kept my p4)