AIW X1900 for $235

[t3h l337 n3wb]

AIW X1900

It's basically an underclocked X1900XT with a TV tuner. Performs at about the level of an X1800XT. Don't know how well it overclocks though.

 

[ModeEngage]

Can you use it in Crossfire mode?

 

[Ricochet]

That looks like a good deal.

 

[CrazyGamer]

Originally posted by: n30
Can you use it in Crossfire mode?

From what I understand it is not crossfire compatible.

 

[imported_dani]

I've found that it OCs very well. I run mine stable at 625/1200 but can reach 640/1225 without problems. I also have a 512MB X1800XT and the X1900 AIW benchmarks higher. I highly recomend the x1900 AIW at this price. Get a Zalman v700 for if you plan on OCing it.

 

[Esquire]

comes with photoshop element and premiere elements so thats sweet

 

[Mursilis]

Nice price - thanks to the OP.

 

[slashbinslashbash]

Thanks for that info dani. I've been wanting to O/C my X1900 AIW but I have yet to buy a new cooler for it. Part of the problem is that the AIW is such a long card that I put it into the second x16 slot on my motherboard in order to get it out of the way of my hard drives. (No problems doing this BTW on the A8R32-MVP.) If I put a nw cooler on it, I will have to move it to the first slot to avoid interference with my PCI cards, but then I'll have to figure out a new arrangement for my hard drives.

I was thinking about getting an [link=[url="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16835186002"]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16835186002[/url]]Arctic Cooling Accelero X2[/link]. People seem to be using it for the X1900AIW, but some people said that it doesn't work with the X1800XL AIW, which (I think) uses the same PCB, so I guess it's somewhat of a gamble there.

 

[Sonikku]

HOT.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: dani
I've found that it OCs very well. I run mine stable at 625/1200 but can reach 640/1225 without problems. I also have a 512MB X1800XT and the X1900 AIW benchmarks higher. I highly recomend the x1900 AIW at this price. Get a Zalman v700 for if you plan on OCing it.

does the v700 work with it? I have the v900 and read that it wasn't compatible with some AIW cards...

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles

Originally posted by: dani
I've found that it OCs very well. I run mine stable at 625/1200 but can reach 640/1225 without problems. I also have a 512MB X1800XT and the X1900 AIW benchmarks higher. I highly recomend the x1900 AIW at this price. Get a Zalman v700 for if you plan on OCing it.

does the v700 work with it? I have the v900 and read that it wasn't compatible with some AIW cards...

I'm sure it probably does.

I think most companies list their product as not being compatible just to prevent them any headaches if its not, but a lot of them will still fit.

I'm planning to pick one of these up when I get my new computer before too long and plan to slap an NV5 Silencer on it since it looks like it'd be a great fit (better than the normal X1900XTs since it has 256MB of RAM). The tuner on this card is so small that there's no way it'd get in the way of either of the Zalman coolers.

 

[imported_dani]

Yeah the Zalman v700 works on it. I have installed it personally on mine so I can tell you for 100% sure that there is no problem with it. Although the tuner is small, that is the reason for the tuner lag when changing stations. The older and larger tuners(ala X800XT AIW) did not have this problem and chang stations almost instantly. There is a difference with the smaller and larger tuners but I couldn't tell you the exact what else. Maybe someone can enlighten us..........

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: dani
Yeah the Zalman v700 works on it. I have installed it personally on mine so I can tell you for 100% sure that there is no problem with it. Although the tuner is small, that is the reason for the tuner lag when changing stations. The older and larger tuners(ala X800XT AIW) did not have this problem and chang stations almost instantly. There is a difference with the smaller and larger tuners but I couldn't tell you the exact what else. Maybe someone can enlighten us..........

Do you have the X1900 or X1800 AIW card? I read a review that mentioned about the channel lag/delay, and they said the X1800 had it and the X1900 doesn't as they changed the tuner on it to a different one.

 

[imported_dani]

Originally posted by: darkswordsman17

Originally posted by: dani
Yeah the Zalman v700 works on it. I have installed it personally on mine so I can tell you for 100% sure that there is no problem with it. Although the tuner is small, that is the reason for the tuner lag when changing stations. The older and larger tuners(ala X800XT AIW) did not have this problem and chang stations almost instantly. There is a difference with the smaller and larger tuners but I couldn't tell you the exact what else. Maybe someone can enlighten us..........

Do you have the X1900 or X1800 AIW card? I read a review that mentioned about the channel lag/delay, and they said the X1800 had it and the X1900 doesn't as they changed the tuner on it to a different one.

I have the X900 AIW and it definately has the lag. I've been using my X1800XT with a seperate PCI tuner because I couldn't deal with it. If you change your stations slowly and you have relative patience then it isn't that bad.....

 

[thedarkwolf]

How do these compare to the x1900GTs with their 12 pipes in gaming?

 

[slashbinslashbash]

Originally posted by: thedarkwolf
How do these compare to the x1900GTs with their 12 pipes in gaming?

From what I can tell, it's really kind of a toss-up. The GT is clocked at 575MHz while the AIW is clocked at 500 - a 15% difference; while the AIW has 16 pipes (a 25% difference). So as far as raw computing goes, the AIW wins. But the GT has faster clocked memory (1200MHz vs 960MHz) which I think is enough of a difference to tip the balance in favor of the GT in most cases, especially with AA enabled. However, there may be particular games/scenarios (e.g. no AA) which are more shader intensive than bandwidth intensive, and in those games I'd expect the AIW to win.

The use of AntiAliasing is quite a bandwidth burden, and tends to bring the AIW down substantially in benchmarks. In many games the AIW is capable of keeping up with the X1800XT or even the X1900XT with AA disabled, but turning on AA drops the AIW framerate by 30% or more compared to the others. E.g. in F.E.A.R. at 1600x1200, the X1900 AIW gets 52FPS vs. 50FPS for the X1800XT with AA disabled, but enabling AA drops the AIW to 25FPS but the X1800XT gets 39FPS. source

I couldn't find any benchmarks that showed the same comparisons (AA vs non-AA) with the GT, but in the reviews that I did find, the GT seemed to come close to the X1800XT in many games with 4xAA enabled.

Of course, overclocking the AIW to equivalent/higher speeds, as many people seem to have done successfully (even to X1900XT speeds), would put it over the GT.

 

[thedarkwolf]

Haven't found much about its overclocking ability other then this. Does make it tempting. I think I would be happy if the core and memory just overclocked to x1900GT speeds. That should make it plenty speedy for me.

 

[vtohthree]

Oh how badly I want this!!!! Just bought new monitor..on tight budget..can't...=[

thanks OP..

 

[slashbinslashbash]

Just FYI, I bought a Zalman VF700-AlCu for $25 at Fry's, and my AIW is now running at 605 core, 640 memory (1280 DDR). That's up from the default of 500 core, 480 memory (960 DDR) -- a 21% increase in core freq, and 33% for memory. Compared to the X1900XT, I am 3.2% slower in core (605 vs 625) and 12% slower on the RAM (640 vs 725).

This is just using ATITool's simple "find max core" and "find max memory" features, with no overvolting. The memory can go *slightly* higher, but the core seems stuck at 605 -- getting it any higher will cause a crash (not a system crash, just a video-card crash with a pop-up from the ATI driver saying that the card was reset). I don't really have much time to test it in games right now, as I'm going out of town this week and have to finish up on some work before I go. I will report back later with more info if I get it. I would also like to run some benchmarks with AA with the memory at stock speeds and overclocked speeds.

One thing that I forgot to do is try o/c'ing with the stock cooler. I would have liked to get a baseline of temps too. Under load, the GPU gets up to nearly 70 deg C. That seems kind of hot to me. If anyone else with an X1900 AIW could just fire up ATITool and tell me what their temps are, I'd appreciate it. N/M, it looks like GT and XT cores hit 90C easily with normal cooling, so I've got nothing to worry about

 

[Vallybally]

Wow great price at 2xx.. it's back up to 4xx on that link...great value at where it was, particularly if you can OC it (without cutting the life expectancy in half which I surmise most OCing does).

 

[Wiseguy69]

ZZF has it now for $244 in this thread.