I got a New X1950XT, have some questions

[Lord Banshee]

Well my PowerColor X1950XT 512MB (625/800) came on friday and so far works as it should . I am using the newest 7.5 drivers from ATI, not sure why every one complains about the control panel, seems fine to me. But overall not sure if i am 100% happy.

I am at least 50% happy as under WinXP it works great as a FireGL 7350 now the other 50% is my vista and gaming that i am not too sure about. I haven't done too much testing but CoH seemed to have a nice increase in performance maybe even doubled my 7800GT score lol. But Age of Empires 3 i was hopping for a big change but not so much. Max FPS doubled, min FPS stayed the same and only received 5-10 fps for AVG FPS... I need to test this so more

But my question are the following:

1) How hot can these 580 get? my idle tep is 45*C-48*C and my load temp has been as high as 97*C using ATITool. Ouch that a good 15*C over my 7800GT with VF900-CU at lowest speed. I am going to play with some fans today to see what i can do as my heatsink is "very very" close to video card. But once no 3D is on screen temps drop pretty quick maybe 10 secs to get to 75*C form 97*C.

2) Talking about ATITool, it seems at stock 3D Clocks i see yellow dots on the artifact scan, but it claims no errors and i even have the artifact error slider all the way to the left. I checked their website and it states some yellow dots do appear due to ATI "optimizations" but are not big enough to cause an error thus does not shown in any real application. Makes me wonder i never saw these yellow dots on my Nvidia card, how good is ATI's Image Quality? Also to note, the little amount of 3Ding i have done since i got the card i have not noticed any artifacts in them so this is good. And another note which makes me wonder if this is a problem with the card, if i under clock the mem to 800->775 these yellow dots go away during the artifact scanning... Hmmmm... But another not when i stop the artifact scanning and just show the 3D view i do not see the dots at stock clocks... So whats the deal?

I think that is all for now

Thanks

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
Well my PowerColor X1950XT 512MB (625/800) came on friday and so far works as it should . I am using the newest 7.5 drivers from ATI, not sure why every one complains about the control panel, seems fine to me. But overall not sure if i am 100% happy.

I am at least 50% happy as under WinXP it works great as a FireGL 7350 now the other 50% is my vista and gaming that i am not too sure about. I haven't done too much testing but CoH seemed to have a nice increase in performance maybe even doubled my 7800GT score lol. But Age of Empires 3 i was hopping for a big change but not so much. Max FPS doubled, min FPS stayed the same and only received 5-10 fps for AVG FPS... I need to test this so more

But my question are the following:

1) How hot can these 580 get? my idle tep is 45*C-48*C and my load temp has been as high as 97*C using ATITool. Ouch that a good 15*C over my 7800GT with VF900-CU at lowest speed. I am going to play with some fans today to see what i can do as my heatsink is "very very" close to video card. But once no 3D is on screen temps drop pretty quick maybe 10 secs to get to 75*C form 97*C.

2) Talking about ATITool, it seems at stock 3D Clocks i see yellow dots on the artifact scan, but it claims no errors and i even have the artifact error slider all the way to the left. I checked their website and it states some yellow dots do appear due to ATI "optimizations" but are not big enough to cause an error thus does not shown in any real application. Makes me wonder i never saw these yellow dots on my Nvidia card, how good is ATI's Image Quality? Also to note, the little amount of 3Ding i have done since i got the card i have not noticed any artifacts in them so this is good. And another note which makes me wonder if this is a problem with the card, if i under clock the mem to 800->775 these yellow dots go away during the artifact scanning... Hmmmm... But another not when i stop the artifact scanning and just show the 3D view i do not see the dots at stock clocks... So whats the deal?

I think that is all for now

Thanks

If possible buy an after-market cooler such as the Accellero II/Zalman. They are cheap enough and your GPU warrants the cooler

You can then turn those fans up like around 100% and they are much more quite then the stock and perform better.

 

[Lord Banshee]

ZStream,

My PowerColor X1950XT comes stock with a Accelero X2. But about the Zalman, not sure if you used a VF900 but at 100% it is very load. At least twice as loud as anything else in my system . But if i was getting the stock cooler i wouldn't last long in my system... I like them quiet.

Here is the link to my video card if it helps:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814131047
and
http://www.powercolor.com/Glob...atures.asp?ProductID=3

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
ZStream,

My PowerColor X1950XT comes stock with a Accelero X2. But about the Zalman, not sure if you used a VF900 but at 100% it is very load. At least twice as loud as anything else in my system . But if i was getting the stock cooler i wouldn't last long in my system... I like them quiet.

Here is the link to my video card if it helps:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814131047
and
http://www.powercolor.com/Glob...atures.asp?ProductID=3

Just use ATITOOL to turn the fan at 90% all the time. It is quite enough to run at that speed.

 

[Munky]

The accelero is quiet even at 100% speed, and 97C is a hot temp even for a x1950xt. Turn the fan to 100% and see if you can get the temps down to 90C or less. Also, note that Atitool stresses video cards more than actual 3d games. You can use Atitool to log your temps while you play a game.

 

[Lord Banshee]

Ok i think i can take care about the heat, thanks. I can not hear a difference in the fan at 100% is it really that silent, or do you think it isn't changing it's speed?

But what about the yellow dots? After running it for five seconds as "artifact scanning" at lowest slider it says "Delta of 92125 in 779 pixel (118.26 avg). No errors for 00:05,12 sec" and this is at any temp.

How normal is this?

 

[Lord Banshee]

Grr just was playing a AOE3 and after 30-45 min boom BSOD, vista says cause by video hardware .... Not sure i like being on the RED side

Also would you disable Catalyst A.I. in the control panel?

And another is there anyway to enable triple buffering in Direct3D with only ATI drivers?

 

[Lord Banshee]

Temps are much better now, setup a nice "real" front 120mm intake for my sonata, used two cut hole PCI covers for where the video card needs air and put the fan at 100% duty cycle. In the end it seem the fresh are from the intake and from the rear of the case though PCI slots helped a lot.

Temps now max out a 87*C with 30 minutes of artifact scanning with ATITools so thats a nice 10*C drop.

Trippe buffering problem is solved by using DX Overrider v1.3, still do not understand how Nvidia can have this option in its control panel, but ATI lacks the feature for DirectX. Blah

Still get yellow dots on artifact scanning but still do not see any in real world apps such as CAD and games, so I'll let this issues be for now.

So what do you guys with X1900XTX use for setting in the control panel?

 

[twjr]

I was thinking of getting an Powercolor X1950xt 256mb (625/1800) and was wondering how these would compare to the 512mb version and generally to other cards?

 

[Zstream]

Yes disable cat AI.

 

[Lord Banshee]

twjr,
if you are funning at high res such 1920x1200 512MB suppose to be a lot smother. Also if you want to run the highest quality textures in some games you really need 512MB or more to not receive a huge decrease in performance.

Zstream,
Thanks ZStream

 

[twjr]

I'll be running at 1600x1200 max. So will it be a disadvantage here? Unfortunately for me In New Zealand the cheapest price on an X1950xt 512 is about the same price as an X1950xtx which is about the same price as a 2900xt which is about the same price as an 8800gts 640. At which point this is about 2-3 times as much as I had wanted to spend on a graphics card. I had really wanted to stay in the X1950xt price range, where it seems to be the best value, around $280AU or $230US. For this sort of price i could get a 7900gt 256 for $300AU and I don't think these perform quite as well.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

i'm using a vf900 on my upside down mounted x1900xt in lian li case and it idles @ 39C and loads at 60C... AMD 4800+ idles @ 34C loads @ 40C. Game used: cs: source for 2 hours

 

[Lord Banshee]

twjr,

if the 512 is that much more stick with a 256 or get a 8800GTS

LOUISSSSS, did i forget an "S" lol

Yeah my gaming load is around mid to upper 60's now, maybe lower 70's. Thats great temps for a VF900 what speed do you have it at?

*edit* never mind make that low 80's during gaming of AOE3 16xAF HQ and AOE3 AA High, i believe it is 4x and HDR.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: twjr
I'll be running at 1600x1200 max. So will it be a disadvantage here? Unfortunately for me In New Zealand the cheapest price on an X1950xt 512 is about the same price as an X1950xtx which is about the same price as a 2900xt which is about the same price as an 8800gts 640. At which point this is about 2-3 times as much as I had wanted to spend on a graphics card. I had really wanted to stay in the X1950xt price range, where it seems to be the best value, around $280AU or $230US. For this sort of price i could get a 7900gt 256 for $300AU and I don't think these perform quite as well.

Unlike the 320mb 8800gts, the x1900xt 256mb does not suffer from a huge performance loss due to less video memory. In most cases you're geting 90% the performance for much less money.