Gigabyte's Radeon HD 4650: Are AGP Graphics Still Good Enough?

[cleeve]

Gigabyte's new Radeon HD 4650-based R465D2-1GI arrives on the scene, hopefully bringing playable frame rates to old AGP rigs long-forgotten by their gaming owners. We pair the card up to an Athlon X2 3800+ to see if AGP is still viable for budget buyers.

Gigabyte's Radeon HD 4650: Are AGP Graphics Still Good Enough? : Read more

 

[amdfangirl]

Don't they have an AGP HD 4670?

 

[drealar]

*Raise up hand*
I'm still using an AGP HD 2600XT .
Good to see that Gigabyte and actually Sapphire too coming up with another card for AGP. But frankly, we (most AGP users in my neighborhood ) are keeping our dollars for now since upgrading to a new system is the most likely option in 2010.

Another thing is, from the benchmarks, it got me worried if I ever upgrade my GPU since most of the result shows CPU bottleneck. If these are the result for a dual core Athlon, then it must be worse for my single core P4 HT

Oh BTW, are you reading the power consumption correctly?
"Even the Radeon HD 3850 and its GDDR3 memory peak at a mere 7 W more than the PCIe Radeon HD 4650 under load."
194 - 178 = 16W. So either the graph is wrong or you mis calculated.

 

[zinabas]

[citation][nom]amdfangirl[/nom]Don't they have an AGP HD 4670?[/citation]

a quick search for "agp 4670" on newegg gave me http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161284 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131161 (Core clock: 750 mhz, 1gb ddr3)

I own a pcie version of it and I really think before part 2 of this article goes up you should acquire one.

 

[rambo117]

[citation][nom]amdfangirl[/nom]Don't they have an AGP HD 4670?[/citation]

yah, i just saw that on the egg today. Must have just come out.
i liked the article btw. ouch at the performance numbers though xD

 

[zinabas]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131161

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161284

 

[zinabas]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161284
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131161

links aren't working

 

[rambo117]

yah, this is the one i saw: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161284

looks pretty nifty. iceq FTW!

 

[eddieroolz]

AGP is like Windows XP, it just never dies

Anyways, it's interesting to read something about legacy ports for a change. I never even figured out how to work with computer hardware when AGP was around, so I never got to mess around with it.

 

[one-shot]

Most of these benchmarks seem to show a CPU limitation across the board. I owned that same CPU, but used a PCI-E 7900GS with it at the time. I think if the CPU limitation was eliminated, we would see a better overall comparison. Also, if there is an AGP 4670, it would be beneficial to older machines to see the benefits of that GPU. It might show the two cards being equal due to the CPU limitation we're encountering.

 

[masterjaw]

I don't think there are lots of people out there who would still hold on to their AGP slots when PCI-e cards are becoming so cheaper and the performance is way better. Even doing a low-end system upgrade would still kick older system's ass all the way to the north pole. But still, another option for those who can't get over the AGPs. They must've been clearing up some old stocks.

 

[cinergy]

"the Radeon HD 4650 does have a few things going for it compared to the Radeon HD 3850, such as more conservative power requirements, two times the texture units, and DirectX 10.1 compatibility."

HD3850 has DX10.1

 

[Guest]

And I thought my rig was on it's last legs...was very much considering upgrading to another graphics card to replace my x1950pro, but I think I might just bite the bullet and get a whole new rig, considering I'm using a motherboard from 2004. It got me through university and a design degree, so it's all good.

 

[danbfree]

You just GOTTA get a faster processor... Or at least overclock it to the max! My 3800+ ran at 2.5 GHz vs. 2.0 for a full 25% overclock using bus speed. That alone makes it comparable to a 5200+ is what Everest told my I believe.

 

[JonnyDough]

[citation][nom]masterjaw[/nom]I don't think there are lots of people out there who would still hold on to their AGP slots when PCI-e cards are becoming so cheaper and the performance is way better. Even doing a low-end system upgrade would still kick older system's ass all the way to the north pole. But still, another option for those who can't get over the AGPs. They must've been clearing up some old stocks.[/citation]

I agree. They probably had some AGP boards PCB sitting around. I for one would never buy a $100 card to go in a motherboard that could pop a cap at any time. I'd rather go without gaming for a bit and upgrade my system. A new motherboard with PCI-E is $50.

 

[marcos669]

This article has no sense, with this processor there is a huge botleneck, and the results are not valid.

Oterwhise, i have a Sapphire 3850 AGP with an Amd Athlon 64 x2 5200(brisbane) and 2gb ddr2-800 memory, and i can play Crysis on high setting, in fact i can play nearly all games setting to maximum(including AA and AF) at 1280x960.

There are some benchmarks made by me, the first link is in spanish, and in it i compare my old pentium 4 with the new athlon 5200+ and there is a huge diference with the same 3850 AGP videocard.

http://foro.noticias3d.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=292090

http://optimitza.cat/benchmarks/laptops

 

[youssef 2010]

I think you should try the HIS radeon 4670 in part 2 of this article to see if it can best the 3850 or not

 

[Gryphyn]

I don't get why they talk about a huge processor bottleneck, but then say 1) they weren't worried about overclocking, and 2) an overclocked video card might help. Seems backwards to me.

When I was running my Socket 939 Opteron 170 (Stock 2.0 Ghz), it bottlenecked my 8800 GTS 640 SC terribly. Overclocking it 35% to 2.7 Ghz eliminated that. As far as speeds go, the Opty 170 is similar to the X2 3800 used here.

I think the writers need to reexamine their conclusion a bit.

 

[admiral_grinder]

It would be nice to see these new ones in low profile. There is a bunch of old compaq/hp/dell p4 desktops that are hitting the used/referb market that make great HTPC. I have a EVO 50 (p4 2ghz) but it has low profile agp.

 

[abnderby]

I had a dual xeon AGP up until 1 1/2 years ago with an HD 2600. It ran everything I wanted (not maxed) but I was not hampered by CPU bottleneck. I cannot recall how many times I wrote in for Tom's to use their dual xeon and opteron boards in these articles. They do have them, and many users out there bought them when all of these dual core systems came out because of price.

Even though I am now on PCI-E it would be nice if the testers would utilize there workstation class systems in their gaming card reviews. They obviously do not know anything about eBay nor all of the dual xeon/opteron systems for sale very cheap.

Yeah they may not be the fancy abit/gigabyte boards, nor are they dual core etc... But dual processor 8GB DDR/DDR2 gives a lot of bang for the buck.

Both system below ran vista without a hitch. Only reason I went to the newer board was 64-Bit and 8GB of memory. Now I run 64-Bit Vista soon to be Windows 7 64-Bit. Plenty of horse power to do everything i need to do.

But as usual Tom's and other sites do not give the effort to bring out the workstations in their comparisons. What a shame, because I have seen both of these boards used by this and other sites for use in HDD controller tests. So it is not like that do not have them.

Come on Tom's do some real world computers tests.

Do you need a Senior QA Engineer to help you out??

If so call at (310) 938-3506 and wrirte at abnderby@yahoo.com

My current gaming rig (getting ready for HD 4850X2) is as follows:

Intel SE7525RP2 with 2 3.6 GHz Xeon 800FSB w/2MB L2
8GB DDR2 ECC
HD 3870 512MB
RAID 10 with 6 320GB 7200 RPM SATA drives
SB XFI
2 18" Dell flat panels at 1280 x 1024

Old system
Intel SE7505VB2 with 2 Xeons 3.2GHz w/1MB L2
4GB DDR ECC
AGP HD 2600 512 MB
RAID 5 6 drive 320GB SATA
SB Audigy 2 ZS

 

[esquire468]

We will answer these questions and more in the second part of this series, so stay tuned.

Well, I hope there actually is a part two, unlike the prior article on the AGP HD 3850:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ati-agp-3850-agp,1939.html

 

[abnderby]

One other note on performance testing being done.

Has anyone ever noticed how clean the systems are? Of course I know being a tester you want and need clean systems. But then there is the real world scenario that we users fall into. That have fully loaded systems running the games also.

How about running systems just as you do at home. With office, adobe and many other applications with all of the updates and patches. Give some real world system statistics. In other words what can these systems really do when run as a user would have them filled up.

That makes a huge difference in the numbers when doing any kind of benchmark. Personally I use a system drive, a data drive and a backup drive on my system. All that I set up for anyone is always same configuration. So that I can reinstall OS clean without losing data. Which helps in benching the system.

But a system drive that has everything on it will bring the numbers down.

Just a thought.

Duane

 

[KyleSTL]

[citation][nom]marcos669[/nom]This article has no sense, with this processor there is a huge botleneck, and the results are not valid.[/citation]
RTFA

But with a faster processor helping improve performance, perhaps an overclocked Radeon HD 4650 could serve up more attractive numbers in today's games. We will answer these questions and more in the second part of this series, so stay tuned

 

[socrates047]

like others have stated before me, this HAS to be done again using a nice overclock on the Athlon. Overclocking is a very viable option for older systems (if it hasn't been done already).

 

[10tacle]

I still have a third gaming system, which is AGP, and use it to play older games like HL2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and other older DX8/9 games that Vista just doesn't like. It's a P4 Northwood 3.06Ghz HT overclocked to 3.3GHz with 2GB Rambus PC1066 memory and a BFG 7800GS AGP card. That rig lasted for many gaming years before making the jump to C2D/PCIe.

But, as this article shows, it is time to put AGP out to a well deserved retirement pasture. The technology is just too far behind today's games and even ones a year or two old. But, I'm keeping my rig until it dies.