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

[razor512]

toms hardware should have used their other socket 939 processors

they should use the fastest socket 939 CPU and overclock it, then test the game

 

[razor512]

i wish they could add a edit feature for comments

with a good overclocking, many socket 939 CPU's can get a cpu score of over 3000 points in 3d mark 06

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]false_dmitry_ii[/nom]Wait, one of the reasons to shift to PCIe was to give more power to the cards? Why does my graphics card have this power plug on it then?[/citation]

because some cards need more than PCIe can supply.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]danbfree[/nom]You just GOTTA get a faster processor... Or at least overclock it to the max! [/citation]

Part 2 fellas, part 2! it's already written and in the content management system.

The same games, but this time with an Athlon64 X2 overclocked to 2.6 GHz.

BIG difference in most of the games.

Althoguh I regret to say, we weren't notified about the AGP 4670 until AFTER the article was completed. So no 4670 numbers in there.

 

[DjEaZy]

... and this card you can use for video editing too... with such app's like cyberlink PowerDirector 7...

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]VChuck[/nom]Yeah it's real nice ATI still catering to people with legacy agp and all ,would have been nice to see how how well it would do with a single core P-4 3.4 [/citation]

Well, this is a game-centric piece, and we've already showed that suingle-core CPUs are no longer up to snuff when it comes to gaming.

For movies and TV... well, I can tell you straight up: a 3.4 GHz P4 will easily handle Blu-ray/DVD playback as long as you have a graphics card that can accelerate video playback. In our last AGP article a year ago, even a 1.8 GHz single core sempron could pull it off without too much hassle. you just need a Radeon 2600/3600 or better, or a GeForce 8600/9500 or better.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]decept[/nom]As far as I know the 4650 is far superior to the 3850 in terms of video quality (for movies) and offload a lot of processing from the cpu.[/citation]

Not really. The 3850 and 4650 will both perform about equally well when playing back video.

I believe the 4000 series has soem new checkbox features that will only excite hardcore folks with an HDMI amplifier, like 8-channel LPCM over HDMI. If memory serves the 3000 series doesn't have that.

But as far as playback acceleration, video quality, and CPU utilization... you're probably not going to see a difference.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]mapesdhs[/nom]And btw, why no X1950Pro AGP included in the article? [/citation]

I thought about it, but I figured showing the X700, 4650 and 3850 was a pretty good spectrum of what you could expect, especially since all the benches were CPU limited anyway.

 

[cleeve]

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

They are absolutely valid, because most of the AGP systems out there have older, slower processors.

What would make the article invalid would be to pair an unrealistically fast processor to the card and say "AGP Rules!", leading folks with older systems to believe that a card upgrade is the key to ultrafast performance. it isn't.

As far as overclocked performance, that's a real-world alternative, and I address it in part 2.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]esquire468[/nom]Well, I hope there actually is a part two, unlike the prior article on the AGP HD 3850:http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,1939.html[/citation]

Actually, thie article *IS* the part 2... it just happened so long ago, I decided not to call it part 2.

But Part 3 (what we're going to call the new part 2) is now gettiong prepped for publishing.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]abnderby[/nom]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...

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

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


Dude, I'm not writing an AGP upgrade article for the four people on earth who use dual Xeons in an old AGP gaming rig.

There are hundreds of Athlon64 X2 AGP rigs for every Xeon out there, maybe a few thousand.

I appreciate your affinity for workstations, but honestly, what were you thinking? And then acting sarcastic on top of it? Doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

[aihyah]

just another thing killing pc gaming. somethings wrong when a video card with a higher number performs worse than the older model.

 

[aihyah]

just another thing killing pc gaming. you know somethings wrong when something named with a higher number gets its ass kicked by the older model with a lower name.

 

[mapesdhs]

caamsa writes:
> I ran an AM2 6000+ Windsor in it as well. It worked but the bios did not recognize
> the processor. ...

Oh!! That's good news. I guess it's just luck that it works, probably varies from
one board to another.


> ... It did recognize the 5600+. ...

Strange, I wonder why Asrock doesn't have it listed as a supported CPU?


> ... Then I got the expansion card ...

How much did the expansion card cost?


> ... My wife still has the board with the AM2 5600+ and a 9600GT.

Prior to switching mbds, I'd been hoping NVIDIA would release an 8800 AGP, but alas
they did not. Pity, would have been nice.


> I certainly saved a lot of money upgrading with that board.

The main thing I learned is that one can get excellent results without buying
expensive motherboards. I kept reading site reviews of PCIe X1950 cards, on
mbds costing $150+, yet I was getting better results with the AGP version on
a mbd that cost 60% less.

Mind you, it does seem like Asrock is one of the few companies that makes mbds
of this kind. Many review sites expressed surprise that they'd made anything at
all which paired AM2 with AGP, but it was perfect for me (I also wanted lots of
PCI slots).


To the article author, can you *please* add X1950Pro AGP 512MB results to the
tables? Or at least include it in Part 2?

Ian.

 

[Guest]

While snagging my lunch i enjoyed reading this article. I'd like to see the followup with a faster processor. AGP Could go along just fine, its that PCI-e is the new standard since years. Was overclocking the CPU not an option?

 

[hixbot]

Please review HTPC performance. DXVA HD playback on old CPUs, also we need to know about HDMI sound. Can we get HD sound out of this AGP card?!
This is the first AGP card to offer so many HTPC features, but we're not sure they work!

 

[bunz_of_steel]

Good article and coverage Don Woligroski. I'm interested in seeing perf with higher cpu. I use AMD 4600 dual core and kick alota but w/bf2. Bring on Part2!

 

[50crckt51]

Lol, as this is being written on a rig with a Sapphire Radeon 9600 pro. I think it is a safe bet that a number of us out here are still fans of the AGP bus.

 

[KyleSTL]

KyleSTL, the thing is, anyone contemplating buying a card like this, who has an
older CPU like a 3000+, is bound to also consider getting a better CPU at the same
time

I totally disagree, the VAST majority of AGP systems still around are Socket A, 754, and 478. You are a very small minority that owns an Asrock board that supports AM2 and AM2+ and AGP (they also made some AGP boards for Socket 775 and 939). I feel that Don writes articles for the majority of readers, not the minority. But then again, a second article will follow up to delve into your situation. While you would like the article to give you more information about your situation, cleeve wrote the article for a different (and more representative) sample. I should know, I have a S478 board for my primary system (the least powerful computer in my house, go figure).

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]KyleSTL[/nom]I totally disagree, the VAST majority of AGP systems still around are Socket A, 754, and 478. You are a very small minority that owns an Asrock board that supports AM2 and AM2+ and AGP (they also made some AGP boards for Socket 775 and 939). I feel that Don writes articles for the majority of readers, not the minority. But then again, a second article will follow up to delve into your situation. While you would like the article to give you more information about your situation, cleeve wrote the article for a different (and more representative) sample. I should know, I have a S478 board for my primary system (the least powerful computer in my house, go figure).[/citation]

I have to agree with kyle here. Although most AGP systems will be older single core CPUs, I passed them by because new games will require at least a dual core for decent performance; even the dual-core 3800+ totally bottlenecked our testing.

The the follow up, I do use the AM2 daughterboard for the 939dual-SATA2, but not because I wanted to - frankly, I would have preferred to stick with Socket 939 - but I wanted to show what a slightly faster CPU could do and I couldn't find a 939 4200+ or better to overclock.

So yes, the follow up will use an AM2 4200+ overclocked to 5000+ specs (2.6 GHz). having said that, it probably performs right on par with a socket 939 X2 at 2.6 GHz; thile the memory changes to DDR2, the latency is much worse that DDR, so this should balance out in the end.

 

[lien]

Its worth it for me to get a 4650 agp because of the low power requirement.
My nephews can do their racing games on the agp backup rig, (my system is off limits)
Sure there is a CPU bottleneck issue, so simply up the resolution/quality levels,.. & all is good.
Yep, interested in part 2,

 

[airborne11b]

Considering that you can build sub- $600 systems with PCI-E, I don't see the point of AGP anymore. PCI-E has been pretty standard now for the past 3 years.

And there are no "CPU Bottle necks" here. Most new games (including Crysis)are 85% GPU bound. you can take a very cheap processor, put in 4GB (2x 2gb) of DDR2 ram, and put in 2 GTX 275's in SLI, and Crysis will run at max settings at 1920 x 1080 resolution over 30 FPS. Granted thats about $400 worth of GPUs, but considering that Crysis is top of the line when it comes to graphics, that's not bad considering a build like that would be >$999. Even less if you strip an old system for basic parts.
IMO we're in a great time for PC gaming. You can play all the newest games on High-Def resolutions and max settings for less than $900. Doesn't get much better then that imo.

 

[Guest]

Something to try is like a faster 939 processor like a 4800+ or maybe do an fx57 for the fast single core as well as the fast dual core 4800 or the dual core fx, 62 or whatever it was...

 

[caamsa]

mapesdhs the expansion board for that mb was around 35-40 bucks including shipping. They still sell the thing at ewiz.com.

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=AM2CPUBRD

 

[Mach5Motorsport]

[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]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.[/citation]

Congrats to Gigabyte for showing that the AGP format isn't dead. Pretty much exposes once and for all that PCIe was just an excuse to force upgrades on users.