ATI X1650 Based Cards - Not Good Choice For Older Dell Computers

[The Sparkster]

Hi Listers,


Avoid the ATI X1300 & X1600 series cards like the pox, especially if
you have an older Dell unit.


I purchased a new X1650 from eBay. The card is sweet, but when
installed in my Dimension 8100, the card won't post, hence no boot-up.
I've been through both ATI support and Visiontek support over
compatibility issues using these cards on with older Dell units. I
assume that Sapphire is the same because ATI support mentioned that
any X1300 or X1600 series cards, especially AGP based ones, will have
problems in certain older Dells.


Apparently, these series of cards will not work direct from the
manufacturer. ATI will modify the card, providing proof of purchase
and shipping both ways. Visiontek will either do a free swap with a
modified X1300 or a $40 upgrade to an X1600XT and your paid shipping
to Visiontek, Shipping is included on the return. The X1300 was
severly dismissed by the tech support person as a deficient card.
Visiontek does not modify the X1650 to run on older Dells. Its either
upgrade or downgrade. Visiontek even has a special rma page
http://visiontek.com/specialrma to perform this task. In either case,
both of the Visiontek replacements must be modified to run on my Dell.
The question that presents itself now is "Will this card run on other
newer PCs when I want to swap machines or resell it?"


My card is Visiontek, presented in an ATI box with a small "This is a
Visiontek Product" notice on the side. Therefore, I'm out $144 for
the card and shipping and down another $40 plus shipping to get the
upgrade to the X1600XT. This doesn't count the day of calls and the
additional two weeks of delay getting my two new flat screens online.


Regards,
Sparky

 

[Augustus]

Hi Listers,


Avoid the ATI X1300 & X1600 series cards like the pox, especially if
you have an older Dell unit.

I just upgraded my kid's Dell 8100 P4D 2.6Ghz from a 9800 Pro to a Diamond
X1650 Pro three days ago......works flawlessly and a vast improvement. HL2
Episode 1 framerates more than doubled and able to use FSAA and other
options now at 1152x864. So it's obviously not just a Dell 8100 issue.

 

[First of One]

The Dell 8100 line stretches back to the early Pentium III days, sporting
the i820 chipset and PC800 Rambus DRAM. For all we know those mobos may
require manual AGP voltage selection (via jumper or BIOS setting) between
3.3V and 1.5V.

Assuming The Sparkster is telling the truth, it will be interesting to see
what "modifications" ATi and Sapphire were prepared to do. I find it hard to
believe that someone in the RMA department at each company is hand-modifying
the cards with a soldering iron.

 

[The Sparkster]

Hi Augutus,

My 8100 was the top of the ine when I ordered it, it is a P4 1.4Ghz. I
cannot go to a faster processor because my mainboard will not support
it. So obviously, there seems to have been an issue with the older
8100s as opposed to yours.


Now I will get to some good stuff.

Dell states that their PCs are fully complant and that ATI was not.
her eis their quote from their forum site:

"Yeah, there are a lot of people who refuse to believe it, or think
we're "biased" when we say it, but a ton of ATi products have had
serious compatibility issues over the years (and not just with Dells).
The early AGP stuff didn't play well with AMD hardware (ironic now),
the early PCIe cards weren't actually in spec (and instead of fixing
it, ATi tried to get the spec changed so their cards would be "in
spec", and to this day their PCI cards are problematic. Not to mention
their drivers are generally worse than Nvidia's, although that
situation has evened out a lot more in recent years. "


Now here's where it gets funny, I've replied:

"I'm sorry to say but Dell sort of painted me into a corner. My family
has a bunch of Dells and several Thinkpads. This 8100 is a strong
family workhorse. I had a top of the line 8100 at the time. I did not
overload it so I have a 250W PSU with little load on it. HDD, DVD and
Video Card are in the 12V rail.

I wish Dell didn't use those proprietary PSUs. That's what caused me
to go ATI in the first place.

I looked for a nice Dual Output DVI video card. Most of them had
warnings about needing a 450W PSU, especially the nVidia based units.
The best I can do for my 8100 would have been a $70+ 420W PSU from
pcpower.

The ATI cards had a warning that a 300-350W PSU was needed, assuming
that the system was fully loaded. When I calculated up the wattage
needed to run the ATI cards, I was well within range.

The funny thing is that I'm replacing my nVidia GeForce4 card."


Then followed with:

"Well, now I am definately getting conflicting information.


1) ATI & Visiontek only have their modifications for older Dells, no
other brands. They state that the same cards work on newer Dells. This
would seem to indicate that something changed on the Dell side of the
house to become compliant.


2) Of the older Dell models in question, it was only certain models
that had problems. If Dell was consistent, ALL older Dells would have
failed not just certain models within their offerings. To me, this
would seem to indicate an issue with the mainboard or chipset that was
used on those models.


3) I was told that the newer X1600XT card, which I will be upgrading
to, along with my current X1650 card had numerous upgrades to them
over the past several years. If there was a problem, where this card
would fail on a multitude of PCs, that issue would have been
addressed. The X1600XT still has to be moified to work on older Dells,
and Dells alone.


4) Tom's hardware and several other sites rate the x1650 and other ATI
cards among the best EVER. If there was a compatibility issue, I'm
sure that would have come into consideration. Also, there would have
been postings from other PC holders experiencing problems with the
X1650 cards."


The problem is not with the ATI cards, it's with Dell. Dell are just
being jerks by denying that they had compatibility issues with the AGP
standard.

Regards,
Sparky

 

[Geronimo]

Hi Listers,


Avoid the ATI X1300 & X1600 series cards like the pox, especially if
you have an older Dell unit.


I purchased a new X1650 from eBay.

----snip-------
Nuf said... You probably bought a dud,