X800 GTO 256Mb or X1600 Pro 256Mb

[Chris]

My current specs are :-

Gigabyte 7DXR M/B
768Mb DDR RAM (EEC)
Athlon XP 2400+
Connect3D Radeon 9500 Pro

Yeah I know pretty dated and I'd love to upgrade the lot but I can't so
I'm looking for an AGP graphics card upgrade to play Half Life 2 :
Episode 1 on, basically HL2 ran ok with my current setup at 1024x768
max settings, but I did get some slow down and when lost coast came out
it wasn't capable of running it at any decent speed at all.

I've identified the following two cards that fit in my budget, but I am
really struggling to choose between them and havn't found any real
direct comparison for them on the web

1 - PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (AGP)
(£117.44)
2 - Sapphire X1600 Pro 256MB DDR2 AVIVO TV-Out/DVI (AGP) (£86.89)

What would you guys recommend between these two for HL2 Lost coast/Ep1
on my system? I tried a Geforce 6600GT on my system last year but had
real problems and found there was some incompatibility between my M/B
chipset and the card, so I'm sticking with ATI to be safe.

Any help is most appreciated.

Thanks

 

[SonofLaL]

My current specs are :-

Gigabyte 7DXR M/B
768Mb DDR RAM (EEC)
Athlon XP 2400+
Connect3D Radeon 9500 Pro

Yeah I know pretty dated and I'd love to upgrade the lot but I can't so
I'm looking for an AGP graphics card upgrade to play Half Life 2 :
Episode 1 on, basically HL2 ran ok with my current setup at 1024x768
max settings, but I did get some slow down and when lost coast came out
it wasn't capable of running it at any decent speed at all.

I've identified the following two cards that fit in my budget, but I am
really struggling to choose between them and havn't found any real
direct comparison for them on the web

1 - PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (AGP)
(£117.44)
2 - Sapphire X1600 Pro 256MB DDR2 AVIVO TV-Out/DVI (AGP) (£86.89)

What would you guys recommend between these two for HL2 Lost coast/Ep1
on my system? I tried a Geforce 6600GT on my system last year but had
real problems and found there was some incompatibility between my M/B
chipset and the card, so I'm sticking with ATI to be safe.

Any help is most appreciated.

Thanks

shame you want to stick with ati as a second hand 6800gt would have fitted
into your price range. only thing is that your cpu may hold back a more
powerful gfx card like the x800 or x1600 or even the 6800gt (if you could be
persuaded to try nVidia again). I only add the 6800gt cos i`m selling mine
as i`m swapping to PCI-e now with an x1800gto.

 

[JimL]

Hi Chris

I've just installed a Sapphire X1600 Pro 256mb into my ageing Asus
P4B533 motherboard as my 3 year old Radeon 9700 Pro expired last week.
I paid £90 for the X1600 Pro ( from SCAN in the UK ) and was amazed to
find that all the benchmarking scores with 3dmark03 and 05 had risen by
50%. Quake 4 now plays smoothly at 1280x1024 which my £300 9700 Pro (
about 3 years ago ! ) could not manage. Amazing value for money,
especially if you are stuck with an AGP slot only and are
unwilling/unable to 'upgrade' just yet. I have 2GB ram and a P4 3.2ghz
processor.
Hope this helps with your decision making process.

Jim

 

[Chris]

Thanks for your input guys, I don't have anything against nVidia its
just there seems to be a compatibility issue between my motherboard
chipset and newish nvidia cards, for all I know I'll have the same
problems with the newer ATI cards aswell (hope not though!).

The X1600 Pro is looking good at the moment as its dirt cheap and
supports some newer functionality, just a little concerned that some of
the specs on paper don't look as good as the X800 GTO, of course like
you said my CPU etc. is probably going to be a bottleneck so I might
not see any difference anyway.

If anyone has any X1600 Pro vs X800 GTO experience could they let me
know what they think.

Thanks

 

[Chris]

Also does anyone know if either of these cards has video in capability
for encoding from an external source?

Thanks

 

[DDC]

Also does anyone know if either of these cards has video in capability
for encoding from an external source?

Thanks

many video card are vivo and AIW capâble and therefore are joint with
a video-in option. you should try to read the spec from the web site
as we dont know what brand your reffering to.

 

[Chris]

I was referring to the two cards in my original post, the Sapphire
X1600 Pro and the PowerColor X800 GTO. I did check out the specs on
the respective web sites but neither of them mentioned anything about
video in capabilities although the X1600 Pro refers to AVIVO (I thought
the VIVO bit meant video-in video-out). None of the included cables
with either card appears to offer video in functionality so i'm just
going to assume they don't. It wasn't that important anyway, would
have been a nice bonus though.

Have decided to go for the Sapphire X1600 Pro, lets see how that
compares in my system to the 9500 Pro which has done a stellar job over
the last few years.

 

[DDC]

I was referring to the two cards in my original post, the Sapphire
X1600 Pro and the PowerColor X800 GTO. I did check out the specs on
the respective web sites but neither of them mentioned anything about
video in capabilities although the X1600 Pro refers to AVIVO (I thought
the VIVO bit meant video-in video-out). None of the included cables
with either card appears to offer video in functionality so i'm just
going to assume they don't. It wasn't that important anyway, would
have been a nice bonus though.

Have decided to go for the Sapphire X1600 Pro, lets see how that
compares in my system to the 9500 Pro which has done a stellar job over
the last few years.

it should have some cable and stuff included.
Once i bought a vivo card and all the componenent where with the
bundle.

it was a build by ati. a x700pro vivo

ex: yours is:
12 pixel pipeline architecture
TruForm 2.0
Smoothvision HD + Adaptive AA
Avivo™ Technology <----

Hyper Z HD, Video Shader HD
http://www.sapphiretech.com/ca/products/products_overview.php?gpid=133

the bundle:
http://www.lostcircuits.com/video/sapphire_x1600pro/3.shtml

 

[tod]

Both cards have 12 pipelines
The X800 GTO will get you more frames per second, 256 bit memory access, the
X1600 only 128 bit.
I believe is also possible to unlock the GTO from 12 pipelines to 16
pipelines?
The X1600PRO has two newer features over the X800
Better encoding/decoding of video and the new SM 3.0 (Shader Model), the
X800 is Shader model 2.0
So the X1600 will get better as more games support SM 3.0
And the X1600 is a bit cheaper.
I would say just get the X1600.
As SM 3.0 get more popular, the X1600 will still have a decent resale value.


My current specs are :-

Gigabyte 7DXR M/B
768Mb DDR RAM (EEC)
Athlon XP 2400+
Connect3D Radeon 9500 Pro

Yeah I know pretty dated and I'd love to upgrade the lot but I can't so
I'm looking for an AGP graphics card upgrade to play Half Life 2 :
Episode 1 on, basically HL2 ran ok with my current setup at 1024x768
max settings, but I did get some slow down and when lost coast came out
it wasn't capable of running it at any decent speed at all.

I've identified the following two cards that fit in my budget, but I am
really struggling to choose between them and havn't found any real
direct comparison for them on the web

1 - PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (AGP)
(£117.44)
2 - Sapphire X1600 Pro 256MB DDR2 AVIVO TV-Out/DVI (AGP) (£86.89)

What would you guys recommend between these two for HL2 Lost coast/Ep1
on my system? I tried a Geforce 6600GT on my system last year but had
real problems and found there was some incompatibility between my M/B
chipset and the card, so I'm sticking with ATI to be safe.

Any help is most appreciated.

Thanks

 

[DDC]

Both cards have 12 pipelines
The X800 GTO will get you more frames per second, 256 bit memory access, the
X1600 only 128 bit.
I believe is also possible to unlock the GTO from 12 pipelines to 16
pipelines?
The X1600PRO has two newer features over the X800
Better encoding/decoding of video and the new SM 3.0 (Shader Model), the
X800 is Shader model 2.0
So the X1600 will get better as more games support SM 3.0
And the X1600 is a bit cheaper.
I would say just get the X1600.
As SM 3.0 get more popular, the X1600 will still have a decent resale value.


My current specs are :-

Gigabyte 7DXR M/B
768Mb DDR RAM (EEC)
Athlon XP 2400+
Connect3D Radeon 9500 Pro

Yeah I know pretty dated and I'd love to upgrade the lot but I can't so
I'm looking for an AGP graphics card upgrade to play Half Life 2 :
Episode 1 on, basically HL2 ran ok with my current setup at 1024x768
max settings, but I did get some slow down and when lost coast came out
it wasn't capable of running it at any decent speed at all.

I've identified the following two cards that fit in my budget, but I am
really struggling to choose between them and havn't found any real
direct comparison for them on the web

1 - PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (AGP)
(£117.44)
2 - Sapphire X1600 Pro 256MB DDR2 AVIVO TV-Out/DVI (AGP) (£86.89)

What would you guys recommend between these two for HL2 Lost coast/Ep1
on my system? I tried a Geforce 6600GT on my system last year but had
real problems and found there was some incompatibility between my M/B
chipset and the card, so I'm sticking with ATI to be safe.

Any help is most appreciated.

Thanks

Well the x1600pro is more future proof also that is has vivo for video
recording. But if your looking to soft mod the video card to unlock
the extra 4 pipes your should look for the x800gto2 witch from what
i"ve read come unlocked already i think and give better performance
for it's technologies.

But there an other choice. There is a sapphire x1800gto pci-e that
have allot to give and it is unlockable to a x1800xl it is vivo
capable and cost around the same as a 7600gt. Actually i'm getting one
soon. Maybe there is an agp version somewhere for you. If not then the
x1600pro or xt should do the trick.

PS: hl2 run great on a x800 128mb pci-e. that's what i got for the
moment.

my first choice was a x1600xt bravo (vivo) from power color as it is
the most powerful version of the xt series, it a pci-e version but
again maybe there one for agp slot.

if i recall well the x1600xt score around 5300 or more in 3dmark05 and
my x1800gto at default setting score around 6500point in 3dmark05...
The card is made by sapphire, power color and HIS... so there a lot of
brand to choice for and maybe one with agp capabilities.

It my better choice from what i can afford.

I should give you some info on how it perform by Friday this week.
If your changing your mind.

a+

 

[Travis King]

I have a Radeon x1600 PRO. It works fine. If you run Windows and
eventually plan on running the next version, Windows Vista, this card will
be excellent for it. My video card is manufactured by Sapphire. Make sure
you have a minimum of a 350-watt PSU with a 4-pin molex connector. Doom3
isn't the greatest, but Doom3 is designed more for NVIDIA cards anyway. (It
still runs considerably better than my FX5600 did, though.)
It's running on:
Asus K8N motherboard AGP 8x (I used to have an Asus A7V333)
AMD Sempron 2800+ OC'd to 2GHz (I used to have an Athlon XP 2400+, which I
had OC'd to 2.17GHz using a 150 FSB instead of 133 on stock voltage. That
CPU does well at overclocking.)
Ati Radeon X1600PRO 256MB GDDR2 AGP 8x. (By Sapphire)
Two IDE hard drives
768MB of RAM
400-watt PSU (soon to be replaced my a Thermaltake 430-watt PSU as my
current PSU keeps killing my hard drives)

 

[Chris]

Thanks for all your posts and advice, I've order the X1600 Pro and
should get it today or tomorrow. Bought it for £91 including delivery
from Dabs.com so thats pretty decent value and I'm sure it will give my
PC a bit of a boost over what it can do now and will keep me going
until I buy a new PC next year sometime.

Thanks everyone.

 

[SP Goodman]

Well the x1600pro is more future proof also that is has vivo for video
recording. But if your looking to soft mod the video card to unlock
the extra 4 pipes your should look for the x800gto2 witch from what
i"ve read come unlocked already i think and give better performance
for it's technologies.

I've got a Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO FireBlade PCI-E, 256MB. Been pleased so
far but how would I know whether the full-pipeline use is enabled or not?

Thx.

--
Stephen Goodman
*
* Cartoons about DVDs and Stuff
* http://www.earthlight.net/HiddenTrack
* The Loop Of The Week since 1996!
* http://www.earthlight.net/Studios

 

[SP Goodman]

In the program called everest corporat there is a section called
display click on that and select gpu... it there

Or download the pdf here it not a fire blade but it about the same
thing
http://www.sapphiretech.com/ca/productfiles/119brochure.pdf
see also http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/details.php?id=135

the gpu number is important too because some are down graded gpu witch
"are" locked. Ie x800 xl are 16 pipes and if the gpu code number of
this card fit your video card gpu like r480 or r423 then you COULD try
to fit the bios of the card you want into yours to get the extra
4pipes that are locked by purpuse.

So to get it straith if your gpu is r480 then it match the criteria of
the x850 xt

I have Everest Home, and it shows "PCI Express x16: ATI Radeon X850 Pro
(R480)"; also it shows 12 pixel pipelines.

but you mush make shure that your new card fit in your card
like agp with agp bios... the amount of memory too. and the speed for
your gpu and memory but this can be adjusted before gaming with
atitools.

Ah, ATITools - Used to use it with the Omega drivers, on my 9550. It came
along with the Omega drivers. Or are you referring to the stand-alone
version? The Sapphire came with an app called TRIXX that seems to offer the
same overclocking functionality as ATITools... So how to get at those
pipelines?

But the best thing is to mod the bios to the correct mhz before
flashing your card that way you wont forget after formating the hdd to
set back your videocard mem/gpu speed.

You mean like softmod? Thanks.


--
Stephen Goodman
*
* Cartoons about DVDs and Stuff
* http://www.earthlight.net/HiddenTrack
* The Loop Of The Week since 1996!
* http://www.earthlight.net/Studios

 

[DDC]

I've got a Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO FireBlade PCI-E, 256MB. Been pleased so
far but how would I know whether the full-pipeline use is enabled or not?

Thx.

In the program called everest corporat there is a section called
display click on that and select gpu... it there

Or download the pdf here it not a fire blade but it about the same
thing
http://www.sapphiretech.com/ca/productfiles/119brochure.pdf
see also http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/details.php?id=135

the gpu number is important too because some are down graded gpu witch
"are" locked. Ie x800 xl are 16 pipes and if the gpu code number of
this card fit your video card gpu like r480 or r423 then you COULD try
to fit the bios of the card you want into yours to get the extra
4pipes that are locked by purpuse.

So to get it straith if your gpu is r480 then it match the criteria of
the x850 xtbut you mush make shure that your new card fit in your card
like agp with agp bios... the amount of memory too. and the speed for
your gpu and memory but this can be adjusted before gaming with
atitools.
But the best thing is to mod the bios to the correct mhz before
flashing your card that way you wont forget after formating the hdd to
set back your videocard mem/gpu speed.