P4 478 & x1950pro AGP Benchmark Results

Dead0rAlive · 22 Jan 2007 at 10:42

System Specs.
CPU

4 478 3.4 "Northwood" 800fsb.
Motherboard:MSI 865PE Neo2-P
Memory:Kingston HyperX 4* 512 3200
Sound card:X-fi Fatal1ty Pro
Graphics Card:HIS x1950 Pro 512.
Power Supply:Seasonic 500W

I know some of you are reading this and thinking why bother.. Its time to upgrade.. 478's are dead.. This maybe true. But back in the day this 478 cost me stupid amounts of money. It still does a pretty decent job to this day. And until I can afford a major upgrade, its going to have to do.

Right, before I give you the results I just want to say that I am waiting for an RMA request to be processed. I bought this bad boy (x1950pro) on Thursday, received and installed Friday. Since then, when It hasnt not got the black screen of death issue, it runs like a dream. I can finally play F.E.A.R in all its glory. HL2 loves it, you can set everything on max at 1600x1200 and it runs sweet as a nut. Yes.. that's right. I too have the black screen issue. You know the one. Where your into about 30 min or so worth of gaming and all of a sudden the screen freezes for a couple of seconds and then your monitor goes into standby mode. And it always happens when your in the middle of some awesome fire fight. BF2142 fans will know what I'm on about.

So.. Results time for those of you who really want to know.
Before I upgraded I had and still have an MSI x800xt pe. I bought a artic cooler for it and it has served me very well over the years. But, the time has come for a little bit more gpu juice. And when your on a budget this 512 x1950pro from HIS looked like an offer I could not refuse.

I ran Benchmark 05 and 06.
On the x800xt pe I was using 6.10 drivers. On the x1950 I started off with the 7.1 but when I was getting the black screens someone suggested on these forums to try differnt drivers. So I ran the 6.12's

BenchMark 05: Benchmark 06:
x800xt pe- 5875 (6.10) 2039 (6.10)
x1950pro- 6891 (7.1) 4001 (7.1)
x1950pro- 6912 (6.12) 3984 (6.12)

Now in all honesty, I was expecting a much greater 3dmark 05 result from the x1950. I was really disappointed because I read about people getting close to 10000 3dmarks in 05. But it looks like my cpu does bottleneck the overall score. Unless the cards fault effects the overall score. Who knows? I'll find out when I get a replacement.

I would be interested if anyone else out there also has a p4 478 and a x1950 to see what kind of results they get. When I ran 3dmark 06 I went to the on-line results checker and only 2 other people have a similar system set up to mine and I was pleased to see that I was at the top of that small chart..

Anyway once everything is a-ok with OcUK and HIS RMA and I get a replacement card I will add a bit more useless statistics for those of you who want to know.
Until then, have a good one!

Secret_Window · 22 Jan 2007 at 11:16

Not bad, not bad at all. As long as you are happy that is all that matters.

dmsims · 22 Jan 2007 at 11:17

I had a 1950 pro AGP.: 6302 in 3d05 with a 3.06 Northwood 533fsb oc'd to 3.22

I had the monitor standy issue and discovered my Abit BE7 mobo was not compatible

MadMatty · 22 Jan 2007 at 11:25

dmsims said:
I had a 1950 pro AGP.: 6302 in 3d05 with a 3.06 Northwood 533fsb oc'd to 3.22

Just to put things in perspective, i had pretty much same score when I was using x800xtpe(agp) on my Abit NF7 AthlonXP3200

With 1950pro I seem to only get the black screen if i overclock, even just a mild one. no artifacts, just black out. no issues so far at default.

Dead0rAlive · 22 Jan 2007 at 16:56

It is an odd one. There is all sorts of rumors out there as to why these cards are black screening. Some reckon its just a faulty batch of cards, others say that the voltage regulators are to blame. :confused:

Thanks for the feedback so far.

marc2003 · 22 Jan 2007 at 17:47

i think the highest i've seen with a p4 is 8k. this is with the p4 clocked to 3.7ghz.....

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17672483

Stonedofmoo · 22 Jan 2007 at 20:59

I got 7348 on my P4 @ 3.5gig so you're not too far off. I upgraded to a Pentium-M on Marcs advice and I now get 9777 @ 2.6gig

Dead0rAlive · 22 Jan 2007 at 21:40

I'll be totally honest. I've never gone down the overclocking route. I bought all the hardware for it. But I think the biggest mistake was the MSI motherboard. It can't even run my HyperX at the speeds that Kingston suggests without it crashing. So everything in my system runs at stock. Thats why I like the sound of this HIS card. The fact that it comes already overclocked for you appeals to the laymen like myself.

If any of you guys reading this had the black screen issue. Could you please let me know if you now have it resolved. I just got my RMA number

Cheers.

Sean_UK · 22 Jan 2007 at 22:05

Dead0rAlive said:
System Specs.
CPU4 478 3.4 "Northwood" 800fsb.
Motherboard:MSI 865PE Neo2-P
Memory:Kingston HyperX 4* 512 3200
Sound card:X-fi Fatal1ty Pro
Graphics Card:HIS x1950 Pro 512.
Power Supply:Seasonic 500W

BenchMark 05: Benchmark 06:
x800xt pe- 5875 (6.10) 2039 (6.10)
x1950pro- 6891 (7.1) 4001 (7.1)
x1950pro- 6912 (6.12) 3984 (6.12)

Now in all honesty, I was expecting a much greater 3dmark 05 result from the x1950. I was really disappointed because I read about people getting close to 10000 3dmarks in 05. But it looks like my cpu does bottleneck the overall score. Unless the cards fault effects the overall score. Who knows? I'll find out when I get a replacement.

You would be seeing scores of at least 9000 with 3DMark05 and 3DMark06 around 4500 from the x1950pro on top end AGP, when you consider im hitting over 9000 with 3dmark05 and 4790 3dmark06 using 7800GS+ 24pipe AGP using Athlon single core system. So something is holding you back a bit (CPU, Mobo) or as you say the card is the problem since its slightly faulty.

Edit: pic

marc2003 · 22 Jan 2007 at 22:35

Sean_UK said:
You would be seeing scores of at least 9000 with 3DMark05 and 3DMark06 around 4500 from the x1950pro on top end AGP, when you consider im hitting over 9000 with 3dmark05 and 4790 3dmark06 using 7800GS+ 24pipe AGP using Athlon single core system. So something is holding you back a bit (CPU, Mobo) or as you say the card is the problem since its slightly faulty.

now we still have no idea how a 7800gs+ compares to the x1950pro when using the exact same hardware. and your a64 is much better than his p4. so how you can compare the two, i really have no idea?

Sean_UK · 22 Jan 2007 at 22:38

marc2003 said:
now we still have no idea how a 7800gs+ compares to the x1950pro when using the exact same hardware. and your a64 is much better than his p4. so how you can compare the two, i really have no idea?

I dont want to offend, but did you read my post properly? :rolleyes:

I was giving him an idea of what is possible from his AGP card if he upgrades the board and CPU which in my opinion is the only reason X1950pro (albeit borked) is not scoring higher. Which was what he wanted to know about.

Edit: If you want to compare side by side the cards, give me a week once i have my 4600 this will mean my system is same as my brothers with only exceptions been PSU and system case. In any case im fully aware the x1950 wins by %5 on most tests.

marc2003 · 22 Jan 2007 at 22:45

Sean_UK said:
I dont want to offend, but did you read my post properly? I was giving him an idea of what is possible from his AGP card if he upgrades the board and CPU which in my opinion is the only reason X1950pro (albeit borked) is not scoring higher. Which was what he wanted to know about.

ah well, it would it seem i did misread that bit. apologies for that....

but surely the whole reason people are buying these cards is so they don't have to upgrade their cpu/mobos. if they did, a cheap pci-e 939 setup would be the way to go. ok people are losing out in the benchmarks to people with a64s and whatnot, but they can still play new-ish games with the all the eye-candy on and that's what's it's all about.

3t3P · 22 Jan 2007 at 22:48

I'll run some benches and post on this thread when my HIS X1950PRO 512mb gets here on wed :cool:

w00t!

I'm socket 478 2.8C @ 3.3ghz, my max overclock unfortunately

If I get anything over 4000 in 3dMark06 then its more than double existing performance.

Its' nice to know it handles that 1600x1200 resolution nicely, a summer monitor upgrade may be deserved if 22'' monitors lower in price

Sean_UK · 22 Jan 2007 at 22:49

marc2003 said:
ah well, it would it seem i did misread that bit. apologies for that....

Heh no probs its late

True it does give a sort of cheap boost, but then its still been very gimped going by results & dont cost much to grab a 3500+ along with decent mobo etc same goes for cheap n chearfull intel equiv. Tbh if the X1950pro agp had been around last June then id own that instead.

HangTime · 22 Jan 2007 at 23:15

Dead0rAlive said:
It can't even run my HyperX at the speeds that Kingston suggests without it crashing.

Could be because you have 4 sticks of RAM - make sure you have command rate set to 2T for starters (yeah, I know it's an intel cpu, but gotta be worth a try)

Generally speaking 3.4ghz/2gig/x1950pro/x-fi is still a pretty decent gaming.

3t3P · 22 Jan 2007 at 23:52

of course its decent, I get a bit irate at times with pci-e snobbery/elitism, like we are all a sub-species with our AGP rigs :mad:

My IQ is currently very nice and will get one heck of a lot better when my new card arrives on wed

Rant over

Stonedofmoo · 23 Jan 2007 at 07:45

I think the point is if you go and buy an X1950Pro card today for your AGP system, provided the processor and memory are up to the job you are guranteed to be able to play any DX9 game that will ever come out and thats fine for me.

We all know you will need better graphics cards to take advantage of DX10 and it's a given a new system will be needed too, but for now us AGP owners have been thrown a cheap and useful lifeline and I for one am very happy about that

rayb74 · 23 Jan 2007 at 08:50

Your scores look OK Dead or Alive. But dont worry about them to much. I am playing quake 4 through at the mo on highest settings everything and with 2xAA at 1600*1200 with fairly constant 45-60 fps.

Should be good for about another year before I build new rig.

melbourne720 · 23 Jan 2007 at 09:51

Dead0rAlive said:
But I think the biggest mistake was the MSI motherboard. It can't even run my HyperX at the speeds that Kingston suggests without it crashing.

I heard that was a problem with your Kingston RAM. In the RAM roundup in Custom PC, they had a sample of Kingston that wouldn't even do its rated speed.

rickw584 · 23 Jan 2007 at 10:57

marc2003 said:
now we still have no idea how a 7800gs+ compares to the x1950pro when using the exact same hardware. and your a64 is much better than his p4. so how you can compare the two, i really have no idea?

Not wanting to stir things up, but I've just upgraded my cpu to a Mobile 754 4000+, which is the same as Seans, but I've got a 1950pro, I don't know what clocks you're running (Sean), but in 3dm05 I get about 10350, in 3dm06 it's about 4850
Cpu at 3ghz, Gcard at 680/850

Mebe the first useful comparision??