AGP refuses to die

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Product: PowerColor X1650 XT 256MB AGP
Website: WWW.POWERCOLOR.COM
System Requirements:Motherboard with AGP 8x slot
Price: €179.99

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REGARDLESS OF what minds think in Nvidia and the graphics division of AMD, the AGP standard pretty much refuses to die out. The only possible way of stopping 3rd party AIBs (Add-in Board manufacturers/vendors) making AGP boards would be killing the production of AGP/PCIe bridge chips such as ATI's RIALTo and Nvidia's bi-directional BR02, which can be used as an AGP to PCIe and PCIe to AGP bridge.

When it comes to ATI GPUs, the RIALTo bridge chip will be available for a while, so we were not surprised when TuL Corporation, better known under its flaghsip PowerColor brand, introduced the X1650XT to its range of AGP products, and announced that it will start manufacturing X1950Pro boards using the AGP interface as well. With Windows Vista coming to retail on the last day of January, revival of at least one or two AGP products was inevitable.

The Card

PEG power connector ending with a single Molex...

The card itself looks nothing short of interesting, and features a definite first appearance in the world of AGP cards: a 6-pin PEG (PCI Express Graphics) power connector. However, it does not give more power to the card than regular 4-pin Molex, it's more an issue with PCB design. It was easier to include a PEG power cable for connecting to one Molex only, not two, as seen with X1900 and 8800 heavy-weights, so overall the board barely passes the 100W thermal budget. Of course, this will practically never happen, but still...

ATi's RIALTo bridge chip lives on with two new babies - X1650XT and X1950Pro

GPU-wise, we're talking about a chip manufactured in 80nm process by TSMC, which is actually a doubled X1600 (RV530 GPU). So forget about comparing the X1600 to X1650, there are massive differences between the two.

While the old RV530 or X1600 GPU came with a four ROP and TMU (Texture Memory Units), 12 Pixel Shaders and five Vertex ones, the X1650 GPU comes with three times more ROP and texture units. Yes, the X1650XT features eight ROPs and TMUs, 26 Pixel Shaders and eight Vertex Shaders, three more than X1600. As you can see with this GPU, ATI killed off the failed X1600, which was planned to go against the 7600GT and ended up as a disaster in same price range. However, the X1600 crashed down into the X1300 area, and Nvidia's pathetic 64-bit 7300 just didn't have any chance. But there were no competitors to 7600.

PowerColor combined this 600MHz clocked chip with 256MB of Hynix GDDR-3 memory clocked at 700 MHz DDR, offering 22.4 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Since the memory chips are 1.4ns rated you cannot expect much of a headroom for overclocking. Also, the GPU has only a 128-bit memory controller, 256-bit internally, thanks to famous RingBus marchitecture.

The board also has two dual-link DVI connectors and an S-VHS out, so in praxis you can run two 30" Dell/HP monitors. Of course, not for playing games, but if you desire to have 60" desktop on AGP, you can.

Testing, testing
How to test the AGP product? At first, we wanted to combine the X2 4800+ with an MSI Socket 939 nForce3 Ultra board, but the board was surprisingly dead. I last used the board a year and a half ago, but it seems that was too much of inactivity for her. So, without an AGP board for AM2, 939 or 775, I decided to take another approach. And that approach is my neighbour's computer, which presented a typical 800 Euro computer two years ago. He would like to run Windows Vista and upgrade to quad-core system from AMD or Intel in late 2007, probably around Yuletide. So, the computer needs to live for another 12 months.

He decided to make the computer Vista worthy by installing 2GB of DDR400 memory instead of the current 1GB, which is these days, a small 70 euro upgrade, retired his old, but ultra-fast Corsair 1GB stick and permanently use it for Vista's ReadyDrive/ReadyBoost feature, and a €120-150 for a graphics card which can run Vista's Aero pack. His current X700 just does not cut the mustard or in this case, the 3.0 performance score in Vista tester. The couple of years old Dell 19" LCD (1280x1024) will also be used until the 'puter gives up the ghost.

The components were the following:
Intel Pentium 4 w/HT 2.8 GHz
ASRock i845 motherboard
1GB DDR400 memory
250GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.8
Pioneer DVR-106S DVD burner
JNC Crapiola case with generic 400W PSU
The system was running on a clean Windows XP Professional SP2a, Intel CSIU driver utility, Catalyst 6.12, and the regular army of benchmarks. We included 3DMark03 into the synthetic suite because the original X700 came on market when that benchmark was "flavour of the year", but we would advise you to take these scores only as 5% of your buying decision. Real performance lies in real world apps, such as... well... games.

3DMark03 vs. 3DMark05 shows synthetic domination

3DMark06 shows a stomping difference...24 Pixel Shaders 3.0

Fill-Rate scores show how 8 ROPs in X700 are kicking 4ROPs arse inside X1300

Company of Heroes scores show how effect-less X700 knocks full-effect X1300 of its feet

F.E.A.R. with full effects bleeds performance of all three cards

Need For Speed: Carbon runs great on X1650XT, diff in pic quality between X1650XT and X700 is huge

Serious Sam 2

We are seeing 4xAA/16xAF scores being the same or even a little bit faster over default settings, which serves as proof of performance offered by X1650XT. We have to say that the comparasion was unfair to a certain extent, because the X700 sometimes offers equal framerate, but without HDR and all those shiny SM3.0 effects turned on.

Vista performance is however, a whole other ballgame. I have tried this computer running Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate Edition and both were flying even when running. Trying the original X700 128MB resulted in even Win+Tab being a bit sluggish when 5-10 apps were opened. However, running Blu-ray movies on X700 is just something that is not going to happen, and my friend is using this computer to connect it to a 42" plasma for some home theatre experience.

In Short
For running Windows Vista on an older machine, this just might be the ticket to ride, giving your older system a nice boost in performance. PowerColor did a good job in manufacturing the board, which comes with nice silent cooler and hefty multi-monitor capability.

This card cannot escape the fact that this product will end up in systems which are already bitten by time, and the performance delta won't exceed the capabilities of your CPU and system memory. So, if you own an Athlon XP or Socket 754 Athlon 64 / Sempr0n, this card will give you a year or two, but if you run the board on and Pentium 4 or Pentium D system, performance will be locked by the CPU/RAM factor. NetBurst marchitecture simply is not good enough.

The Good
DRM-infestation under the name of Blu-ray/HD-DVD acceleration gives you an option to use this board for your HTPC or just enjoy movies on 3-4-5 year old PC.
Board was dead silent during testing
Dual Dual-Link DVI w/HDCP connectors
X1650XT, not X1600XT

The Bad
Performance is badly tied to the CPU. Cheer for AMD owners, not so great for NetBursters
Only one DVI-D-SUB adaptor and board features two DVI connectors

The Ugly
Nothing to write home about.

Bartender's Report
Three out of Five Pints