AGP is not dead yet

G

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Well I figured I play a little more with my Sapphire 3850 AGP card. I had this Zalman VF700-Alcu cooler rusting there :p and I figured I remove the stock cooler and put that on. I'm amazed how crappy the stock cooler was really.. After replacing the cooling my load temps dropped around 20 degrees. It idles now at 42/43 degrees.

I've flashed my bios and cranked her up to 900/1150 with 1.254 volts. These are stable settings. Here is MSI Kombuster.

kombuster.jpg


Here is a FM03 bench! :D

fm03.jpg


http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6424053

I am excited about this I have to say. I love making old stuff go fast!
 
Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
What are your frame rates like in specific games at a specific resolution? 3DMark is synthetic so real world numbers would go a long way in letting folks determine if AGP is ready for the scrap heap. Also I'd say that 3DMark06 would be the minimum test that I would run simply because the rest are so out dated.

I'm not trying to short change what you've done. Those are great clocks on the card and if it's working for what you need, that's all that matters.

I find overclocking great fun (and frustrating at times) and it's always nice to get a bit more performance without paying the premium for higher end parts.
 
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G

GFreeman

Coastermaker
I've just tried NFS Shift. Downloaded and installed FRAPS. Here are some numbers.

Time (ms): 60.000
Frames: 1689
Min FPS: 23
Max FPS: 33
Avg FPS: 28.150

This is with the following game settings:
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        <prop name="Vsync" vsync="0" />
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        <prop name="TextureFilter" texturefilter="5" />
        <prop name="TextureResolution" textureresolution="2" />
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G

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Here's Call of Duty World at war.. Lowering the settings 1440x990 will be smoother, but I decided to push her a little. Well anyways, here are my settings and the FPS.

settingsf.jpg


Time (ms): 60.000
Frames: 1257
Min FPS: 16
Max FPS: 27
Avg FPS: 20.950

These are my gaming settings for that game:

settingsf.jpg

settings1.jpg


Time (ms): 60.000
Frames: 1492
Min FPS: 21
Max FPS: 33
Avg FPS: 24.867

These are smoother settings.
 
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G

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Optix said:
What are your frame rates like in specific games at a specific resolution? 3DMark is synthetic so real world numbers would go a long way in letting folks determine if AGP is ready for the scrap heap. Also I'd say that 3DMark06 would be the minimum test that I would run simply because the rest are so out dated.

I'm not trying to short change what you've done. Those are great clocks on the card and if it's working for what you need, that's all that matters.

I find overclocking great fun (and frustrating at times) and it's always nice to get a bit more performance without paying the premium for higher end parts.
Click to expand...

I agree real world numbers matter. I would say that this AGP card is strong enough for me, especially having it overclocked.
 
G

GFreeman

Coastermaker
I've tried Dirt2 as well. Here's how that went:

Time (ms): 60.000
Frames: 1689
Min FPS: 23
Max FPS: 33
Avg FPS: 28.150

That's with 1680x1050 4xAA Ultra detail.
 
Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
Nice, nice. Even your minimum is playable although probably very noticeable in Dirt. Stick it to the hardware man and get every last drop of performance out of your gear!
 
G

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Yeah I do however have a small problem. Running Dirt or Testdrive unlimited 2 now and then both games have small freezes a black screen for 2 seconds and they continue again.This happens sometimes after a few minutes or even longer.. Obviously I've tried running stock settings but it's still the same. Testdrive 2 is playable except from the lockups which waste the gameplay.. I have read about ATI cards having problems with Dirt 2.. I'll get to it if I have some more time.

EDIT: I have found the problem.. It turned it was heat of the entire system. GPU was running cool enough but other components weren't.Testdrive unlimited 2 pushes my cpu 100% on both cores. Yesterday it's been a warm day when I was having these problems. Room temp was about 25c. Now though it's alot colder in my room (18c). No problems this time. My settings are 1920x1080 4xAA everything else: low. I get about a 18-22 fps average.

EDIT2: My guess was about right. Here's FRAPS with Testdrive Unlimited 2:
Time (ms): 60.000
Frames: 1246
Min FPS: 17
Max FPS: 27
Avg FPS: 20.767

It is playable however. This told me I wasn't. I'm glad to prove them wrong ;)

testdriveunlimited2u.png
 
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G

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Sighs same problems again and my temps are perfectly fine. Maybe trying to play with AGP Aperture Size can help.. Have it set on 64mb now.. That's the quickest for this system. Have any of you ran into problems with these two games?
 
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G

GFreeman

Coastermaker
I solved the problem. It turned out my gpu overclock wasn't completely stable. I'm back at 1.25v with 870/1100 settings. I did some testing with Furmark this time round and it passed that. I'm even playing TestDrive Unlimited 2 at 1920x1080 with medium settings now. It works like a charm.
 
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G

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Optix said:
What are your frame rates like in specific games at a specific resolution? 3DMark is synthetic so real world numbers would go a long way in letting folks determine if AGP is ready for the scrap heap. Also I'd say that 3DMark06 would be the minimum test that I would run simply because the rest are so out dated.

I'm not trying to short change what you've done. Those are great clocks on the card and if it's working for what you need, that's all that matters.

I find overclocking great fun (and frustrating at times) and it's always nice to get a bit more performance without paying the premium for higher end parts.
Click to expand...

Here's my FM06 gaming score with my cpu@2,8ghz and the 3850 oc'd stable now at 870/1100: http://3dmark.com/3dm06/15946725
 
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