Introduction

The AGP platform was declared dead quite some time ago now, but we all know that the majority of PC users still have a motherboard with AGP slot. Only a small minority keeps up with the hectic PC upgrade cycle and so it makes sense that companies are releasing new products for AGP.



For quite some time NVIDIA dominated the AGP scene with their 7800GS based AGP video card, originally available at a discouraging €300+; luckily this price has gone down to a more acceptable ~€200. ATI’s latest AGP action was with their X800 series, and while the X850XT delivered impressive performance at the time of release, it's an aging video card by today’s standards, not supporting the latest technologies needed to display all the coolest effects (HDR anyone?) in recent games.

Enter the ATI X1950 Pro chipset, HIS is one of only few manufacturers who decided to release and AGP card based on the popular mid-range chipset from ATI. We did some in-depth performance tests of the PCI Express version some time ago. Today we test the card on the older AGP platform to see if it can boost gaming performance to acceptable levels.


HIS does AGP

HIS has been known for years now to provide custom cooled video cards based on ATI GPUs, their X1950 Pro is no different, their IceQ3 keeps the GPU cool and quiet, and even allows them enough headroom to ship the card with the highest out of the box clocks speed. Let’s compare:

Currently 4 manufacturers have a product based on X1950 Pro for AGP, they differ in GPU clock speeds, memory clockspeed, memory amount and cooling:

- Gecube 575/690 256Mb - Stock Cooling (single slot)
- Sapphire 580/700 512Mb - Custom Cooling (single slot)
- Powercolor 575/690 256/512Mb - Custom Arctic Cooling (dual slot)
- HIS 620/740 512Mb - Custom Cooling (dual slot)



The IceQ3 version from HIS is running at overclocked speeds only reached by a select amount of X1950 Pro cards; they must be hand picked. With 512Mb the card has head room to run games at higher resolutions with AA/AF enabled.

What can make you buy a new €200 video card for your aging system? Performance of course; whether you will see benefit from a video card upgrade depends a lot on the other components in your system, a minimum of 1Gb of system memory is highly recommended, CPU wise we have been quite lucky (?) these past several years, while for certain applications CPU performance has been doubled, the dependence on raw CPU power in games has diminished quite a bit, making it less important to have the latest and greatest to enjoy today’s games. This in turn makes it possible to use this AGP video card upgrade with older Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 systems, sorry if you still have Athlon XP, you really should consider a motherboard/cpu upgrade.

A Pentium 4 clocked over 3ghz or Athlon 64 at 2ghz+ are sufficient for a mid-range gaming system, the ideal partner for mid-range video cards like the HIS X1950 Pro, let’s take a closer look at the card ->

In the box:

The box contains almost everything needed to start using the HIS X1950 Pro to its full potential



- one HIS X1950 Pro Video Card

- HDTV Output cable
- S-Video Out Cable
- DVI to VGA Dongle x 2

- Manual & Drivers CD
- Microsoft Dungeon Siege Full
- CyberLink PowerDirector 5 SE Plus
- CyberLink Power2Go 5 - CD
- CyberLink Medi@Show 3
- GameShadow
- ATI Demos

Quite an impressive package but it's lacking a vital component, older AGP systems rarely have a brand new power supply with all the latest connectors, since the HIS X1950 Pro requires a 6-Pin power pin, if you don't have a power supply with this connector, or a converter nearby, you can't make this card work. I hope HIS will include a 4-pin to 6-pin power converter in their box in the future as this can spare quite a bit of hassle for most end users.

The HIS X1950 Pro IceQ3:

The AGP version is very similar to the PCI Express edition, with of course the obvious difference in connection bridges, there are small differences with the location of components like the 6-Pin power adapter and fan header; the AGP version lacks the cross fire connectors visible on the PCIe one.


AGP Edition


PCI Express Edition

Cooling wise both cards use the same heatsink, but the AGP version has a double slot metal bracket, compared to seperate one of the PCI Express.

You get two DVI connectors on this AGP card with a (HD)TV-out in the middle:



The GPU and memory is cooled by a copper/heat pipe heatsink, a fan near the end of the video card blows fresh air over the fins of the heatsink towards the rear and out of the case. The 6-pin connector is easily accessible near the top of the card:



Let's get it installed our test setup:

Test Setup and Test Methodology

JMke AGP Test Setup
CPU	AMD Athlon 3200+ @ 2Ghz
Cooling	TTIC NPH-K8 with Arctic Cooling 92mm fan @ 7v
Mainboard	MSI K8N Neo
Memory	2 * 512Mb PC3200 G.Skill
Other	Coolermaster ATCS 201 Mid Tower Case Asus 6600 GT Coolermaster 500W Real Power Maxtor 200GB Sata HDD Maxtor 80GB SATA HDD Creative Audigy 2 ZS Pro Plextor 8x DVD Writer

As you can see from the specifications above, this system is nowhere near high end, with only a 2ghz Athlon 64 (single core, socket 754) and dated 6600GT AGP video card, the gaming performance leaves much to be desired when you want to play the latest games.

We ran through a few different games using the build in benchmark where available (FEAR, Painkiller, Supreme Commander) or rely on FRAPS to do repeated manual run-throughs (Oblivion). Mixing resolutions and AA/AF settings we try to see what image quality we can set and still keep playable frame rates.

The latest ATI Catalyst drivers were used with the HIS X1950 Pro (7.2), as well as the latest NVIDIA drivers on the 6600GT (93.71).

Comparing performance results

While we loved to have a NVIDIA 7800GS AGP for comparison, we couldn’t get our hands on one in time for this review; what we settled on is the previous budget king from NVIDIA, the 6600GT, which proved immensely popular thanks to a very competitive price and good performance in (then current) games.

The Asus 6600GT we acquired comes with a loud stock cooler, which was quickly switched to a Zalman VF700 Fatality edition. Set at only 5v the VF700 kept the 6600GT’s GPU cool and was extremely quiet.



Compared to the HIS X1950 Pro the Asus 6600GT is dwarfed, a real dual slot monster:



Inside the Coolermaster ATCS 201 room is limited and longer VGA cards do run into trouble with the hard drive racks. The HIS X1950 Pro did fit, but it was a close fit:



Onto the benchmarks ->

F.E.A.R.
Official website



FEAR is a game which relies on its excellent enemy AI to deliver an enjoyable experience, the in-game graphics are far from bad, with a nice slow-motion (matrix style) effect which does add to the game play overall. However the maps are quite dull (office complexes) with very monotone colors. The models are highly detailed with high resolution textures and they look great there's also a very convincing lighting engine which casts shadows correctly to create the desired atmosphere of 'FEAR'.

The 6600GT offers playable FPS at 1024x768 with high GFX detail. Adding AA/AF is not recommended as minimum FPS goes well below 30.

It takes 1600x1200 with high detail to really stress the X1950 Pro, all other resolutions, with 2xAA/4xAF enabled offer very playable results; impressive!

TES: Oblivion
Official website



The Oblivion graphics engine can be very taxing for even the fastest hardware once you increase the level of detail. There is also a difference in performance compared running outside, in city area or inside a dungeon, the outside is most taxing for the graphics card, the town area is noticeably easier on the GPU while the dungeon is usually less taxing of all.



Oblivion doesn’t offer lightening fast action as seen in FEAR, and thus playable frame rates can already be had in the 20~30 FPS region.

The 6600GT is really showing its age here, anything over 1024x768 is unplayable and becomes a slide show (12 fps average at 1600x1200).

Who would have though that a dated AGP system could run Oblivion in high detail at 1600x1200 at 46fps! The HIS X1950 Pro really delivers here, offering fluent game play. You can also see that at 1024x768 and 1280x1024 the system bottleneck is the CPU as Oblivion is one of few games which does benefit from a higher end processor.

Painkiller
Official Website

Painkiller is a chaotic first person shooter which throws tons of enemies at you in large waves; comparable to Serious Sam but with a hellish theme and darker mood. The graphics engine can show quite a bit of cool visual features but doesn’t tax the latest VGA cards very hard.



When updating the game to the latest version you get access to an in-game benchmark which does a fly-by across one of the game’s larger maps which has in-door and outdoor scenes. The higher the resulting benchmark score, the more FPS your system was able to generate. The custom score shown below is the game’s own measurement result (much like a 3DMark, call it a PainMark).

The 6600GT doesn’t have much trouble running this game fluently, it’s not until we start using 1600x1200 with AA/AF that performance drops and in-game stuttering is visible.

The X1950 Pro has no trouble with this older game, even at 1600x1200 4xAA/4xAF the game remains very playable.

Onto our last 2 benchmarks ->

Supreme Commander
Official Website

Supreme Commander is the spiritual successor of the much lauded Total Annihilation Real-Time-Strategy game. SupCom increases the battlefield’s size, the number of units and sports a very high detailed graphics engine. The game supports dual cores (and quad cores!) out of the box, to help path finding for the thousands of units which move across the battlefield.



This game will be reason for many RTS fans to start upgrading their machines, while an Athlon 64 3000+ does “ok” with the game, larger battles definitely need a more beefy CPU. An in-game benchmark runs through several attacks by the AI, with nukes, airplanes, spider-like monsters (as in the screenshot above) and many more. At the end of the benchmark you receive a global system score, higher means better.

The 6600GT is “okay” for SupCom at 1024x768, medium detail offers playable frame rates when you limit games to 1vs1 on smaller maps.

The HIS X1950 Pro is completely CPU bottlenecked, it requires a more beefy processor to increase the performance of your system, the X1950 Pro has more to spare. On the upside, you can now play the same games you did with the 6600GT but at 1600x1200!

Futuremark 3D Marks



These synthetic systems tests from Futuremark give you a good overall idea of performance between the video cards: you should not solely rely on these results though as the game benchmarks do not always reflect these rankings.



Futuremark 3DMarks actually reflect the game benchmarks this time around, in the older 3DMark03 the 6600GT is trailing the X1950 Pro but only by 76%, the newer 3DMark05 has more image quality trickery up its sleeve and the gap widens to 150%; with 3DMark06 you can see a gain in performance of over 200% when you plug in the HIS X1950 Pro.

Noise & Temperatures

The Coolermaster ATCS 201 case was set up with 1x92mm fan in the front, one 1x80mm in the rear, the system is not dead silent, a few dBA over ambient, but far from noisy. With the 6600GT modded with Zalman VF700 @ 5v the noise from the VGA cooler did not surpass the case fans. With the HIS X1950 Pro installed the IceQ3 cooler proved to be quite effective, at reduced fan speed it was also inaudible in the system, only when the fan speed went over 60% you could pick up the fan-noise from the VGA cooler.

In a 21°C room the X1950 Pro was stressed with Real-Time HDR for 30 minutes, the GPU topped out at 72°C, the onboard ambient temp probe read 62°C. The fan setting was set to auto and it never got over 45% even when heavily stressed.

Overclocking

Since the release of the X1950 Pro chip we’ve been waiting for an updated ATI Tool to help us in our overclocking endeavors, unfortunately at the time of writing ATI Tool does not support the X1950 Pro very well; we resorted to ATI Tray Tools which was able to change the GPU speeds a little bit, but not by much, going from 620Mhz to 634Mhz did yield a small increase but ultimately did not prove stable enough to complete the whole benchmark suite, HIS really pushed this chip to the limit, even 620Mhz is beyond what most get out of their X1950 Pro video card.

Memory overclocking simply did not work, trying to increase even 1Mhz the system would halt, again, at 740Mhz HIS is running the memory near maximum limit.

It will come as no surprise that the IceQ3 cooling facilitates running the X1950 Pro core and memory at higher than default clockspeeds, the heat pipe design with copper heatsink does pay off.



Conclusive Thoughts

The X1950 Pro chipset from ATI breathes new lives into AGP systems, HIS’ version is the highest overclocked version on sale right now, and this for a reasonable €200 which is on par with the PCI Express version.

Whether or not it’s a wise choice to invest in a video card based on a no longer actively support platform depends on your current system and what you expect to do with it the coming months/years. If you have a high end S939 Athlon 64 system this card will turn your system into a gaming rig that can handle the latest games. If however you’re still using an older Pentium 4 or Athlon XP system you will quickly run into a CPU bottleneck as the HIS X1950 Pro IceQ3 is too powerful for your system (so to speak). A partial upgrade to a Core 2 system based on one of the hybrid boards offer by Asrock which supports PCI Express/AGP, DDR/DDR2 will offer you a cost effective way to step up the performance ladder without having to throw away all your old gear.

We applaud HIS for their continued support for the aging AGP platform with their latest product, the X1950 Pro IceQ3 gives you a lot bang for the buck, and while the AGP market is shrinking there are still people out there who can benefit from a VGA upgrade like this one.

And so we recommend the HIS X1950 Pro IceQ3 for the mainstream PC users out there:

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We like to thank Jason from Tecnacom for lending us this card for test.