XFX 7950GT AGP - a foolish upgrade?

[DanoUK]

Hello,

I purchased an XFX GF7950 512mb AGP card yesterday and I am very disappointed with the performance. Before / After benchmarks are included, but the benchmarks don't tell the whole story.

My plan was to get 12 months further use from my system by getting a new GFX card... at least that was the plan

System
antec 430p (20amp 12v)
abit NF8-V (socket 754, nForce3)
2x512mb DDR400 (not sure about memory clocks)
Athlon 64 3200 (2.2ghz 200x11 stock speed)
xfx 7950GT AGP

previous graphics card ati x800 pro (vivo version 16 pipelines, clocked at 500/1000)

old card 3dmark05 = 6331, new card = 7728
old card 3dmark06 = 2095, new card = 4376

Whilst those benchmarks appear to show improvement, not what I would call £170GBP worth of improvement. Big downside - Games are jerky now as if more HDD access time, or something else, is necassary for the new card.

Can anyone hazard a guess at the route cause of this jerkiness? Could it be a result of AGP appature / mainboard memory clock / CPU underpower?

I guess my question is, are the benchmarks and jerks the *expected result* of putting this graphics card in this system?

Is there any mileage in overclocking the other components in the system?
My mobo is very overclockable, but its been running at stock speeds until now. I can adjust bus speed, cpu multiplier and agp clock in the BIOS and within Windows nvidia Ntune can be used to adjust memory clock speed and HT multiplier.

Is AGP slot overclocking the answer or is this dangerous? I guess I am after advise as to where the bottlenecks are and what can be done.

Many thanks,

-- Dano

[PP Mguire]

Hey bro i believe that you didnt make a mistake. Ok first of all you only have a gig of ram. Second of all that big of jump on your machine with just a new video card on 06 is pretty good. HD lag time means that you probably have to much "crap" running in the background of Windows meaning it has to access the HD pagefile. (In simplefied terms, anything pushed out of ram becasue of the game gets put on the HD which everybody knows is slower). IMO i believe more ram would help, and to clean up w/e you have running in the background. Your system and cpu should be fine. Look at my specs, i max out every game and get roughly 5200 in 06. Of course, everybody knows 3dmark dont mean crap ;) Its RL performance right?

Is AGP slot overclocking the answer or is this dangerous? I guess I am after advise as to where the bottlenecks are and what can be done.DO NOT OVERCLOCKED THE AGP SLOT!!! Always keep it at 66mhz. PERIOD. I suggest if you have no experience in overclocking to not. Or just try SMALL things first. Read some faqs online about it first and know exactly what your doing from paper first THEN try. Also, I strongly suggest bios overclocking isntead of in Windows overclocking. To me seems more stable.

Clean your stuff up, possibly see if defragging your HD will help.

Hope i helped, im sure somebody else has something else to say.

[werty316]

Don't base a video cards performance based on 3DMark06 since it is a synthetic benchmark.

[Xero (1)ne]

nForce 3 boards should have a lock on the agp(and pci) frequency anyways. It probably would have been smarter to upgrade to pci-e, mabey you can buy a new mobo and trade in your video card? Idk what XFX does for trade ins, but it's always good to know where you stand.

[PP Mguire]

Hes pretty good for now, and after spending that kinda money on a card i dont think he wants to hear somethign liek that. My friends 7800GS and nF3 Ultra setup keeps up with me quite well actualy. He probably just ahs to much going on in the backgrond and the HD access is killing him.

[DanoUK]

Thanks for the advice guys. Overclocking the FSB to 210 has improved performance.

I've looked at 2GB of DDR400 ram and it seems pretty expensive to if I want CAS2. Given that my mobo only has two slots and I have to ditch my existing 1GB this seems like another potentially flawed and expensive move.

I think my next move will be a more powerful AGP motherboard
(eg) Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA (Socket AM2)

Or a mobo supporting AGP and PCI-E to give me an upgrade path
Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA (Socket 775) PCI-Express/AGP DDR2

Thanks,

-- Dan

[Xero (1)ne]

Didn't think of that PPM.

Dano, try closing every single thing you can before benching and see if there's any difference.

['Amp!']

After all else if you are still dissatisfied try to OC your CPU. Kick that pig up to 2.7ish and you should see an increase.

And run some game benchies for RL value.
But start with the ram upgrade.

[PP Mguire]

Yea, do some stress tests before and after a CPU OC (if you feel confident) and it will show you what increase it will do. Going from 1.8ghz to 2.66ghz on this 3000+ didnt really do much honestly.

[werty316]

Overclock your 3000+ and you'll see some differences.

[PP Mguire]

Who me? I have, its sitting at 2.66ghz from 1.8ghz. Not really much of a difference, he has a 3200+.

[DanoUK]

I did a lot of thinking about this, mostly when I should have been asleep!

When I considered all my options - one fact could not be ignored.
If I keep this AGP card I have to invest money to boost my current system.
And my current system is already near end-of-life!

I went back to the store this morning. Fortunately the retailer has given me a refund for the Graphics card.

Now I can think again and plan properly this time!

If I go PCI-E and DDR2 just about everything, except maybe the case, HDD, DVD and monitor, needs to be replaced.

Considering the following:

abit KN9-SLi NF570
2x1GB DDR2 PC2-6400 (800)
AMD AM2 Althon64 5200 Dual Core 2.6 (2x1mb cache)
Akasa cooler
Zalman 500w modular PSU
all about £360GBP

playing computer games is not cheap! :icon_tiphat:

[PP Mguire]

Yea and now you dont have a video card ;) Should have went with a simple 2x1gig dual channel kit like the G.Skill Value. CAS dosent really mean much anymore when you have speed.

AS for the new setup, your going to get hounded by ppl here to go C2D dude. It really dosent matter honestly.

[Xero (1)ne]

I recomend staying with your current cpu+ram, getting a new mobo, psu and a DX10 card, then when AM3 rolls around, you'll have some saved up for a new mobo, cpu, and ddr3 ram! :-D Your current cpu and ram should hold you over just fine till then.

[PP Mguire]

I went back to the store this morning. Fortunately the retailer has given me a refund for the Graphics card. To late dude.

[DanoUK]

i'm back with my x800 pro which is flash modded and clocked (16pp/256mb/500c560m)

xero freelance, i didn't understand your suggestions. My CPU is socket 754, and I don't think I can get a better S754 mobo than what I have already [abit NF8V nForce3]
i guess I'll hang on with this kit until directx10 is more affordable

thanks for the advice

[PP Mguire]

Honestly, i believe you would have been better hanging onto the 7950GT. You just needed to be more patient and tweak some things some more.

[Lord of Shadows]

Where'd you pick one up locally? All the major store websites I've checked dont have them listed.