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First post, by classicvga

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Hi All,
Since I have these cards in my workshop now it would be shame not to compare them. Hope you will enjoy the comparison of the fastest AGP available! 😀

bit.ly/2VzlkyR

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Reply 2 of 18, by cyclone3d

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Nice... This makes me want to run some benches with a 7950GT AGP which was the fastest AGP ccard released by nVidia.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/nvidia-g71.g47

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Reply 4 of 18, by classicvga

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cyclone3d wrote:

Nice... This makes me want to run some benches with a 7950GT AGP which was the fastest AGP ccard released by nVidia.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/nvidia-g71.g47

Yes. It would be nice to see! I will also update my scores in the future when I get the working unit on my hands 😀

Anyway, HD3850 is still the king according to RETRO Hardware youtube site. He put 7950 against 3850 and in most cases Geforce was the weaker card overall.

Reply 5 of 18, by clueless1

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Nice! Thanks for posting results. The fastest AGP cards I had were the 9800Pro and 6800GS. Wanted the HD3850 but by then I had hit a gaming hiatus that lasted roughly a decade. By the time I got back into gaming, it was 2014 and I ended up with the 750ti (which I'm still using).

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Reply 6 of 18, by appiah4

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clueless1 wrote:

Nice! Thanks for posting results. The fastest AGP cards I had were the 9800Pro and 6800GS. Wanted the HD3850 but by then I had hit a gaming hiatus that lasted roughly a decade. By the time I got back into gaming, it was 2014 and I ended up with the 750ti (which I'm still using).

I actually used the X1600PRO for a while after the 9800PRO but then moved onto PCI-Express, and got an HD3850. I used that for a good while before upgrading to an HD4850, then an HD7770, and now an RX480. ATI Forever!

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 7 of 18, by agent_x007

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You have 3,3V capable 7900 GS AGP - that's quite something !
Have you tried running it on 440BX motherboard ?

Add 20% on top of your 7900 GS scores, and you should get what full 7950 GT AGP could score (at the same clocks in absolute BEST case scenario - ie. never in real live).

As for tests, your CPU isn't fast enough for 3DMark 01 SE, Quake III Arena, and Doom 3 (it limits 3850 to 7900 GS speed). Actual difference (or where it should be), is represented by later 3DMarks and F.E.A.R. Also, you should add Crysis to this tests...

In general : HD 3850 512MB will destroy 7900 GS 256MB in anything DirectX 8+ based (OpenGL stuff should work better on NV [GPU FLOPs rating be damned 😁] since drivers for it are hit and miss on ATI/AMD side). Assuming you are not limited by your platform (CPU/RAM/Chipset).
3850 is downclocked 3870, which in turn competed with 9600 GT in performance over 11 years ago (just FYI).

Good thing about 7900 GS is that you can use it on Win98 (256MB VRAM with AGP 3,3V are great things to have in this case).

PS. Why bit.ly and not standard hyperlink : LINK ?

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Reply 8 of 18, by classicvga

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Lots of good comments and suggestions here! thx!

agent_x007 wrote:
You have 3,3V capable 7900 GS AGP - that's quite something ! Have you tried running it on 440BX motherboard ? […]
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You have 3,3V capable 7900 GS AGP - that's quite something !
Have you tried running it on 440BX motherboard ?

Don't have any 440BX yet. I just started hunting down for stuff from that era. Future project for sure.

Add 20% on top of your 7900 GS scores, and you should get what full 7950 GT AGP could score (at the same clocks in absolute BEST case scenario - ie. never in real live).

As for tests, your CPU isn't fast enough for 3DMark 01 SE, Quake III Arena, and Doom 3 (it limits 3850 to 7900 GS speed). Actual difference (or where it should be), is represented by later 3DMarks and F.E.A.R. Also, you should add Crysis to this tests...

Totally true! Especially Quake3 Arena which shows ridiculous over 600fps 😀

In general : HD 3850 512MB will destroy 7900 GS 256MB in anything DirectX 8+ based (OpenGL stuff should work better on NV [GPU FLOPs rating be damned 😁] since drivers for it are hit and miss on ATI/AMD side). Assuming you are not limited by your platform (CPU/RAM/Chipset).
3850 is downclocked 3870, which in turn competed with 9600 GT in performance over 11 years ago (just FYI).

Good thing about 7900 GS is that you can use it on Win98 (256MB VRAM with AGP 3,3V are great things to have in this case).

That is another thing I am going to try in the future! That would be perfect 440BX/Win98SE platform for testing. But for now I stick mostly to WindowsXP.

PS. Why bit.ly and not standard hyperlink : LINK ?

cheers! 😀

Reply 10 of 18, by looking4awayout

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I used to have an HD3850 on my Tualatin RDD with the VIA Apollo Pro 133T chipset. While it worked, whenever there was any kind of lighting effect, such as dynamic lights, explosions and so on, the framerate would drop to 1 FPS. Due to that issue, benchmarks score were extremely disappointing, slower than the overclocked 6800GT it used to replace. That card died shortly after while being in storage, for no apparent reason.

I still have a 7800GS, but unfortunately that one has issues as well: it runs well the first time. Then, the second time it begins to slow down to 20/25 FPS, and then it begins to BSOD constantly with the same usual "driver is stuck in an infinite loop" message. Replacing the thermal paste and changing driver versions has not fixed anything.

I don't know if I just have been unlucky with those cards or if my chipset is incompatible (I heard that VIA chipsets can have issues with some bridged AGP cards). But on the other hand, I have been using an ATI Radeon X1950 Pro, which is another bridged card, and works with absolutely no issue whatsoever, on the same system.

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3

Reply 11 of 18, by appiah4

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HD3850 and HD4650 AGP cards use AGP bridge chips that are a lot more problematic compared to early PCIe to AGP stuff like X1950. I use an X1950 AGP in my Socket 754 system and love it as well. I also have HD3850 and HD4650 but I never bothered to use them for long, I feel AGP had long since died before these novelty cards hit the market.

The issue you have there is an ancient motherboard (Socket 370 chipset, ultimately) with a card that is almost a decade younger - it would be amazing if you didn't have issues.

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Reply 12 of 18, by looking4awayout

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Yeah. The X1950 Pro seems to be the best solution for such a system, as it is much faster than a Geforce 6800GT/6800 Ultra, and faster than a 7800GS.

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3

Reply 13 of 18, by greasemonkey90s

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My only gripe is people who use x1950pro/xt agp on unbalanced systems like pre 939 systems create a bottleneck. Anyway this onesided benchmarking by the op would have been more interesting with a x1950 instead. Either way i appreciate the data which is still important.

Reply 14 of 18, by appiah4

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greasemonkey90s wrote:

My only gripe is people who use x1950pro/xt agp on unbalanced systems like pre 939 systems create a bottleneck. Anyway this onesided benchmarking by the op would have been more interesting with a x1950 instead. Either way i appreciate the data which is still important.

Let's make that pre Socket-754 and I'll agree 😎

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Reply 15 of 18, by Standard Def Steve

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looking4awayout wrote:

Yeah. The X1950 Pro seems to be the best solution for such a system, as it is much faster than a Geforce 6800GT/6800 Ultra, and faster than a 7800GS.

For an overclocked Tualatin, I find that the 6800GT is the best card overall, since you're able to use much older drivers with less overhead. On a P3 system pushing this class of card, low driver overhead is far more important than raw GPU speed. GPU speed comes into play with faster CPUs like an an Athlon 64 or 3.2+GHz P4.

When I tested these faster AGP cards in my own Tualatin DDR system, the 6800GT typically came out ahead.

Tested system was a PIII-S @ 1.63GHz, 155MHz FSB, 2GB DDR at 310MHz, 2-2-2-5 timings, X-Fi, QDI Advance 12T, and XP SP3.

3DMark2001SE:
GeForce 6800GT (drv 81.98)- 14,180
Radeon X1950 Pro (Cat 7.3) - 13,844
Radeon 9800 Pro (Cat 4.12) - 12,604
GeForce 7800GS (drv 91.31) - massive artifacts. Bridge chip not compatible with Apollo Pro 266T chipset.

3DMark2003:
Radeon x1950 Pro - 12,062
GeForce 6800GT - 10,087
Radeon 9800 Pro - 5,560
GeForce 7800GS - Massive artifacts

Doom 3 Timedemo1, 1024x768 "Ultra"
GeForce 6800GT - 50.8 fps
GeForce 7800GS - 48.3 fps (it actually ran without any artifacts!)
Radeon x1950 Pro - 44.0 fps
Radeon 9800 Pro - 34.8 fps

Quake III Arena timedemo001, 1024x768
Radeon 9800 Pro: 220.2 fps
GeForce 6800GT: 218.4 fps
GeForce 7800GS: 212.4 fps (another game that was free of artifacts!)
Radeon x1950 Pro: 199.6 fps

NFS Most Wanted (2005) - 1280x1024, most settings enabled/high
GeForce 6800GT: Fairly smooth, I'd say averaging around 30fps
Radeon x1950 Pro: Inconsistent frame rate. Though overall frame rate was similar to the 6800GT, there was lots of juddering, making it very unpleasant to play.
Radeon 9800 Pro: Only 15-20 fps, but at least it was consistent, unlike the x1950 Pro.
GeForce 7800GS: Artifacts.

Crysis (2007) - DX9, 800x600, everything low:
GeForce 6800GT: 23.4 fps
Radeon 9800 Pro: 22.5 fps
Radeon x1950 Pro: 19.1 fps. The juddering was destroying its average frame rate
GeForce 7800GS: Artifacts

And it's the same story with most other games I've played on this machine. Generally, the 6800GT comes out on top, and sometimes by quite a margin! The 9800 Pro does surprisingly well in very CPU-limited games and is usually as good (sometimes slightly better) than the 6800GT (eg, 3DMark 99/2000 and games from 1999-2001). The x1950Pro falls flat in older games, sometimes trailing the 6800GT and 9800 Pro by as much as 15%. In newer, more GPU-limited games, it's often mired in a juddery mess. This card is a lot nicer in my 2.64GHz Athlon 64 machine, where it easily and consistently outperforms the 6800GT.

The 7800GS isn't 100% compatible with these older VIA chipsets. A few games work fine, but the vast majority of them cause the card to just break out in artifacts. The 7800GS works fine in my i815 PIII board, but with a 512MB RAM cap and plain old PC133, that board makes me bored.

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Tualatin: PIII-S @ 1628MHz | QDI Advance 12T | 2GB DDR-310 | 6800GT | X-Fi | 500GB HDD | 3DMark01: 14,059
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Reply 16 of 18, by swaaye

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looking4awayout wrote:

Yeah. The X1950 Pro seems to be the best solution for such a system, as it is much faster than a Geforce 6800GT/6800 Ultra, and faster than a 7800GS.

And superior image quality across the board. It should have slightly nicer texture filtering than HD 2000 - 5000 too actually. Less mipmap transition shimmering as long as HQ anisotropic is enabled.

And it supports 16-bit color dithering, unlike those Radeon HD cards. Great for old games and dgVoodoo1.

Run Catalyst ≤ 7.11 for best luck with older OpenGL games.

Reply 17 of 18, by greasemonkey90s

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appiah4 wrote:
greasemonkey90s wrote:

My only gripe is people who use x1950pro/xt agp on unbalanced systems like pre 939 systems create a bottleneck. Anyway this onesided benchmarking by the op would have been more interesting with a x1950 instead. Either way i appreciate the data which is still important.

Let's make that pre Socket-754 and I'll agree 😎

well to be unbias to what i just said 🤣. honestly i know to each is own right its all in the name of playing games so it doesnt matter. how about only if its presented in the manner like such cards suck in my system and spreading misinformation which i have seen the past. mostly see it in s478 builds seem like the drug of choice is the x1950pro. personally playing with my rare x1950xt agp i have tried it on everything from 478-775conroe and all i can say its a much better experience instead of playing the push AA card and im good . socket 754 is reserved for my 6800 ultra but too be honest when you hoard out many cards like myself some potential builds seem redundant when you know you have 1 card that can do it all.

Reply 18 of 18, by greasemonkey90s

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swaaye wrote:
And superior image quality across the board. It should have slightly nicer texture filtering than HD 2000 - 5000 too actually. L […]
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looking4awayout wrote:

Yeah. The X1950 Pro seems to be the best solution for such a system, as it is much faster than a Geforce 6800GT/6800 Ultra, and faster than a 7800GS.

And superior image quality across the board. It should have slightly nicer texture filtering than HD 2000 - 5000 too actually. Less mipmap transition shimmering as long as HQ anisotropic is enabled.

And it supports 16-bit color dithering, unlike those Radeon HD cards. Great for old games and dgVoodoo1.

Run Catalyst ≤ 7.11 for best luck with older OpenGL games.

interesting i didn't know that about the 16-bit color dithering thanks.