Catalyst Drivers for XP for Radeon X-series AGP cards? (benchmarks, drivers and questions)

Snorts . .stable this card ...bruh the HD2000 series of cards were not stable at any point in their life cycle, let alone ATI producing drivers that didn't have issues. They ran HOT loud and slow, combined with their stupidly high production costs and low die yields ATI dropped them like a hot rock as soon as the HD3000 cards were ready.

I had a 2600XT AGP back in the day and I can never recall it being truly stable at any point under XP.

Others here will say it wasn't that bad . .but rose colored glasses can hide a multitude of sins and ATI packed these cards with plenty .. including not putting a damn heatsink on the PCIe to AGP bridge chip.

The best you can hope for here is to find ones that will crash less often than others.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-05-08, 09:54:

Snorts . .stable this card ...bruh the HD2000 series of cards were not stable at any point in their life cycle, let alone ATI producing drivers that didn't have issues...

Honestly? I have the same impression about all AMD cards (got RX5700XT when it was new, that thing turned perfectly working system into a mess which could not even run a browser without crashing). And from my time with that card and discussions about it on some local forums i came to conclusion that whole "bad drivers" thing may be an excuse for faulty hardware to avoid RMAs. But i want to give it a honest try.

As for hardware... well, it has survived so far what seems to be a fair amount of use. Plenty of dust inside the heatsink and it looks like it has been disassembled a few times to clean it and service the fan... It is not horribly noisy, does get hot, so if it dies it dies...

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-05-08, 09:42:

Catalyst Drivers for XP for Radeon X-series AGP cards? (benchmarks, drivers and questions)

Yeah, i've been through that thread, but thanks for the link. Still going through all the versions suggested there, but so far the only thing i got were different crashes in different scenarios....

Archer57 wrote on 2025-05-08, 10:28:

Honestly? I have the same impression about all AMD cards (got RX5700XT when it was new, that thing turned perfectly working syst […]
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Trashbytes wrote on 2025-05-08, 09:54:

Snorts . .stable this card ...bruh the HD2000 series of cards were not stable at any point in their life cycle, let alone ATI producing drivers that didn't have issues...

Honestly? I have the same impression about all AMD cards (got RX5700XT when it was new, that thing turned perfectly working system into a mess which could not even run a browser without crashing). And from my time with that card and discussions about it on some local forums i came to conclusion that whole "bad drivers" thing may be an excuse for faulty hardware to avoid RMAs. But i want to give it a honest try.

As for hardware... well, it has survived so far what seems to be a fair amount of use. Plenty of dust inside the heatsink and it looks like it has been disassembled a few times to clean it and service the fan... It is not horribly noisy, does get hot, so if it dies it dies...

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-05-08, 09:42:

Catalyst Drivers for XP for Radeon X-series AGP cards? (benchmarks, drivers and questions)

Yeah, i've been through that thread, but thanks for the link. Still going through all the versions suggested there, but so far the only thing i got were different crashes in different scenarios....

The HD3000 cards are just a cut down refresh of the HD2000 cards, they halved the memory bus and tweaked a few things which made them cheaper to produce but they are the same cards. And yeah people kept using them for quite a while they were expensive cards and many people were not in a financial position to just replace them, that doesnt change how bad they were.

As for the heat .. just grab a 2900XT and it'll make sure you stay toasty warm even in summer !

The 5700XT was great hardware but its drivers were seriously terrible and IIRC it wasn't till after the RX6000 series was out that they managed to "mostly" fix the 5700XT driver issues, its still not perfect but certainly better.

But well ATI/AMD and driver issues go hand in hand, they for whatever reason devote less money to their driver department than they do to their hardware.

but so far the only thing i got were different crashes in different scenarios.

This more likely implies some issues with the card itself.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-05-08, 10:37:

but so far the only thing i got were different crashes in different scenarios.

This more likely implies some issues with the card itself.

Or .. XP has gotten some drivers messed up in its driver store along with multiple bad registry entries and needs to be cleaned, I cant remember if DDU has a version for XP32 but I would hit XP with that before jumping to implications.

XP and multiple different driver installs and it falling over due to that was a good source of IT work back in the day. Shit ATI drivers were also pretty good at corrupting registry entries and not removing/repairing them at uninstall .. nvidia was bad for it too but not on the level of ATI drivers.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-05-08, 10:37:

This more likely implies some issues with the card itself.

Perhaps. I do not know the history of the card.

What's weird though - if something runs it runs. I've left 3dmark05 running overnight with 8.5 driver and it was still working in the morning. Makes hardware faults not very likely IMO, though i do understand that it does not guarantee anything.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-05-08, 10:36:

The HD3000 cards are just a cut down refresh of the HD2000 cards, they halved the memory bus and tweaked a few things which made […]
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The HD3000 cards are just a cut down refresh of the HD2000 cards, they halved the memory bus and tweaked a few things which made them cheaper to produce but they are the same cards. And yeah people kept using them for quite a while they were expensive cards and many people were not in a financial position to just replace them, that doesnt change how bad they were.

As for the heat .. just grab a 2900XT and it'll make sure you stay toasty warm even in summer !

The 5700XT was great hardware but its drivers were seriously terrible and IIRC it wasn't till after the RX6000 series was out that they managed to "mostly" fix the 5700XT driver issues, its still not perfect but certainly better.

But well ATI/AMD and driver issues go hand in hand, they for whatever reason devote less money to their driver department than they do to their hardware.

Yeah, high end cards always have issues with heat. I still remember jokes going around in GTX8800 times about it being golden space heater...

Time changes everything though, faster AGP cards are quite hard to get nowadays, especially since they coincided with some well known manufacturing defects. 2600XT is not bad at all in terms of performance, even overkill for many AGP systems, so while back in the day i would have probably just replaced it with something from another GPU manufacturer nowadays it may be worth messing around with...

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-05-08, 10:44:

Or .. XP has gotten some drivers messed up in its driver store along with multiple bad registry entries and needs to be cleaned, I cant remember if DDU has a version for XP32 but I would hit XP with that before jumping to implications.

XP and multiple different driver installs and it falling over due to that was a good source of IT work back in the day. Shit ATI drivers were also pretty good at corrupting registry entries and not removing/repairing them at uninstall .. nvidia was bad for it too but not on the level of ATI drivers.

That i am aware of. To avoid wasting time messing with DDU or whatnot and having this kind of issues XP is restored from clean backup on each try. Simpler that way, only takes a couple of minutes SSD to SSD.

Let's not talk about urban legends.

I have a rock stable Radeon 2600 pro AGP DDR2 video card from Sapphire.
Well, it was glitching and going crazy for three years.
I thought it was broken.
It turned out that the motherboard had a design error - too low-power MOSFET in the AGP power supply (aka the power supply for the northbridge core)

HyperTransport was also powered by AGP via the same type transistor.
When the load changed, the whole system collapsed.

It was hard to find.
But, again, it has nothing to do with the video card, AGP settings, SBA, delayed transactions, etc.
Playing with the settings helped a little, but not significantly.

shevalier wrote on 2025-05-08, 11:05:

Let's not talk about urban legends. […]
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Let's not talk about urban legends.

I have a rock stable Radeon 2600 pro AGP DDR2 video card from Sapphire.
Well, it was glitching and going crazy for three years.
I thought it was broken.
It turned out that the motherboard had a design error - too low-power MOSFET in the AGP power supply (aka the power supply for the northbridge core)

HyperTransport was also powered by AGP via the same type transistor.
When the load changed, the whole system collapsed.

It was hard to find.
But, again, it has nothing to do with the video card, AGP settings, SBA, delayed transactions, etc.
Playing with the settings helped a little, but not significantly.

But . .urban legends is at least half of retro collecting 😜

Most urban legends have some truth to them and the HD 2000 cards are well known for not being what ATI advertised them as being.

Having owned a genuine HIS IceQ HD 2600XT AGP back in the day due to lack of finances for anything better I feel I have enough first hand knowledge of the card to talk to its ...eccentricities. (The PCIe version as I found out later was a much better behaved card)

I even played STALKER on that card ..not great, not terrible. (Pun intended)

shevalier wrote on 2025-05-08, 11:05:

Let's not talk about urban legends. […]
Show full quote

Let's not talk about urban legends.

I have a rock stable Radeon 2600 pro AGP DDR2 video card from Sapphire.
Well, it was glitching and going crazy for three years.
I thought it was broken.
It turned out that the motherboard had a design error - too low-power MOSFET in the AGP power supply (aka the power supply for the northbridge core)

HyperTransport was also powered by AGP via the same type transistor.
When the load changed, the whole system collapsed.

It was hard to find.
But, again, it has nothing to do with the video card, AGP settings, SBA, delayed transactions, etc.
Playing with the settings helped a little, but not significantly.

Well, urban legends or not, when i plug in one card and system works perfectly fine, but when i use another one it becomes an unstable mess i end up blaming the card. Ultimately it does not matter what's the cause - faulty driver, some design quirk which exposes motherboard issues or higher than usual power draw on certain rail - the end result is the same.

Though i did get the feeling something like what you describe has been happening with that 5700XT. Did not feel like drivers, which people are fast to blame. Was completely stable for some people, but completely broken for others. Could have been hardware fault on the card, but also could have been a compatibility issue with motherboard, PSU or something.

To avoid this I did test this card in completely different systems though - EP-RDA3EI board in one, GA-7N400S in another. Different PSUs too.

Just out of curiosity - in your case was power draw on that rail within spec for AGP (motherboard issue then as it could not handle that) or higher (card issue)?

The urban legends ends on some specific Catalyst version being buggy with Rialto chip, but that's not exclusive HD 2xxx thing.

~10 years ago I ran a Visiontek HD2600XT AGP for about 2 years on a P4 HT running WinXP32 and had no trouble with it. I didn't play games heavily with it but I did test it out enough to say it was stable.
The explanation I've read for the driver issues is that ATI didn't want these GPUs to be used on AGP cards but then some card manufacturers did it anyway, so the driver support was inconsistent.

I'm not finding any perfectly clear notes about what driver I used, but I *think* the driver I used must have been this, because I saved it in a folder for "HD2000-3000 AGP Visiontek"

NWXP.exe 125,990,720 bytes (for WinXP)
NW_win7.exe 121,252,355 bytes (for Vista/Win7 - I never tried this, I only used XP)

In 2015, Visiontek's web site had these drivers listed for their HD2600XT AGP card.
I just checked now and I can't find this generation of cards listed on their site anymore in the "legacy" driver section. They have older cards and newer cards, but not the "HD" range.
I haven't tried archive.org
I already have the file but I can't upload it here.

My notes on the NWXP.exe file say that it installs Catalyst 10.4, so maybe the generic ATI driver 10.4 would work the same. Or not - since ATI was anti-AGP at this point, maybe only the 3rd party branded drivers work properly? Not sure about that.

S.t.a.l.k.e.r. 😀

Archer57 wrote on 2025-05-08, 11:34:

To avoid this I did test this card in completely different systems though - EP-RDA3EI board in one, GA-7N400S in another. Different PSUs too.

They're both in their 20s, come on.

If you really want to understand, then install XP 32 bit and 3DMark2003.
And any other sufficiently productive video card - from 5000+ points.

Video test #4 - Mother Nature
+
СPU test #1
In a cycle of 5 hours on 3 different days.

If the computer is really stable (not "stable enough"), you will know about it.
My JetWay was also "stable enough" with other cards.
It could even work for half a day without freezing.
The HD2600 just detects this much faster.

PS. The 2600 AGP core is powered by the AGP +12V bus, additional power is only +5V and only for video memory.
That was the accepted practice at the time.

shevalier wrote on 2025-05-08, 12:33:

S.t.a.l.k.e.r. 😀

Yup

Not great, Not terrible.

playable as was my experience, well playable FPS till the huge fire fights got going between Freedom and Duty ..good times !

I have not had any driver issues with my 2900XT.

I've had plenty with my AGP 2600XT. I think this might be down to the bridge chip that was used as some boards just refused to recognize the card.

shevalier wrote on 2025-05-08, 12:33:

S.t.a.l.k.e.r. 😀

I can't get it to run smooth with higher settings even on my 2900XT, and its the one that's got the STALKER promo!

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-05-08, 13:33:

Not great, Not terrible.

Munx wrote on 2025-05-08, 13:56:

I can't get it to run smooth with higher settings even on my 2900XT, and its the one that's got the STALKER promo!

As I got older, I stopped being a fan of STALKER or GTA. Apparently, I don't identify with the main characters.

I only have STALKER benchmark installed on this PC. I can also show Furmark and 3Dmark 😀

This screenshot demonstrates which is what the topic starter asked for
- that there are 2600 AGP that do not hang under load
- Catalyst 14.4

P.S. I always say that "XP builds" are pretty pointless.
- Old hardware at the time couldn't handle the games
- These games work fine on Windows 11.

shevalier wrote on 2025-05-08, 14:16:

- that there are 2600 AGP that do not hang under load - Catalyst 14.4 […]
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- that there are 2600 AGP that do not hang under load
- Catalyst 14.4

P.S. I always say that "XP builds" are pretty pointless.
- Old hardware at the time couldn't handle the games
- These games work fine on Windows 11.

Good. This gives me another version to try.

However you misunderstood me. Does not "hang under load". It crashes in various transient conditions. Like starting a specific game. Or specific test in 3dmark. Or changing screen resolution. If it runs it runs and it ran 3dmark05 in a loop for 10+ hours just fine but it crashes trying to start second game test in 03.

As for the builds like this - yeah, they are kind of pointless from "games" perspective. I just like this platform with all its quirks and messing with this HW is fun. I think this is the reason many people do it, not actual games. If i wanted XP for games i'd throw together LGA1155 system which would cost less than one of this AGP cards and would run everything perfectly.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-05-08, 14:58:

[However you misunderstood me. Does not "hang under load". It crashes in various transient conditions.

That's why I wrote
Graphics test #4 + CPU test #1

This combination is very good at revealing instability due to load type changes.
High GPU load + average CPU load, load drop when loading the next test, high CPU load and average GPU load.
I had about the same thing.
It crashed when there was a sudden change in context, for example, a change in location in Far Cry.
I went into the corridor - reboot, went out into nature - hung.
That is, at the moment when a large amount of data begins to be transferred via AGP.
Only with the Radeon 9800 this happened once every few hours, and with the 2600 PRO - several times an hour.