shevalier wrote on 2025-05-08, 15:23:

That's why I wrote Graphics test #4 + CPU test #1 […]
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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.

Well, i'll do the tests. No harm in it. However the system really is stable in this configuration: https://valid.x86.fr/ctcxyg

I've played through at least KOTOR1/2 on it, this is like few hundred hours with zero crashes. Do not mind tiny 5% overclock, that was removed when replacing the card.

Second (gigabyte) board i am much less confident in, it has its own issues with RAM. I'd expect the issues to be different on different boards though, not the same, that's why i used it to verify they are the same...

Then I really don't know what to assume.
But I'm more than sure that it's not a software problem.

shevalier wrote on 2025-05-08, 15:53:

Then I really don't know what to assume.
But I'm more than sure that it's not a software problem.

Thanks for trying to help. Yeah, it is confusing and suspicious to me too.

May be i should try to set it up on a bench and see what's happening with those voltage rails when i run stuff...

I always use Catalyst 9.1 first, and use 10.2 or newer only (like 11.4/11.6), if game has issues for Terascale things.
AGP or not, you just have to force install official driver by picking it from Advanced installation list (otherwise it won't install at all).

I ordered today MSI ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO 512MB DDR2 AGP with passive cooling, pretty cool design thou. I play mostly rpgs, rts strategies , not too demanding games, but i always like to experiment to see how it will behave with my Pentium 3/Tualatin 1.4 (overclocked to 1.5). Judging on your comments i will not have a good time, but anyway i`ll try it for sake of testing. 😉 Wish me luck.

Studiostriver wrote on 2025-07-03, 02:12:

I ordered today MSI ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO 512MB DDR2 AGP with passive cooling, pretty cool design thou. I play mostly rpgs, rts strategies , not too demanding games, but i always like to experiment to see how it will behave with my Pentium 3/Tualatin 1.4 (overclocked to 1.5). Judging on your comments i will not have a good time, but anyway i`ll try it for sake of testing. 😉 Which me luck.

Do give it a try before assuming anything. I still do not know what causes the issues i am having conclusively, but here are my observations so far:

- It is not the drivers. My initial assumption when starting this thread was false. It is something hardware related, as when it works it works with any drivers (obviously with some bugs, but those are normal for AMD).

- It is not power supplies. I swapped a few on working and non working configurations - makes no difference.

- The card is not faulty, of that i am about 99% sure. It works in some configurations with no issues.

- Motherboards i am using are not faulty. I've tested with literally 10s of different cards - from GF2 to FX, radeon 9x, GF6, GF7, etc - everything works. Only this card does not. This is with multiple motherboards from different manufacturers too.

- On socketA/nforce2 it works if i set FSB to 333. On multiple boards from different manufacturers. And with decent CPU, like 3000+ AXDA3000DKV4D, it works well and performance is actually good. This does not affect anything card related like AGP frequency so not sure how or why - i can not explain it, but it is what it is.

- On S478 board i have with RDRAM and 2Ghz northwood it works too - no stability issues at all. But performance is poor - min FPS is very low, a lot of stuttering. Again - not completely sure why. Yeah, it is slower than 3000+ athlon, but it still should not be completely horrible. If i put 7300GT into this system, which is slower, performance is a lot better.

- When it works performance in older games, like <DX9, is not amazing. It usually works, is mostly sufficient, but again - 7300GT performs better. Mostly in terms of min FPS.

Make of that what you will, but at this point my opinion/guess is - something is either out of spec or marginal on this cards. Probably related to signalling. And that makes them only work reliably on some boards/in some configurations where it can be tolerated. This would also explain amount of issues people are having with this cards and rather... divided opinions on them. A lot of people falsely blame drivers too, as i initially did.

Personally at this point i've pretty much given up. I will keep the card, may be some day i'll have a system where it works. May be i'll resell it later for more money - it'll only get more expensive over time. But i do not see a reason to bother trying to use it anymore - it just is not good, in multiple ways including compatibility with older stuff for which systems like this are built. And i am definitely not going to buy any more late AMD AGP cards - even if they technically are faster i see no point. Compatibility is more important - if i wanted more performance there always is an option to go with newer platform and pci-e.

https://drivers.dosreloaded.de/index.php?b=Gr … 2FHD3xxx_HD4xxx

Radeon HD2600 wasn’t that great on AGP, I also have some
They ran great on Intel chipsets for me, but causing problems with most other SiS, NVIDIA (random freezes etc)
Your issues are looking like compatibility problems w PCIe Bridge
You can install rivatuner und try to disable AGP Features like SBA, FastWrites etc

Performance is actually ok with a Core 2 CPU, but on Athlon XP already cpu bound
The DDR2 Cards aren’t great watch out for DDR3 Cards.

Thanks for the link, i'll download and store that just in case.

matze79 wrote on 2025-07-03, 04:21:

Your issues are looking like compatibility problems w PCIe Bridge
You can install rivatuner und try to disable AGP Features like SBA, FastWrites etc

Perhaps...
I've tried messing with AGP, some of the boards i've used have a bunch of options in BIOS. I've tried disabling SBA, fast writes, limiting it to x4, even lowering frequency to 50Mhz.

Does not seem to affect stability at all.

matze79 wrote on 2025-07-03, 04:21:

Performance is actually ok with a Core 2 CPU, but on Athlon XP already cpu bound

I'd expect it to be no worse than on slower cards though, CPU bound or not. This, however, is not necessarily the case here.

There is very little (if any) reason to use core2 with AGP and such card too. I mean core2 with AGP and something older may be great for compatibility with older games, but with a card like this... no advantages over pci-e, which offers much wider and cheaper choice of cards.

matze79 wrote on 2025-07-03, 04:21:

The DDR2 Cards aren’t great watch out for DDR3 Cards.

Yep, mine is DDR3. What's annoying is that they are often sold without mentioning memory type for the same price, intentionally or not. Some people just do not understand the significance, others are eager to scam.

Studiostriver wrote on 2025-07-03, 02:12:

Which me luck.

Best luck and everything! I would love to read about your experience. If you have time, check out this tread if you haven't already: Radeon Sapphire HD 2600 Pro AGP advice needed

Halofiber86 wrote on 2025-07-03, 20:05:

Studiostriver wrote on 2025-07-03, 02:12:

Which me luck.

Best luck and everything! I would love to read about your experience. If you have time, check out this tread if you haven't already: Radeon Sapphire HD 2600 Pro AGP advice needed

I`ll check it right know. Hahah, i wrote which in a hurry. 😀

Archer57 wrote on 2025-07-03, 03:46:

- On socketA/nforce2 it works if i set FSB to 333. On multiple boards from different manufacturers. And with decent CPU, like 3000+ AXDA3000DKV4D, it works well and performance is actually good. This does not affect anything card related like AGP frequency so not sure how or why - i can not explain it, but it is what it is.

- On S478 board i have with RDRAM and 2Ghz northwood it works too - no stability issues at all. But performance is poor - min FPS is very low, a lot of stuttering. Again - not completely sure why. Yeah, it is slower than 3000+ athlon, but it still should not be completely horrible. If i put 7300GT into this system, which is slower, performance is a lot better.

I tend to think it is related to load and board design. Athlon XPs are multiplier locked so you can't test 2.2Ghz running at 333 FSB. It would take a later board like socket 754 where CPUs can be easily clocked down via multiplier to diagnose it. The problem should disappear at lower CPU clocks.

You can also try running the old Sanctuary or Tropics unigine benchmarks. They work in Windows XP. I use Sanctuary for testing retro cards. A card that survives 1-2 hours is usually ok. These should be less CPU bound than 3d mark. In Windows 7 I use Heaven benchmark for stability testing.

Radeon HD2600XT AGP doesn't seem to be special in any way. It is about equal to GeForce 7600 GT AGP in raw pixel/texture rate.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-07-13, 12:56:

I tend to think it is related to load and board design.

Probably. The only thing that i know for sure is: all hardware is functional, nothing is faulty and there is some sort of hardware compatibility issue. Nothing to do with drivers, which i originally suspected, as far as i can tell.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-07-13, 12:56:

Athlon XPs are multiplier locked so you can't test 2.2Ghz running at 333 FSB. It would take a later board like socket 754 where CPUs can be easily clocked down via multiplier to diagnose it. The problem should disappear at lower CPU clocks.

Wait, but i did? I mean it is not exactly 2200, it is 2167, but i do not think that'd make a difference. I have 333x13 3000+....

AlexZ wrote on 2025-07-13, 12:56:

Radeon HD2600XT AGP doesn't seem to be special in any way. It is about equal to GeForce 7600 GT AGP in raw pixel/texture rate.

Not necessarily special, but it is a high performance AGP card. That in itself is kind of special nowadays. 7600GT/7800GS are rare and expensive, HD2x and HD3x cards are much more common and cheaper. Now i know exactly why...

One more thing i noticed with this card - performance is less consistent than with 7600GT. A lot more FPS variations and even stutters depenting on what's happening on the screen.

Not necessarily special, but it is a high performance AGP card

It's not. I can understand why someone would want to buy such a card now, due to dried up stock of decent AGP cards, but let's not gaslight anyone about it. HD26xx/36xx were not desirable AGP cards for a reason.

The Serpent Rider wrote on Yesterday, 01:23:

It's not. I can understand why someone would want to buy such a card now, due to dried up stock of decent AGP cards, but let's not gaslight anyone about it. HD26xx/36xx were not desirable AGP cards for a reason.

Yeah, at least for me the reason would be software and hardware compatibility. It does not work well with old games and does not work correctly with many motherboards. This is arguably more important for old stuff than performance, as compatibility with old games is the reason to mess with old hardware in the first place.

That said when it does work raw performance is quite good for AGP. On a level of better cards like higher end GF7. And HD3850 is generally considered "the fastest AGP card", even though i suspect all the compatibility issues will still be there...

As was mentioned by @The Serpent Rider, HD 2600 XT isn't at the high end GF7 level of performance (especially the "nerfed" versions with DDR2).
It might get to 7800 GS performance level IF it has GDDR3 memory, AND you like to play mostly DX10 capable titles on WinXP PC with AGP port (like Crysis, Bioshock, etc.).
In all other cases, it will lose to 7800 class GPUs (be it due to lack of fillrate, memory bandwidth [DDR2 versions], or compatibility reasons).

agent_x007 wrote on Yesterday, 06:42:

It might get to 7800 GS performance level IF it has GDDR3 memory, AND you like to play mostly DX10 capable titles on WinXP PC with AGP port (like Crysis, Bioshock, etc.).

Yep, exactly. And since there is no AGP 7800GT - 7800GS kind of is "high end GF7".

There are, theoretically 7900GS and 7950GT, but those are quite rare.

And obviously DDR2 versions are no good...

Those high-end FPS games wouldn't benefit from a faster GPU, it would be mostly slow paced games like FIFA or maybe Sims 2. The CPUs available for boards that use AGP are usually too slow. Windows XP/Vista era saw major development of CPUs, similarly to previous decade and game developers went overboard with system requirements in order the stand out in the market.

It might get to 7800 GS performance level IF it has GDDR3 memory

Not when MSAA is involved.

Archer57 wrote on Yesterday, 07:17:

Yep, exactly. And since there is no AGP 7800GT - 7800GS kind of is "high end GF7". […]
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agent_x007 wrote on Yesterday, 06:42:

It might get to 7800 GS performance level IF it has GDDR3 memory, AND you like to play mostly DX10 capable titles on WinXP PC with AGP port (like Crysis, Bioshock, etc.).

Yep, exactly. And since there is no AGP 7800GT - 7800GS kind of is "high end GF7".

There are, theoretically 7900GS and 7950GT, but those are quite rare.

And obviously DDR2 versions are no good...

I have a fully working 7900GS AGP, I can say the drivers for it are .. not great and can be incompatible with a lot of older games but for WinXP stuff its ok. Id love to get a 7950GT AGP but they are even more rare than the 7900GS are, especially in working condition.

Just to be clear, because it seems like i am trying to defend this card now and i am not even sure how we got here: This is not a good card and i do not recommend anyone to buy it.

- Hardware compatibility is awful. I've definitely spent more time than it is worth finding a system in which it works. It is not a card you can buy for your system, it is a card you have to build a system for, so that it works.

- Software compatibility is bad. Drivers are garbage, as always from AMD. But even with those which work old games do not work well. Not to mention silly issues like 3dmark hanging on collecting system info.

- For games which can actually benefit from DX10 performance is not going to be sufficient. From card and from whatever platform it is used in, unless it is something silly like LGA775+C2D with AGP.

- Coolers on (the most common) sapphire cards are bad. Too hot, loud, annoyingly time consuming to disassemble and clean, prone to quickly getting clogged by dust. +no bridge cooling as a bonus.

Yet, still, it is among the fastest AGP cards in terms of performance. How many are significantly faster? 7900GS and 7950GT? 7800GS/7600GT would be comparable and faster with some settings? And obviously HD3850 which will also have the same downsides. Perhaps something from HD4nnn?

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 11:12:

I have a fully working 7900GS AGP, I can say the drivers for it are .. not great and can be incompatible with a lot of older games but for WinXP stuff its ok. Id love to get a 7950GT AGP but they are even more rare than the 7900GS are, especially in working condition.

Yeah, i've seen both for sale for around 500-800$ and that's definitely above what i am willing to pay for known defective (bumpgate) hardware. To be honest - even around a hundred for 7600GT or 7800GS is kind of a lot and makes whole idea of high end AGP systems questionable, but that i was able justify...