Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-17, 18:37:

shevalier wrote on 2025-08-17, 17:55:

AMD video cards - Sapphire, AIB manufacturer №1.
I apologize for offending someone's religious feelings.

Mine was a sapphire card 😀 As is HD2600XT from OP.

Nowadays they make decent cards. I do hate them for their old coolers on X and early HD series though, those were not good for multiple reasons.

The lineup was bad. So was the X1xxx series

X1300, X1300 pro, X1600, X1650SE - 4 shaders.
X1600PRO, X1600XT, X1650PRO - 12 shaders
X1650XT - 24 shaders -> true mid end, only card that can go against the 7600GT

the X100 series' low and mid end is equally confusing and dishonest. x300, x550 and x600 are esentially the same thing. Mid end is handled by the x700 witch is a good card, but the x600 is often pitted against the 6600, and it loses badly. Both were overpriced at launch. X8xx series was ok. The GTO cards were a bit shit stock. Basically neutered to x700 levels but on a 256 bit bus (both had 8 pipelines).

Socket3 wrote on 2025-08-17, 18:16:

Serious Sam 4 is a buggy mess.

I use this level to check the processor cache.
The situation was as follows: everything was fine, then problems with Sailors 2 began.
Launched SS 4 on this episode - black screen.
Then a major Windows update, and everything was fine again.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-17, 18:37:

Mine was a sapphire card 😀

One of the online stores (I think it was German) published statistics on defects - 2% was average.
Just unlucky.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-17, 18:37:

As is HD2600XT from OP.

In those years, all manufacturers were "experimenting".
Considering that many schemes have leaked onto the Internet, they are often simply painful to look at.
This is from the point of view of a textbook on circuit design.
Then the cost of video cards increased, and engineers began to simply copy the datasheet.

Just wading in late as I have a bit of a soft spot for the old HD2600XT, though I have only played with the PCI-E version admittedly.

You can play crisis at 800 x 600 medium settings on the PCI-E GDDR3 version averaging 46fps.
Using the latest drivers avaiable for old cards in XP, I have more success with old ATi than old Nvidia - there may have been more than a problem at the time but using the latest supported xp drivers and things are smooth going in my experience. The saple size isn't big enough to prove but I certainly end up spending more time fiddling and finding earlier driver versions on green team cards.
My current videocard in my main machine is a Radeon 7800XT and the same can be said, drivers have never proven to be a problem. I try and avoid Nvidia because of their (comparatively higher number of) shady business practices but it's not like we can trust any huge corporation to be good guys.
DDU version 17.0.8.6 works with XP 32 bit edition and can be found on the internet archive, I use it a lot and it's great.
Catalyst 13.4 worked well for me on HD2000

It may be the bridge chip that is causing any instability. t may be worth putting a heat-sink on it and/or finding a way to have a case fan blow over it. I have an AGP X700 and that chip on the back get's burn-your-finger hot and has no cooling whatsoever (also sapphire).

Socket3 wrote on 2025-08-17, 19:41:

The lineup was bad. So was the X1xxx series […]
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Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-17, 18:37:

shevalier wrote on 2025-08-17, 17:55:

AMD video cards - Sapphire, AIB manufacturer №1.
I apologize for offending someone's religious feelings.

Mine was a sapphire card 😀 As is HD2600XT from OP.

Nowadays they make decent cards. I do hate them for their old coolers on X and early HD series though, those were not good for multiple reasons.

The lineup was bad. So was the X1xxx series

X1300, X1300 pro, X1600, X1650SE - 4 shaders.
X1600PRO, X1600XT, X1650PRO - 12 shaders
X1650XT - 24 shaders -> true mid end, only card that can go against the 7600GT

the X100 series' low and mid end is equally confusing and dishonest. x300, x550 and x600 are esentially the same thing. Mid end is handled by the x700 witch is a good card, but the x600 is often pitted against the 6600, and it loses badly. Both were overpriced at launch. X8xx series was ok. The GTO cards were a bit shit stock. Basically neutered to x700 levels but on a 256 bit bus (both had 8 pipelines).

No argument or fanboy defence but the confusing naming scheme was not at all limited to ATi.
You never quite know what you're going to get in that era, I have an X1600SE which is worse than a X1300
I also have a Nvidia GeForce 7300SE which had a 32bit memory bus and a 7300XT which is basically a 7600 with fewer shaders but based on the same core. The GeForce 7100 is actually a 6200 etc etc.
Then OEM cards come into the mix with even more misleading names and huge bottlenecks.

It must have been a real minefield back in the day.
Fascinating now, buying one of these old cards is a gamble, you never know what's actually inside until you plug it in (and even then you're trusting GPU-z to get it right).

Ash515253 wrote on 2025-08-18, 09:12:

It may be the bridge chip that is causing any instability. t may be worth putting a heat-sink on it and/or finding a way to have a case fan blow over it. I have an AGP X700 and that chip on the back get's burn-your-finger hot and has no cooling whatsoever (also sapphire).

Have to be extremely careful messing with bridge chip. Very fragile, very hard to fix if you damage any of the capacitors the size of speck of dust and the only place you can find one for a replacement is another card...

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-18, 09:41:

Ash515253 wrote on 2025-08-18, 09:12:

It may be the bridge chip that is causing any instability. t may be worth putting a heat-sink on it and/or finding a way to have a case fan blow over it. I have an AGP X700 and that chip on the back get's burn-your-finger hot and has no cooling whatsoever (also sapphire).

Have to be extremely careful messing with bridge chip. Very fragile, very hard to fix if you damage any of the capacitors the size of speck of dust and the only place you can find one for a replacement is another card...

so screwed if you touch it, screwed if you don't touch it... bridge chips, what a great invention!

No wonder there are so few later AGP cards.

Ash515253 wrote on 2025-08-18, 10:13:

so screwed if you touch it, screwed if you don't touch it... bridge chips, what a great invention!

No wonder there are so few later AGP cards.

Nvidia did this much better. The chip is on the same side of the board as GPU and is cooled (and protected from physical damage) by either main heatsink or separate small one. Not sure why ATI did it the way they did but yes, this chip is annoying...

7800GS:

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-18, 10:17:

Nvidia did this much better. The chip is on the same side of the board as GPU and is cooled (and protected from physical damage) […]
Show full quote

Ash515253 wrote on 2025-08-18, 10:13:

so screwed if you touch it, screwed if you don't touch it... bridge chips, what a great invention!

No wonder there are so few later AGP cards.

Nvidia did this much better. The chip is on the same side of the board as GPU and is cooled (and protected from physical damage) by either main heatsink or separate small one. Not sure why ATI did it the way they did but yes, this chip is annoying...

7800GS:

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I have investigated a lot on the rialto bridge and I think their motivation for putting it on the back of the card stems from a few things:

They have extremely short traces for both AGP and PCIe. If you look at rialto powered PCBs, the bridge is basically half way under the GPU on the backside of the PCB, directly where the PCIe interface of the GPU is.

In theory, this js very ideal in terms of signal integrity.

The other aspect is BOM cost / coolers.
Most if not every card i recall with Rialto uses the same or at least very similar cooler to their PCIe pendant. That is especially appreciated by boardpartners. They don't have to come up with a different cooling solution, especially if the chip doesn't really require it. And since the front side of the card is basically the same, the same coolers can be re-used.

AGP has been a doomed platform at that point. So you'll probably have to keep in mind that board partners might be reluctant to build new cards for a dead interface.