I can check my x1950GT tomorrow, same layout.

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-05-07, 19:33:

I can check my x1950GT tomorrow, same layout.

Wow, thank you! BTW I noticed me referencing R29 correctly in the beginning of my post and then writing R5 in the end. To avoid the confusion, It's R29 😀

I've got the exact same card as the Retroweb one. Though that card seems to be missing something rather important... 🤔 If tehsiggi doesn't get back to you I can pull mine out and have a look (though they're much more likely to know what to tell you).

Seems like there's been a recent swell of interest for X1950's here - inspired me to dig mine out and try it out in my own XP 2600+ system. I had my own issues getting the card working, which were eventually solved thanks to an old thread here. It was a driver issue and trying one of the Omega series of drivers got it working perfectly.

Hey there. Little one is still sleeping, so I could quickly grab the card from the lab.

The missing resistor R29 is part of the AGP speed detection pins (A3 - GC_DET#),

Here is the part of another Rialto based Radeon with the same arrangement:

You have the neighbor (R18) going to A2, with 5.1Ohms, just as the schematic. R29 is a 0 Ohm jumper link, measured it on my X1950GT as well.

Let me know if you need more values, the card is here and I can more or less measure anything.

Can't desolder C1 and C5 right now because my equipment is in the lab, however by their position, i'd assume 100nF 0402 form factor for both of them.

Then i'll just bridge the pads should make for a 0 OHM resistor. Solder suitable caps and test.
Interesting, I have a vague memory that i concluded that my card behaved irrationally.
I only got a picture from it once (maybe briefly or very low resolution,
never got to driver installation i think, maybe it crashed loading windows? This got me thinking now that i only had same problem as UBIQ?) and only worked in one of my motherboards.
Then it never posted again after i started working on it.
I did switch the 2 jumpers on the back around in all combinations without luck.
Now i don't even know what they do or how they "should" be set.

Thanks again guys, lets see what happens, looks like a good friday night to me!

Soldered 0 OHM resistor and took some caps from a broken hard drive, could work?

Also, this is the 2 jumpers i was talking about, with the markings 1 ON and 2 kE, what could they possibly do, and what setting do i try?

Set the 1 to up and leave the 2 on low.
That's what my card has.

Give it a shot.

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-05-08, 19:54:

Set the 1 to up and leave the 2 on low.
That's what my card has.

Give it a shot.

👍

Good luck!

First i tried the card in my Athlon system, GPU fan stuck at 100%, no picture, cpu fan turning on and off seemed like bootloop/nopost but rialto was getting hot. I proceeded to try different monitors and dvi ports/cables/vga cable with adapter, and when i booted the system after changing some combinations of cables, i heard the gpu fan calm down for the first time, like i heard the fanspeed dropping from 100% down to 20% right when its booting, but still got no picture.

I gave up on that system and brought my Sempron system to try in. Tried the widescreen monitor with dvi cable in the second dvi port, still nothing i thought, but then i restarted the monitor and...

Well bois, we got picture! On both my Sempron and retried on the Athlon and got picure there too!

ettla wrote on 2026-05-08, 22:07:

First i tried the card in my Athlon system, GPU fan stuck at 100%, no picture, cpu fan turning on and off seemed like bootloop/n […]
Show full quote

First i tried the card in my Athlon system, GPU fan stuck at 100%, no picture, cpu fan turning on and off seemed like bootloop/nopost but rialto was getting hot. I proceeded to try different monitors and dvi ports/cables/vga cable with adapter, and when i booted the system after changing some combinations of cables, i heard the gpu fan calm down for the first time, like i heard the fanspeed dropping from 100% down to 20% right when its booting, but still got no picture.

I gave up on that system and brought my Sempron system to try in. Tried the widescreen monitor with dvi cable in the second dvi port, still nothing i thought, but then i restarted the monitor and...

Well bois, we got picture! On both my Sempron and retried on the Athlon and got picure there too!

Spoiler

The attachment 20260508_233538.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20260508_233843.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20260508_233523.jpg is no longer available

Great news! Happy to see the card working again.

ettla wrote on 2026-05-08, 22:07:

First i tried the card in my Athlon system, GPU fan stuck at 100%, no picture, cpu fan turning on and off seemed like bootloop/n […]
Show full quote

First i tried the card in my Athlon system, GPU fan stuck at 100%, no picture, cpu fan turning on and off seemed like bootloop/nopost but rialto was getting hot. I proceeded to try different monitors and dvi ports/cables/vga cable with adapter, and when i booted the system after changing some combinations of cables, i heard the gpu fan calm down for the first time, like i heard the fanspeed dropping from 100% down to 20% right when its booting, but still got no picture.

I gave up on that system and brought my Sempron system to try in. Tried the widescreen monitor with dvi cable in the second dvi port, still nothing i thought, but then i restarted the monitor and...

Well bois, we got picture! On both my Sempron and retried on the Athlon and got picure there too!

Spoiler

The attachment 20260508_233538.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20260508_233843.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20260508_233523.jpg is no longer available

Great! Were you able to get drivers loaded and have it actually push some pixels? That was my whole headache with this card.

(Also, jealous of your stock cooler, mine came with an absolutely hideous aftermarket Evercool monstrosity)

ettla wrote on 2026-05-08, 19:40:

Also, this is the 2 jumpers i was talking about, with the markings 1 ON and 2 kE, what could they possibly do, and what setting do i try?

I recall the jumpers are there to switch between PAL or NTSC on TV-Out.

ubiq wrote on 2026-05-09, 13:04:

(Also, jealous of your stock cooler, mine came with an absolutely hideous aftermarket Evercool monstrosity)

You definitely don't want to use this card without some sort of radiators on the VRM.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2026-05-09, 13:25:

You definitely don't want to use this card without some sort of radiators on the VRM.

Yeah, I'm going to take care of that. Which is the VRM - the big chip that says VITEC, or the two little ones above it?

Great news! Happy to see the card working again.

Just getting a picture from this card felt like a real victory, was fearing it needed a new Rialto/Bridge chip...

Great! Were you able to get drivers loaded and have it actually push some pixels? That was my whole headache with this card.

Had to do other things until now, so i have not tried installing drivers yet. But now Im really excited, just dug out a wiped harddrive to install fresh windows xp/drivers/software to test this tonight!

(Also, jealous of your stock cooler, mine came with an absolutely hideous aftermarket Evercool monstrosity)

This got me thinking about cooling if maybe I should install some small heatsink with thermal compound on rialto before testing, because that got hot to the touch yesterday.
Your cooler looks like cooling potential to me, but like Serpent mentioned maybe not the best solution if it doesn't cool the rest of the components besides the gpu die?

I recall the jumpers are there to switch between PAL or NTSC on TV-Out.

Thanks, Guess I won't need to bother with those anymore since I don't use TV-Out

Which is the VRM - the big chip that says VITEC, or the two little ones above it?

If i recall correctly, my cooler has thermal pads on the 2 chips "above" the VITEC chip and and I think another thermal pad on the chip with a "purple hue" on top along with pads on the all VRAM chips, I can post photos if you need.

ubiq wrote on 2026-05-08, 00:26:

It was a driver issue and trying one of the Omega series of drivers got it working perfectly.

Now i have installed fresh windows xp and tried installing omega driver (cat_7.12_ati_omega_xp2k_48442.exe), i checked relevant options such as AGP in the setup. But when i rebooted and windows apparently started loading the driver, i was met with a black screen and i felt rialto suddently went cold to the touch. With no way to uninstall the driver without changing video cards. To be continued... What driver did you finally use to make it work?

ettla wrote on 2026-05-09, 22:15:

ubiq wrote on 2026-05-08, 00:26:

It was a driver issue and trying one of the Omega series of drivers got it working perfectly.

Now i have installed fresh windows xp and tried installing omega driver (cat_7.12_ati_omega_xp2k_48442.exe), i checked relevant options such as AGP in the setup. But when i rebooted and windows apparently started loading the driver, i was met with a black screen and i felt rialto suddently went cold to the touch. With no way to uninstall the driver without changing video cards. To be continued... What driver did you finally use to make it work?

For me it was the 7.12 ones as well. My specific problem was that the official Catalyst drivers would boot to desktop in XP just fine (though there were some weird "PCI device" popup errors when installing), but it couldn't perform any 3D functions. Even a basic Direct3D test in dxdiag would throw an error. The first set of Omega drivers I tried (7.12) appeared to Just Work.

If you're having more serious issues could still be a hardware problem - and if so, not something I can help with unfortunately.

For me it was the 7.12 ones as well. My specific problem was that the official Catalyst drivers would boot to desktop in XP just fine (though there were some weird "PCI device" popup errors when installing), but it couldn't perform any 3D functions. Even a basic Direct3D test in dxdiag would throw an error. The first set of Omega drivers I tried (7.12) appeared to Just Work.

If you're having more serious issues could still be a hardware problem - and if so, not something I can help with unfortunately.

Ok, then they should be working for me too...

Got further with testing today, I installed the gpu into my Sempron system with the same harddrive from yesterday, and i got into windows. There were popups "New hardware detected" and there it said "Radeon x1950" so i opened Device Manager and ran the Driver wizard for the GPU. Driver wizard instantly found the Omegadrivers (I had installed yesterday, but never loaded correctly) for the graphics card and applied them sucessfully. There i was thinking everything finally must be working. I started Multires and changed resolution without any issues. Then i launched ATI Tray tools and changed some settings (Cant really remember what it was, but nothing major) then the screen went black, and didn't come back.
Had to do a hard reboot but did not get post picture, then i reseated graphics card, and i got post picture back. But this time it went black at windows loading again. Restarted, but no post picture again... Reseated card again but i dont get post picture, its like hit and miss...

Sooo, im suspecting typical BGA problems, as one second everything seems to be working? Next its not.

Sounds like some broken solderballs on the Rialto to me.
I had a similar behaving card. Worked sometimes but didn't POST at all in the end. Looked completely like dead.
In the end a proper reflow of the Rialto chip brought it back to life.
My guess is its placement very near to the AGP slot makes it vulnerable to mechanical stress from the slot.
I'd start from there if there's no other clue.

ChrisK wrote on 2026-05-10, 20:18:

Sounds like some broken solderballs on the Rialto to me. I had a similar behaving card. Worked sometimes but didn't POST at all […]
Show full quote

Sounds like some broken solderballs on the Rialto to me.
I had a similar behaving card. Worked sometimes but didn't POST at all in the end. Looked completely like dead.
In the end a proper reflow of the Rialto chip brought it back to life.
My guess is its placement very near to the AGP slot makes it vulnerable to mechanical stress from the slot.
I'd start from there if there's no other clue.

Ok, I will try reflowing the Rialto chip with flux, poke it a little just to see it moving and try the card again. I really hope its the Rialto and not the GPU substrate BGA or even GPU die BGA...