One thing i noticed during benchmarking several cards is that old benchmarks + newer hardware is not a good match.

My case: 7950GX2 has crappy 3dmark01 score, compared to older (high end) solutions, but when benching with 3dmar06 it would simply crush those older cards.
Newer cards are optimized to run newer apps...

The only way to really find out if it's doing better is to throw a newer game into the system and get the feel of it.

the x1300xt came in gddr3 + ddr2 versions

This is another one from the era of disguised mid-range cards- NV43 6200/ unlocking 9800SE ---> 9800 Pro/ 6800XT---> 6800 etc. Unfortunately, most of the time if you were not careful, you often got the turkey.

OK, there's 2 versions, the slow ass ddr2 and the uber ddr3 version which is basically an X1650 pro in disguise (the one your thinking of).

I've got the right one, a Sapphire X1300XT DDR3- it's at least as fast as my overclocked 6800GS (400/1100) in some games (like NFS: MW), and as icing on the cake the Radeon can overclock another 20% or so, if memory serves me right.

Oh yeah, almost forgot ... both are AGP.

The one I'm stuck with is some Visiontek one.

Of course it is slower, the AGP card has ddr2 like almost all X1300 XT did. Those cards beats 5900/9800 only in shading power.

I view X1300 as sort of an upgraded 9600 Pro. It's more efficient and has SM3 but it has similar throughput per clock.

So is the DRR2 version of the X1300XT supposed to be half the card that the DDR3 versions are? If so, what a shame. I would def expect some impact, but not this much. Don't get me wrong here either, I got this thing in a system for 5 bucks that had otherwise some good quality stuff. A Thermaltake tr2 rx-450, a SiS 741GX board with XP 2400+, 1.5 gb worth of ram, 180gb harddrive, blah blah blah, all of it looking like NOS, but it feels like I will have little to no use for this X1300 it seems.

swaaye wrote:

I view X1300 as sort of an upgraded 9600 Pro. It's more efficient and has SM3 but it has similar throughput per clock.

Well, yeah the original X1300 I would have to agree, because they both have 4 pixel shader pipelines, but the X1300XT has 12, not 4.

Well look at that the X1300XT does have 12 shader units. It looks like it was a late addition to the X1300 line up. I have a X1600 Pro 512MB at home that is gimped by DDR2 as well. That's essentially what you have in that X1300XT.

X1300XT should be about as fast as a plain 6600 regardless of a little memory gimpage. That should mean that it's close to 5950 most of the time and dusts it in SM2 games.

X1300XT DDR3 is an X1300 in name only. It's got the X1650 Pro core with 12 shader units. Really, really powerful and low power requirements as well. I looked hard for this card back then, being careful not to get stuck with the X1300/ 1550/1600/1650 DDR2 versions.

It's the same as X1600 Pro, basically, which is nothing to get exciting about frankly. 7600 GT blew that stuff out of the water. It's basically 6600 GT performance.

ATI was behind the curve with their midrange stuff for both the Xxxx and Xxxxx generations. At the tail end of the Xxxxx generation, they brought out a card called X1650 XT which used the RV570 chip from X1950 Pro but with some units shut off (renamed RV560). This finally was competitive with 7600 GT.

I'm not saying it plays Crysis. Just that it's a great card for it's time compared to it's contemporaries. Not that I need to since I own the 6600GT, 6800GS and X1300XT but I don't have the inclination to run my own benchies to prove something I already know, so:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/X1300XT/1.html

At 1280x1024:

Far Cry: X1300XT: 51.6, 6600GT: 51.7, X850Pro: 75.8
FEAR: 6600GT: 25, X1300XT: 30, 6800GS: 35, X850Pro: 36
Prey: 6600GT 25.2, X1300XT: 26, 6800GS: 34.5, X850 Pro: 35.4
Quake 4: 6600GT: 18.9, X1300XT: 21.3, 6800GS: 24.9, X850 Pro: 26
X3: 6600GT: 25.1, 6800GS: 29.1, X1300XT: 32.7, X850Pro: 38.7
3D Mark 05: 6600GT: 3154, 6800GS: 3892, X1300XT: 4252, X850Pro: 4294

There's nothing wrong with matching the 6600GT- it was the benchmark to aspire to for a long time, in an era where it meant playable Far Cry, HL2 and FEAR. Nonetheless, mostly faster than 6600GT, sometimes faster than a 6800GS.

Maybe why I seemed so enthusiastic was that using the latest drivers and newer games + 20% overclock, my little X1300XT matched or sometimes surpassed the mighty 6800GS (mind you, also overclocked to the limit).

Compared to what they both cost me new, $300 vs $80, I think you can see why there was much to be excited about.

The problem was really with X1600 Pro / XT matching 6600GT. 6600GT was the midrange from the prior NV generation. 😀 7600GT was the card they were supposed to beat but they failed just like with 6600GT vs X700 and X600.

For both generations they eventually brought out a card based on a partially disabled high end chip just to beat NV's midrange. The plain X800 and the X1650XT.

I suppose X1300XT was an admission that both the X1300 and X1600 lines were underspecced. RV530 shifted down to become the X1300XT and RV560 became X1650XT. They were late to the party again though.

Is that similar to an X1200 card? (I'm a NVidia/3dfx guy, I have no idea how to follow Radeon cards.) My wife's laptop is a Toshiba Satellite a215 with an ATI x1200. I can get it to play most casual games and hidden object games, which she loves. The most 3d performance I've been able to coax out of it is for Quake 3 engine games like Alice 1. ZDoom's engine ran on it too.

x1200 is an integrated and cut down 9600, with far worse performance.

yea X1200 is an IGP inside of the ATI RS690G chipset. It uses Radeon X700 tech but with a layout like X300/9600 and with gimped performance due to very restricted memory bandwidth.

The 1300XT AGP will perform the same (give or take maybe 10%) as the PCI-ex version. I highly doubt that the 1300XT is on a par with a 6800 series - the 6800 vanilla was a match for the x800, which was top end. The 1300 series were laptop / bottom end solution around a year later. IIR the 6800 performed similar to the x1600 pro, which was more than twice as fast as an x1300. Regardless, it's not a gaming card, and I'd rather stick with the 5950 or even better get an x1800 AGP for little $ - or an x850 - or a 6800GT.