Project: The Ultimate AGP System (PC-A05FNB/HD3850)

[Jayzilla]

What's that? An X1650?

Yes. You got it, sir.

The Cooler of the SHorter card has been around since the Radeon 9700 Series. so that design is 10+ years old now (Works well for what cards need)

10+ years design cooler and works efficiently. Without a doubt HIS made best cooler for AGP video cards.

For durability and looks of the heatsink. I think I like copper over aluminum, but for the weight. Aluminum sure win. Don't know about the cooling performance.

 

[de.das.dude]

dude. its china. their stuff is pathetic. those people with reviews were probably paid to write good stuff. once a chinese company asked me to do a similar thing in exchange for their products.
the thing was i was supposed to write a good review before i got the product.

f*&^%cking chinese mothe^%kers

 

[nasospakos]

The only thing we know for sure up till now is that anyone still can install Windows Vista or 7 or even 8 on an AGP + nForce 3 + multi-core motherboard but only if all cores are disabled down to one.

I am using my Gigabyte HD 4650 AGP with Windows 8 at the moment and the acceleration is enabled though I can't play any new games because my system works with only one core enabled. It is a tough problem indeed. You must choose graphics acceleration or multi-core support yet both of them no way.

If we found the solution to this, I would say ancient, issue we are probably going to win a Nobel price.

P.S: By the way, cdawall's beta XP64 nForce drivers didn't work for me on Win 7 environment but I'm not sure if I did the installation correctly. I was too confused that day.

 

[niubreed]

Hi

Hi everyone and especially to TS,

this thread made me create account at TPU forum.
have some of 3850 AGP. but still can not find a good match with other component.

waiting and seeing updates from you..

thanks and cheers

 

[TRWOV]

Best combos for HD3850 AGP:


Asrock Conroe865PE + 4GB DDR400 CL2.5 RAM + Core 2 Quad. I can OC my board to 285FSB but I've seen reports of people reaching 300FSB on this board (YMMV). I currently have a QX6800 on mine but I can't take it beyond 3.1Ghz, I think I'm being limited by the board having only 4 power phases. The advantage is that the 865PE chipset has full 64bit support on Windows 7.
Note: the DDR400 CL2.5 RAM is a requirement for Core 2 support. If you use CL3 RAM you'll get constant crashes.


AM2NF3-VSTA + Phenom II X4 AM3 + 4GB DDR2-800. This build would be limited to XP 32bit because there are no 64bit GART drivers for nForce3 boards.

There are more boards that support dual and quad cores with AGP slots but they only have 2 RAM slots so you'd be limited to 2GB of RAM.

 

[niubreed]

Best combos for HD3850 AGP:


Asrock Conroe865PE + 4GB DDR400 CL2.5 RAM + Core 2 Quad. I can OC my board to 285FSB but I've seen reports of people reaching 300FSB on this board (YMMV). I currently have a QX6800 on mine but I can't take it beyond 3.1Ghz, I think I'm being limited by the board having only 4 power phases. The advantage is that the 865PE chipset has full 64bit support on Windows 7.
Note: the DDR400 CL2.5 RAM is a requirement for Core 2 support. If you use CL3 RAM you'll get constant crashes.


AM2NF3-VSTA + Phenom X4 AM3 + 4GB DDR2-800. This build would be limited to XP 32bit because there are no 64bit GART drivers for nForce3 boards.

There are more boards that support dual and quad cores with AGP slots but they only have 2 RAM slots so you'd be limited to 2GB of RAM.

hi TRWOV,
thanks for your respond. i've been following some of your posts, and yes looks like you are the AGP system Guru nice. learn much from you.
appreciate also for TS with his project log.

and yes Conroe865PE is my current top of mind. still trying to find this board also.

 

[eidairaman1]

That be a waste of money then. just.like shoving a agp 3.0 card in a agp 2.0 slot and running it at 2x only!.

The only thing we know for sure up till now is that anyone still can install Windows Vista or 7 or even 8 on an AGP + nForce 3 + multi-core motherboard but only if all cores are disabled down to one.

I am using my Gigabyte HD 4650 AGP with Windows 8 at the moment and the acceleration is enabled though I can't play any new games because my system works with only one core enabled. It is a tough problem indeed. You must choose graphics acceleration or multi-core support yet both of them no way.

If we found the solution to this, I would say ancient, issue we are probably going to win a Nobel price.

P.S: By the way, cdawall's beta XP64 nForce drivers didn't work for me on Win 7 environment but I'm not sure if I did the installation correctly. I was too confused that day.

 

[ian]

Tell, please, one more time for acknowledgement: can I install hd3850agp drivers on XP64bit with mobo am2nf3-vsta or the only solution is XP32bit?

CPU is athlon 64 x2 4400+

 

[TRWOV]

Tell, please, one more time for acknowledgement: can I install hd3850agp drivers on XP64bit with mobo am2nf3-vsta or the only solution is XP32bit?

CPU is athlon 64 x2 4400+

I'll work but you'll lose AGP texture acceleration (horrid!). Basically it'll be unsuitable for games so stick to XP 32 for the time being, blame nVidia for not providing a proper 64bit GART driver for multicore systems.

 

[ian]

No way! Life without textures seems like selfdecieve.
And what if to downgrade CPU to singlecore (but still 64bit)?
I know there is official info -

If you adopt Single Core CPU on this motherboard, this motherboard can support ATi™ and NVIDIA® AGP cards

But I wanna be 100% sure because I've screwed up once (I mean bought am2nf3 :shadedshu)

 

[TRWOV]

Single core will work fine but then you'll be bottlenecking that HD3850. There's no win-win scenario.

 

[ian]

OK. Maybe the overall situation should be highlighted.
Initially I had:
1) Sapphire HD3850AGP;
2) 2 x Goodram DDR2-800 4096MB PC2-6400 (GR800D264L6/4G);
3) Zalman ZM600-ST (bought it long ago; it is the worst PSU I've ever seen for its money!)

So recently I've purchased AM2NF3 and I need any x64 OS.

To be honest, I have another one desktop with msi z77a-gd65 mobo, i5 quadcore CPU and msi N670 PE 2GD5/OC video

But I still need that old AGP stuff working properly...

 

[ian]

I've just found used athlon LE-1640 (ADH1640IAA4DP) for $18

I will report about the total system perfomance after I finish assembly.

Thanks for help a lot

 

[3870x2]

So what happened to the Ultimate AGP build?

 

[TRWOV]

OK. Maybe the overall situation should be highlighted.
Initially I had:
1) Sapphire HD3850AGP;
2) 2 x Goodram DDR2-800 4096MB PC2-6400 (GR800D264L6/4G);
3) Zalman ZM600-ST (bought it long ago; it is the worst PSU I've ever seen for its money!)

So recently I've purchased AM2NF3 and I need any x64 OS.

To be honest, I have another one desktop with msi z77a-gd65 mobo, i5 quadcore CPU and msi N670 PE 2GD5/OC video

But I still need that old AGP stuff working properly...

OK, with your setup:

XP 32 - works fine
XP 64 - works but no AGP texture acceleration
W7 32/64 - works but you won't be able to install drivers for the HD3850 due to the bridge chip. Native ATI AGP cards will work as well as Nvidia native and bridged cards but in PCI mode (unusable for games at more than 800x600 or you'll run into bandwith issues).

Chalk this one up to nvidia shenanigans. They left nforce, ULi and Ageia users in the dust

 

[ian]

OK, with your setup:

XP 32 - works fine
XP 64 - works but no AGP texture acceleration
W7 32/64 - works but you won't be able to install drivers for the HD3850 due to the bridge chip. Native ATI AGP cards will work as well as Nvidia native and bridged cards but in PCI mode (unusable for games at more than 800x600 or you'll run into bandwith issues).

Is it with single core cpu??

 

[TRWOV]

Multicore. Single core will work fine with any configuration, only the multicore CPUs have problems with the GART driver.

 

[eidairaman1]

Multicore. Single core will work fine with any configuration, only the multicore CPUs have problems with the GART driver.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 (754, 939, 940), AMD/ATI Radeon Graphics Card AGP, Nvidia Nforce 3 Chipset AGP result in a Code 43 because of Motherboard GART issue.

AMD Athlon 64 doesnt exhibit this but there is no proper Vista or even 7 GART driver from NV for NF2 and 3 so performance is going to suck anyway.

 

[ian]

AMD Athlon 64 doesnt exhibit this but there is no proper Vista or even 7 GART driver from NV for NF2 and 3 so performance is going to suck anyway.

I know that.
But let me tell you something. My goal is to get fast AGP solution on ANY 64bit OS. In this case the only way out is AM2NF3. Certainly you can say: "Oh, man! There is several mobos running on Intel 865. You can paste Pentium4 and have the same velocity".

But you will be absolutely wrong. Even with Pentium D or Core2Duo such assembly sucks.
'cause using DDRI is a real bottleneck. I mean, all the power of CPU is faded by the slow rates of RAM data transfer. Furthermore data transfer between the RAM and AGP8x is also significantly reduces with DDRI.

More about P4.
Extreme lack of P4 is the pipeline structure: it consists of 20-25 stages (depending on architecture type) - horrable latency. Therefore, any dismiss in code causes branch prediction failure and total pipeline reload occurs. It takes not less the 127 clk to restart the pipeline!
And don't forget about high TDP of P4 - also significant disadvantage.

6 years ago I had to write a part of critical code on asm connected with coding/decoding algorythm. It had to be universal for a quite vast number of intel CPU's starting from P4. The only processors we had problem with was P4... Because the code had to be so specificaly rewriten to omit branch prediction misunderstandings. Bad days.

So going back to the topic - fast AGP solution is the solution running DDRII.

 

[eidairaman1]

I wasnt talking about the ram I was talking about the lack of a driver for a Specific High Performance Skt 754, 939, 940 chipset from NV!

From Looks it would appear Via K8T800 Pro and ULI 1689 would be the ideal choices for Skt 939 in order to have a Athlon 64 X2 and ATI video card together with the performance to boot.

I know that.
But let me tell you something. My goal is to get fast AGP solution on ANY 64bit OS. In this case the only way out is AM2NF3. Certainly you can say: "Oh, man! There is several mobos running on Intel 865. You can paste Pentium4 and have the same velocity".

But you will be absolutely wrong. Even with Pentium D or Core2Duo such assembly sucks.
'cause using DDRI is a real bottleneck. I mean, all the power of CPU is faded by the slow rates of RAM data transfer. Furthermore data transfer between the RAM and AGP8x is also significantly reduces with DDRI.

More about P4.
Extreme lack of P4 is the pipeline structure: it consists of 20-25 stages (depending on architecture type) - horrable latency. Therefore, any dismiss in code causes branch prediction failure and total pipeline reload occurs. It takes not less the 127 clk to restart the pipeline!
And don't forget about high TDP of P4 - also significant disadvantage.

6 years ago I had to write a part of critical code on asm connected with coding/decoding algorythm. It had to be universal for a quite vast number of intel CPU's starting from P4. The only processors we had problem with was P4... Because the code had to be so specificaly rewriten to omit branch prediction misunderstandings. Bad days.

So going back to the topic - fast AGP solution is the solution running DDRII.

 

[TRWOV]

ULi has the same problems as nforce. Right after buying ULi, nvidia halted all development. The last integrated drivers were 2.20.

ian, if you want the best you can get from the AM2NF3-VSTA you'll have to stick with XP32.

And 865 is no slouch, here are some benchmarks with my HD3850 on a 865 board: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2544510&postcount=949

 

[eidairaman1]

ULi has the same problems as nforce. Right after buying ULi, nvidia halted all development. The last integrated drivers were 2.20.

ian, if you want the best you can get from the AM2NF3-VSTA you'll have to stick with XP32.

And 865 is no slouch, here are some benchmarks with my HD3850 on a 865 board: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2544510&postcount=949

those beta drivers should be compatible with win 7

 

[ian]

TRWOV, seems quite impressive.

When I finish assembly (on next weekends I think) I'll upload my benchmark scores

 

[ian]

From Looks it would appear Via K8T800 Pro and ULI 1689 would be the ideal choices for Skt 939 in order to have a Athlon 64 X2 and ATI video card together with the performance to boot

Maybe. But it depends on tasks you're performing. If you use PC just like a work horse, your assembly is brilliant. If you want to watch films or play games, those require big portions of data to be buffered in RAM and transferred to CPU/VGA, then you need faster RAM and bus.

Are you agree?

 

[eidairaman1]

Maybe. But it depends on tasks you're performing. If you use PC just like a work horse, your assembly is brilliant. If you want to watch films or play games, those require big portions of data to be buffered in RAM and transferred to CPU/VGA, then you need faster RAM and bus.

Are you agree?

Erm BD movie watching or anything that has been encoded to other file formats can be watched on even a x1950 Pro AGP with the said above specs. Im not sure on my First rig because i dont own a BD Drive