GIGABYTE Presents Radeon HD 4650 AGP Version

[malware]

If you still feel some love for your old AGP platform, GIGABYTE's new Radeon HD 4650 AGP edition video card might be the best present for it. Named GV-R465D2-1GI, the card has 1 GB GDDR2 memory, 128-bit memory interface, supports Microsoft DirectX 10.1/OpenGL 2.1 and the AGP 8x standard. The card is even suitable for older media PCs as it features ATI's Avivo HD technology and Dual-Link DVI-I, analog D-SUB and a single HDMI outputs. Now the bad news, the GV-R465D2-1GI is still missing from GIGABYTE's official page as their product. There's no word on pricing and availability date either.



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[tkpenalty]

wow nice. This seems like it would be a fairly cheap buy judging by the OEM cooling and the relatively simple PCB design.

 

[LittleLizard]

my old pc is screaming for one.

 

[Yukikaze]

DDR2 ? Why.... Sure it might be cheaper, but not by a whole damn lot, and it really slows cards down.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Well at least the PICTURE is AGP, not PCIe. Let's hope this really is a HD4xxx AGP. Shame they didnt push it a bit further with GDDR3. Anyway, GDDR2 is still better than DDR2!

I doubt performance will be interesting; the 3850 beating it hands down. But for a cheap upgrade to a Dual link DVI for older office machines, and if it is low power and near silent, then yes, it has benefits.

3850 > 4650, but key question, is 4650 >> XT850??

 

[LittleLizard]

3850 > 4650, but key question, is 4650 >> XT850??

in features, no doubt (dx 10, sm 4.0 bla bla) but in performance i dont know. probably yes it also win.

 

[Duncan1]

Well at least the PICTURE is AGP, not PCIe. Let's hope this really is a HD4xxx AGP.

It is man. Look the official product page.

 

[Yukikaze]

It is man. Look the official product page.

Was I the only one who ROFL'ed at the "Supports CrossFireX™ and Avivo™HD technology" line in the specs ?

 

[lemonadesoda]

Yep, and it says 4650 AGP on the box. So it's not just a single typo somewhere. Someone has spent a lot of time doing the box graphics, so must be true, I guess.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Was I the only one who ROFL'ed at the "Supports CrossFireX™ and Avivo™HD technology" line in the specs ?

Yep, Crossfire on AGP is a bit silly... BUT, it is actually possible in theory. There ARE specialist mainboards out there with multiple AGP slots, but nothing in the consumer lines

 

[Yukikaze]

Yep, Crossfire on AGP is a bit silly... BUT, it is actually possible in theory. There ARE specialist mainboards out there with multiple AGP slots, but nothing in the consumer lines

Even assuming such a board:

How will the two cards communicate with each other ? The card has no CF connectors from that pic, as far as I can see, and I doubt there is a way, even on those boards with two AGP slots, to make both slots communicate with one another.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Yes, these boards do exist, but no-body here will have one. They are extremely specialist graphics workstation devices for driving multiple monitors. Think mapping and air-traffic control systems, etc. They are very very expensive.

IIRC, Crossfire doesnt need the top CF connectors, it can do it through the bus. Only that it is QUICKER and without CONTENTION to do it over dedicated crossfire connectors.

If you needed to drive 4 monitors, 2 AGP ports would still be useful.

Anyway, I agree, silly to advertise "crossfire technology" on the GPU for implementation on AGP when clearly NO-ONE will/can use it.

************************************

PS. WE NEED A TPU review... vs. 3850 on AGP vs. 3850 on PCIe vs. 4770 on PCIe. Same processor, e.g. Q6600, same clocks, but on AGP vs. PCIe mainboard.

 

[Yukikaze]

IIRC, Crossfire doesnt need the top CF connectors, it can do it through the bus. Only that it is QUICKER and without CONTENTION to do it over dedicated crossfire connectors.

Anyway, if you needed to drive 4 monitors, 2 AGP ports would still be useful.

Yes, but AFAIK, AGP does not allow for two AGP devices to communicate with each other over the bus. While the host could probably allow for this, I seriously doubt any AGP-equipped NB in existence has this feature (Since those boards with more than one AGP slot were few, far between, and not meant for gaming, not to mention the whole concept didn't quite exist).

I agree on the multiple monitors (Heck, I run three, myself), but this is a rather moot point in the discussion about CF.

 

[lemonadesoda]

I wonder how similar the PCB design is for the 4650 compared with the 4770. Since they both use 128-bit memory bus, it might be an EASY conversion for them to do an AGP 4770 special edition based on this 4650 PCB.

 

[Kitkat]

Yeah i have a 3850 AGP .... i was amused when they did that and its powerful lol.... but there is no need for this lol i think we can end at what we ended at lol.

 

[mdm-adph]

I think the question no one here is asking is: will drivers be released that will make this card even usable.

 

[ucanmandaa]

I have a Voodoo 5 AGP which is a dual chip (GPU) card. I am pretty sure crossfire (single card like 4850x2) would be possible using a proper bridge chip on AGP. It would not be feasible of course considering the cost of a such card .

 

[Widjaja]

Trust Sapphire to keep the AGP inface from dying out all together.

 

[Disparia]

Yeah, trying to find one is near impossible. A friend of mine at Micron took a couple spy shots of these boards back when they were readying them as Rambus (i820/i840) killers. These are not them unfortunately, just a couple pics I was able to find on the net. My originals were HQ.

(IIRC) Each NB could support up to two Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon CPUs, 3GB of DDR, and an AGP slot. NB's could be linked well beyond two units, in fact I believe the max was 512!

It was a big fail when this board/chipset didn't make it to any board manufacturers or even Micron's own line of workstations

 

[yourma2000]

F**k the 4650, i want the 4770 on AGP! i think i've used up my "i want 4770 AGP" meter

 

[HolyCow02]

this is smart. Keep the people that don't want to completely upgrade their old system buying new products. Very smart.

 

[1Kurgan1]

There was some CF AGP boards back in the day, not just workstations. But there wasn't too many of them since PCI-E was coming out at the time CF did.

 

[Yukikaze]

There was some CF AGP boards back in the day, not just workstations. But there wasn't too many of them since PCI-E was coming out at the time CF did.

You have a model as an example ?

(Not trying to nitpick here, I am actually interested in knowing who made those things).

 

[mdm-adph]

You have a model as an example ?

(Not trying to nitpick here, I am actually interested in knowing who made those things).

Look at the pic "Jizzler" shadedshu) posted up above. You can see the other AGP slot next to the occupied one on the motherboard.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Very very nice spy shots Jizzler. We want moar