The Card

The first thing I noticed after opening the package (other than the perfect bundle) was the card’s red PCB, just a tad lighter than blood red, and the two-slot cooling setup. The card is shorter than my nVidia 6800 Ultra, which will definitely please all owners of a small case. The card also appears less power hungry, as it only features one power connector. The yellow connector is for VIVO. The cooling system on this card is the reference one by ATI (unlike the Arctic Cooling Silencer that Sapphire mounts onto some of its cards) and occupies two slots, compared to the one slot solution on the X800 series. I would not count this as a major disadvantage, as very little people need all the five or six PCI slots on their motherboard, and can afford to sacrifice one to aid cooling. The advantage, of course, is that hot air can be expelled directly out of the case as fresh, colder air is taken in. There is also a L-shaped piece of metal that provides passive cooling to the memory on the back of the card.

Unlike its PCI Express brother, this card only has 1 DVI output and one VGA (wheras the X850XT PE for PCI-Express boasts 2 DVI connectors). This is a bit of a shame, as nVidia's 6800 Ultras have dual DVI regardless of the bus type. The only reason why ATI might have opted for 1 VGA output would be that it was expecting people with AGP to have a CRT monitor, and thereby allow CRT users to plug in their monitor without much hassle.

Installation

This card’s installation was no different than the countless number of AGP cards I have installed before. Just “pop” the card into the slot, check that the AGP security tab is holding the card in place and finally secure the bracket with 2 screws. Nothing out of the ordinary. I fired up my PC, expecting a sound similar to the “whoooosh” of my GeForce FX 5800, but the sound took me by surprise. It was more like “grrrrrr”, as if the card was getting ready to rip out of my motherboard. A few seconds later, the noise vanished, and I could barely hear the sound of a fan spinning, definitely much quieter than a GeForce FX 5800 or the 6800. The screen then came on and I proceeded to install a fresh copy of Windows.

Test Systems

Antialiasing and anisotropic filtering was stressed through the drivers unless otherwise noted.
The FX 5800 benchmarks were run using 8x AF.

Before we move on to the benchmarks, I’d like to point out that the AGP test system has a pretty weak PSU (only 340W, with 15A on +12V); however I did not experience any stability issues no matter how much I stressed the whole system (and the card for that matter). That just proves that not all high-end cards have to be power hungry, and you won’t necessarily have to dish out another $80-$100 for a decent PSU to run the card.