Hardware / Graphics & Displays

Radeon X1600 Pro: Prolonging the Graphics Life of Your AGP Machine

Author: Thomas Soderstrom
Date: June 14, 2006 05:39
Source: Tom's Hardware

Sometimes it's hard to let go, other times it just doesn't make economic sense.

Sometimes it's hard to let go, other times it just doesn't make economic sense. Those who have built a high-end system a few years ago could objectively consider the state of today's hardware and believe they have no need to start over. Certainly, a 3 GHz Pentium 4 is competitive with more modern processors for single-threaded applications. Also, low-latency DDR400 still performs well and is used in a variety of systems, and AGP 8X bandwidth still seems up to par. With the exception of dual-core processors in multi-threaded applications, it seems as if graphics processors are the only components that have seen any noticeable performance advancements as of late.

But the gaming world is quickly moving away from AGP systems of any performance level. Sure, last year's AGP cards looked good, but this year's pricing and availability leave much to be desired. Our February article titled The GeForce 7800GS Shows AGP Ain't Dead Yet proved that high-end cards are able to extend the usefulness of older gaming systems, but, again, they retail for high-end prices. In short, you want something up to date, but inexpensive enough to justify keeping your existing motherboard!

Offering the latest graphics features such as Pixel Shader 3.0, High Dynamic Range rendering and hardware H.264 acceleration, ATI Radeon X1600 Pro AGP 512-MB cards seem well suited for those seeking the latest features without dropping "three bills" on a high-end GeForce 7800GS. Diamond's Viper X1600 Pro, which we review here, falls under this category of new high-powered AGP cards.

The Viper Is Back

Based on the familiar X1600 reference design, Diamond's AGP version looks nearly identical to PCI-Express cards, at least from the front. Most noticeable is the floppy-style supplemental power connector, likely needed for the PCI-Express to AGP converter. However, it is possibly also needed to supplement the graphics core, since AGP slots can't provide as much electrical current as PCI Express. The heat sink features an offset fan and covers the graphics processor plus four memory chips.

A jumper along the upper edge selects TV-output to match NTSC or PAL standards, which is a plus for anyone taking their system abroad. However, many previous products allowed this setting to be made using software.

Oh my, someone at the assembly plant got ambitious with metallic thermal paste! Several minutes of tedious cleaning revealed the RV530 Pro graphics core, which was designed to knock down the 6600GT before ATI knew how fast the 7600GT would be. The device has 12 pixel shaders and five vertex shaders that feed four pipelines.

Conclusion

When weighing the advantages of keeping an older motherboard against those of replacing it, cost savings gained by upgrading only the graphics card are offset by the added expense of the card itself. Manufacturers consider the AGP upgrade market too small to justify new AGP graphics processors, so buyers must foot the expense of adding an AGP to PCI-Express signal converter.

Added expense puts the Radeon X1600 Pro AGP 512 MB within the same price range as a GeForce 7600 GT or Radeon X1600 XT PCI-Express products, which are far more powerful cards. A better AGP card can be found with the GeForce 7800GS, but does anyone really want to invest $300 in their rapidly-aging system? Transitioning to PCI-Express may prove just as cost-effective, especially when future upgrades are considered.

The Diamond Viper X1600 Pro AGP 512 MB completely obliterates similarly priced cards of three-years ago, yet it still cannot meet the demands of today's new and graphically-intensive games. This would be expected of a less expensive card, but cost to performance issues go part-in-parcel with the use of an "obsolete" interface.

Maybe we missed the point? The Viper X1600 AGP 512 MB should prove powerful enough to put the boost back into older games by offering twice the performance of the Radeon 9600 Pro. Buyers who struggle to run one-year-old games on three-year-old hardware should be satisfied with its substantial performance increase.

The entire Radeon X1600 series may prove to be better suited for the upper-range home theater PC market since it supports ATI's latest Avivo video enhancements and H.264 acceleration. However, even then the Viper's gamer-oriented cooler may be too noisy in a hot-and-stuffy HTPC case, forcing buyers to invest in either a passively-cooled X1600 Pro or a third-party cooler.