Making the switch - ATI to Nvidia

[DarknessInside]

I've been a loyal ATI consumer for around 5 years, maybe more. I built my new machine three days ago, choosing the Sapphire ATI Radeon 1950XT 256MB.
atm, I play Oblivion and NFS Carbon, I was BLOWN AWAY by the gfx capabilities. Very fluid, very sexy - very impressed, of course until it started crashing. After a few days of testing, I concluded the gfx card was defintely at fault (it's not even OCed). I was running 6.10 catalyst straight off the CD, but immediately preceeded to download 6.11 to check if it was a driver problem. When that failed to install (along with 6.9 AND even 5.13 which was a long shot anyway). I quickly realised, and was DISGUSTED to discover there was NO SUPPORT for my card whatsoever. So I am left with incredibly unstable games, which is unacceptable.

This card, although amazing I will admit when it DOES work, is getting promptly returned. I have no idea when it comes to Nvidia. So the question remaining is what card would be a good replacement with at least equal performance for £200 (+/- £20) - considering the ATI 1950XT cost £177.

As mentioned I mainly run Oblivion, Carbon, Doom3, at around 1440x900 at full or near full. My machine basic specs: Intel 2.4 Duel Conroe, 1GB @ 1066, ASUS P5WDG2 WS PRO (MB)

[pepsi_max2k]

and for the third time tonight - just be glad you ain't running linux. then you'd be even more disgusted by ati's support. anyway...

these two charts should come in very very handy for comparisons:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/132
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/131

can't see any 1950xt so i'm assuming it's somewhere between a pro and an xtx (i know nothing about anything under 2 years old...). in which case, the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 and GeForce 7900 GTX seem to be pretty similar. pricewise the 7800gtx 512 would probably be cheaper, though i couldn't say anything else about the price.

[shaithis]

6.10 and 6.11 Catalysts have FULL support for the x1950 series.

The 6.9s would work with them but you had to manually install them.

Seems your giving up really easily on resolving this issue, and if you go nVidia over this you either going to have to sacrafice a lot of Oblivion performance or a wedge of cash (8800GTX).....and good luck being a next-gen guinea pig

[s_kinton]

A 7900GTO, 7900GTX or 7950GT should equal or beat the 1950XT 256MB performance

[Robert]

Darkness, you have things totally mixed up. Why would ATI not support one of their newer cards???????????

[kalniel]

6.10 and 6.11 Catalysts have FULL support for the x1950 series.

Wrong, unfortunately.

Very very annoyingly, 6.11's do NOT support the X1950xt specifically. They support the *other* x1950 series cards, but not ours. We have to use the modified 6.10's provided on our CD.

I hope, very much, that they will support the x1950xt in 6.12 onwards. But at the moment there is only one manufacturer producing them. The support isn't great, as Sapphire just tell you to get stuff from the ATI website.

However, I've not had any crashing problem with mine - I've had crashes with unstable games (Gothic 3 and NWN2, but they were the games fault I'm sure).

An equivalent NVidia card is the 7900GTO. This is very similar in a lot of ways - even the idea of it being a cut down 'top' card. You get more ram and good texture performance, but it's not quite as good IQ and won't be as good in Oblivion. It'll be better for some other games though.

Darkness, you have things totally mixed up. Why would ATI not support one of their newer cards???????????

Simply because it didn't hit the mainstream in time for ATI to include it in the generic drivers - they did rush the december drivers so now we've got to wait till some time in January.

edit: ATI have confirmed they are aware of the issue, it's a driver initialisation bug. Might not be fixed in 6.12 (isn't fixed in current beta). They had the same thing with the x1950pro which took 2 or 3 driver versions to get right.

[DarknessInside]

kalniel appears quite right, the card is defintely not supported. I am defintely staring at an critical error message and it defintely will not let me proceed any further. That makes as little sense to me as it does to all of you. I am also defintely experiancing crashes every 20-120mins - very annoying. I'm not sure if this is a fault with the card or a driver fault but I don't care - it's getting returned.

I used to mess around with computer conponents a lot back in my younger years. However these days I'm of the opinion that when I buy anything it should work and work well. Rightly so too, when it comes to parting with money for ANY service or product.

I'm aware ATI has the best performance in oblivion, i'm also aware nvidia is somewhat more expensive. Maybe I was a bit brash with the title, as I was annoyed, perhaps I would reconsider another ATI card, but it would have to WORK! plain and simple.

[kalniel]

What is your power supply Darkness? I've got a very strong feeling that this is the cause of your unstability with the x1950xt - it's a bit of a beast regarding power and people are finding you really need quite high amps to run it stably.

That being the case, you're unlikely to get an RMA for it.. but if you do you have the choice of either getting a better PSU or going to the x1950pro which still runs oblivion great, and has much lower power requirements.

[DarknessInside]

I have a Hiper 580w (630w peak) PSU, its a modular type, but don't worry I have the PCIe running off a single rail. I'm quite confident it's quite adequate?. Though, even if it WAS a power issue, there is still the unacceptable problem with drivers.

I've already got an RMA, so its going back tommorow.

Yes, I'm considering another 1950, maybe by a different brand, ASUS perhaps.

[kalniel]

I have a Hiper 580w (630w peak) PSU, its a modular type, but don't worry I have the PCIe running off a single rail. I'm quite confident it's quite adequate?. Though, even if it WAS a power issue, there is still the unacceptable problem with drivers.

*shrugs* The driver problem isn't unacceptable. What would be unacceptable would be needing a newer version of drivers to be able to run a game well. Every game I know runs great off the provided drivers, so there's no need to upgrade. By the time they do require newer drivers, you'll be able to get them for the card.

Have you got a pic (or the info) from the currents box on the PSU? There's a thread at the Sapphire forums explaining how even high Watt split rail PSUs can be a problem for this graphics card. Despite the dual rail thing, it appears PSUs are still limiting combined amps over the rails. An example was given where someone had dual rails, rated at 18A each I think, however there was a combined rating as well, of 30A, so when one rail was taking 16A there was actually only 14A left for the other rail.. and that was maximum A, not continuous.

[sawyen]

I also had stability problems with my X1800XT 512MB when I got it with my Tagan EasyCon 530 on split rails, crash, artifacts and such.. but after a simple flick of the switch at the back (for combined rails), problem resolved.

Funny they'd release x1950xt with minimal support.. well, me thinks its gonna be the hardware.. since Kalneil got his working on default driver that came with the card... I would have guessed card support should be at least working from the drivers provided by the manufacturer.

[DarknessInside]

I was refering to the stability problem as being unacceptable, sorry, I keep linking this with a driver issue in my mind (hence the attempt at upgrading) and maybe I shouldn't as there is no absolute proof of that.

kalniel: do you actually have a *Sapphire* 1950XT 256MB? I'm just trying to rule things out here. Besides, even if you do have the same card as me we're unlikely to have identical system (software/hardware) setups which could be confounding the problem (although, I doubt it). [Forget that actually, I just noticed the 'my system' button near your avater and that confirmed it for me - d'oh]

Here is the spec sheet for my PSU. The power output is listed near the bottom.

[DarknessInside]

Attempt no 2:-

[DarknessInside]

attempt no 3:-

http://www.hipergroup.com/English/pr...hpu-4k580.html


(hexus blocked this url due to not having at least 5 posts)

[kalniel]

*nods* As you can see from the chart, while you have a theoretical limit on each rail of 20A and 18A respectively, you have a regulation that limits the two rails to a maximum of less than 360W. 360W/12V = 30A total across both rails.

Users on the sapphire forums (http://www.sapphiretech.com/en/forum...isplay.php?f=1) have suggested this can be a problem.

I really don't know what to suggest - it could be that I'm not meant to be able to run it smoothly on my PSU either, I can't remember how mine rates with combined rails, but certainly there are several reports suggesting dual rail PSUs are *not* the way to go (despite the fact you then have to break ATX2 certification if you don't).

Can I suggest you update your 'my system' with your specs so that others can get a quick place to look at them (I know you posted most of them in your first post).

Have you tried running your RAM at it's normal speed, or infact lower, just incase this is placing additional load on your PSU? From what I can gather it's not just the A that matter for this card, it's the 'cleanliness' of the supply - how are you hooking up the PCIe power connector for the card?

[PimpedOut3]

hey guys,

i got the HIS x1950xt and i found out that it definately wasnt supported. it took me a couple of hours of uninstalling and re-installing drivers but i finally managed to get the cat 6.10 drivers that came with the card to work it, (with the exception of the WDM drivers).

I understand that the 6.12 beta drivers also didn't support this card but now the official 6.12 drivers are out. any word on whether this supports it (and supports it fairly well), as i REALLY dont wanna go through the whole trying to install 6.10 drivers again if the 6.12's dont work.

cheers