AGP owners- Interesting for SH4

[swdw]

Hey AGP users, just found this article that ATi will be releasing the HD3850 in AGP!
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...100-agp-market

Next, for those wondering about upgrading to a less expensive card- stay tuned. I decided to upgrade my old system and use it for playing HD and Blu-ray movies on our TV (once BR drives drop). The MB uses AGP so I needed a AGP card that could decode h.264

In this pursuit I bought a HD2400 and took it back for an HD2600. In another couple of days I'll post a review here on the useability / feasability of this option and what I'm learning. Guess you already can figure out the verdict on the 2400

Anyway- looks like things are looking up for AGP users with fast enough CPU's.

Sorry for the delay, here goes:
Test systems:

Both running WinXP Sp2 32bit version with all the latest updates and AMD 32bit patch for 64 bit processors

Catalyst 7.10 for the x1950, and AGP ( AGP numbers are confusing, they are also called the 8.4 drivers and were released Nov 4th). On a side note, the card came with 7.7 drivers and upgrading to the lates gave almost a 30% increase in framerates

AGP
ECS MB
Sempron 3300+
1.5 GB DDR400
CT8780 based soundcard
ATi HD2600 Pro 512MB AGP card Agp 3.0 8x
ATA100 HD

Comparing it to
PCI-e
ABit MB
Athlon 64 x2 3800+
2GB DDR2 800
on board sound ( surprisingly, I tried a PCi sound card and it made no difference in performance, unusual for onboard soound to work this well)
ATi x1950 Pro 512MB
SATA300 HD

A note on the 2 systems. Overclocking was removed to give stock umbers as there are no utilities capable of overclocking the 2600 yet. The drivers/card are just way too new.

There are XT and XT OC versions of the HD 2600.

Test missions:
Submarine school- torpedo attack
Ambush at Palawan Passage
Sailing out of Pearl at the start of a career

SH4 settings:
All settings on except for post processing. All sliders maxxed except LOD size set at 3/4
1280X 1024 32bit 70hz
Tested Stock and with all new ROW releases including sound mod.

Keep in mind that the AGP system has slightly less memory and the memory bus is half the clock speed of the PCI-e system.

In the school mission, the external view was positioned on the cruiser and the lead ship with as much water in the screen as possible to lower the frame rate. Periscope view was on the cruiser.

For the Ambush mission I switched to the external camera and positioned it on the Japanese fleet. The camera was then moved to get as many ships as possible into the screen. Several views were tried to get the LOWEST framerate I could achieve. This usually occured with the camera fixed on the Yamato. The avg value is with only a couple of ships in the view.

For the Pearl mission the outside view was positioned to show as much of Ford Island and battleship row behind the boat as possible.

Stock:

School
outside view- lowest value
AGP-25 fps
PCI-e 30 fps

Periscope view of cruiser- lowest value
AGP- 35 fps
PCI-e 41 fps

Ambush
outside view
AGP- lowest- 16fps, average 20 fps
PCI-e lowest- 20fps, avg 25 fps

Periscope view
AGP- lowest 23fps
PCI-e lowest 36fps

Pearl
AGP- lowest- 17fps
PCI-e lowest- 24fps

ROW:


School
outside view- lowest value
AGP-26 fps
PCI-e 39 fps

Periscope view of cruiser- lowest value
AGP- 35 fps
PCI-e 41 fps

Ambush
outside view
AGP- lowest- 17fps, average 20 fps
PCI-e lowest- 24fps, avg 25 fps

Periscope view
AGP- lowest 20fps
PCI-e lowest 31

Pearl
AGP- lowest- 16fps
PCI-e lowest- 19fps

All in all, not a bad performance considering the 2600 is clocked slower than the 1950, is an AGP card, and is on a system with slower memory and less memory.

In most situations, the framerates stay high enough to allow for smooth viewing. I think this bodes well for the HD385o AGP card which nas a LOT more horsepawer than the 2600.

Most surprising thing for ATi owners will show up in the following pictures:

Wait a minute- do you see what i see

How about this:

And then this


There is one drawback, there seems to be a problem in ROW with the sun appearing through the water once it's below the horizon. THis did not happen in the stock version, so I'm posting a message for Leo in the ROW thread.