SAPPHIRE RADEON 9600XT 256M DUAL (LITE) AGP #450

kav · Post by **kav** » Thu Nov 03, 2005 12:17 pm

I just finished ordering a new video card for my computer. Right now I have the Geforc4 MX that came with the system and I thought it was time to upgrade but I didn't want to spend a whole bunch of cash. I was wondering what you guys thought about the card below. The price is in CANADIAN dollars. I plan to use it for some video watching and light gaming..

http://robotnik.com/product.php?product ... =58&page=1

ALSO - what do I need to do once the card is physically installed to finish the install of this on my computer?

Thanks.

Post by **Apoptosis** » Thu Nov 03, 2005 12:35 pm

Is your motherboard running 2x or 4x AGP?

kav · Post by **kav** » Thu Nov 03, 2005 12:56 pm

I am not sure on this.. Will this affect my ability to use this card?

Thanks.

sbohdan · Post by **sbohdan** » Thu Nov 03, 2005 12:59 pm

if you plan on gaming then forget the 9600. it only has 4 pipes and wont play anything new even at low settings. if you want to stay on budget, get the x700 or a 9800pro from ATI or a 6600 fom nvidia. they cost slightly more but all have 8 pipes. the 6600 and 9800pro both have good overclocking potential.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/ ... 89&CatId=0

http://www.pccyber.ca/scrItem.asp?produ ... ct_id=6335

edit: actually would be helpfull if you could post the specs of your computer.

kav · Post by **kav** » Fri Nov 04, 2005 10:15 am

sbohdan wrote:if you plan on gaming then forget the 9600. it only has 4 pipes and wont play anything new even at low settings. if you want to stay on budget, get the x700 or a 9800pro from ATI or a 6600 fom nvidia. they cost slightly more but all have 8 pipes. the 6600 and 9800pro both have good overclocking potential.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/ ... 89&CatId=0

http://www.pccyber.ca/scrItem.asp?produ ... ct_id=6335

edit: actually would be helpfull if you could post the specs of your computer.

Thanks so much for that information.. I am going to look into getting one of those instead.. My computer being a bit older only hast 2X and 4X AGP, so does this rule out both cards you suggested? I have been trying to track down a 9800 pro for under 150 in Canada with no luck.. If you have any sources it would help alot..

THanks.

kav · Post by **kav** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:12 pm

Thanks for the advice guys.. I just returned the 9600XT 256MB and bought a new ATI 9800 PRO 128MB off ebay for 120..

Thanks again..

Now to find a better fan

sbohdan · Post by **sbohdan** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 1:44 pm

congrats on your purchase. this should be a good choice, especially for this price. you might want to consider reading these articles - concerning your card's cooling and a possible flash to an XT (provided it's the XT PCB and R360 core). all of these concern the 9800pro so read up.

cheap cooling mod: http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.asp ... =72&pgno=0

extreme cooling mod:http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.asp ... 246&pgno=0

modding the 9800pro to 9800XT: http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.asp ... =92&pgno=0

about your question: set it to 4x AGP if that is the most you can do. it shouldn't matter much. I would be more concerned with Overclocking your computer so that it wouldn't bottleneck the card

kav · Post by **kav** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 5:21 pm

sbohdan wrote:congrats on your purchase. this should be a good choice, especially for this price. you might want to consider reading these articles - concerning your card's cooling and a possible flash to an XT (provided it's the XT PCB and R360 core). all of these concern the 9800pro so read up.

cheap cooling mod: http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.asp ... =72&pgno=0

extreme cooling mod:http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.asp ... 246&pgno=0

modding the 9800pro to 9800XT: http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.asp ... =92&pgno=0

about your question: set it to 4x AGP if that is the most you can do. it shouldn't matter much. I would be more concerned with Overclocking your computer so that it wouldn't bottleneck the card

Thank you!

kav · Post by **kav** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 5:29 pm

Is it possible to overclock P4 2.53MHz?

sbohdan · Post by **sbohdan** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 6:51 pm

yes, I used to have a 2.53 northwood (and a 9800pro too

) . you can OC it more or less depending on your mobo. I used to have an asus with a sis chipset which was a bad OC er but anything with an intel chipset should be OK. let us know the exact mobo name, what ram you have and PSU.

kav · Post by **kav** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 8:28 pm

sbohdan wrote:yes, I used to have a 2.53 northwood (and a 9800pro too ) . you can OC it more or less depending on your mobo. I used to have an asus with a sis chipset which was a bad OC er but anything with an intel chipset should be OK. let us know the exact mobo name, what ram you have and PSU.

This is very interesting! Do you know where I can locate those specs? Do I have to physically look at the parts? I bought a pre-assembled Dell and have no idea what components they used.

Kerii · Post by **Kerii** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 10:51 pm

kav wrote:This is very interesting! Do you know where I can locate those specs? Do I have to physically look at the parts? I bought a pre-assembled Dell and have no idea what components they used.

Sometimes you can tell just by looking at its specs. If it's a Northwood it should only have 512Kb of cache, if it's a newer Prescott it'll have 1MB of cache.

Or you can just use something like CPU-Z and it'll tell you what you have.

http://www.cpuid.org/download/cpu-z-130.zip

If you find that you have a Northwood, you've got a real gem on your hands, the things can overclock to 3ghz and sometimes even 3.2ghz without breaking a sweat (as in no voltage increases)*.

*Also depends on how good your RAM and motherboard are with overclocking

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDcx
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/di ... -oc_4.html

allenpan · Post by **allenpan** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 11:12 pm

If you find that you have a Northwood, you've got a real gem on your hands, the things can overclock to 3ghz and sometimes even 3.2ghz without breaking a sweat (as in no voltage increases)*.

*Also depends on how good your RAM and motherboard are with overclocking

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDcx
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/di ... -oc_4.html

please read carefully, 2.53 is not NORTHWOOD C is northwood B, as result is almost very little head room @ OC and becide he is using Dell, most of time is MSI i845b533 chipset with dell bios so less OC

people please learn to read carefully b4 give out suggestion, in order to elimiate redutant try and error[/quote]

and he has AGP 2/4X only intel chipset choice are i850, i850e or i845e/b/a/g

almost low chance of OC with msi dell bios

Kerii · Post by **Kerii** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 11:27 pm

allenpan wrote:please read carefully, 2.53 is not NORTHWOOD C is northwood B, as result is almost very little head room @ OC and becide he is using Dell, most of time is MSI i845b533 chipset with dell bios so less OC

people please learn to read carefully b4 give out suggestion, in order to elimiate redutant try and error

and he has AGP 2/4X only intel chipset choice are i850, i850e or i845e/b/a/g

almost low chance of OC with msi dell bios

Oops, my mistake, don't know how I managed to read that as 2.4c. Mmm... sleep deprivation starting to get to me.

Still, pumping the FSB from Windows with something like CPUFSB is an option.

kav · Post by **kav** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 12:18 am

Again I really appreciate all the info - I am learning tons!!

Here is the report:

CPU-Z Report
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CPU-Z version 1.30.

CPU(s)
Number of CPUs 1

Name Intel Pentium 4
Code Name Northwood
Specification Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.53GHz
Family / Model / Stepping F 2 7
Extended Family / Model 0 0
Brand ID 9
Package mPGA-478
Core Stepping C1
Technology 0.13 µ
Supported Instructions Sets MMX, SSE, SSE2
CPU Clock Speed 2525.0 MHz
Clock multiplier x 19.0
Front Side Bus Frequency 132.9 MHz
Bus Speed 531.6 MHz
L1 Data Cache 8 KBytes, 4-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L1 Trace Cache 12 Kµops, 8-way set associative
L2 Cache 512 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L2 Speed 2525.0 MHz (Full)
L2 Location On Chip
L2 Data Prefetch Logic yes
L2 Bus Width 256 bits

Mainboard and chipset
Motherboard manufacturer Dell Computer Corp.
Motherboard model 0M0321,
BIOS vendor Dell Computer Corporation
BIOS revision A06
BIOS release date 04/22/2003
Chipset Intel i845PE rev. A1
Southbridge Intel 82801DB (ICH4) rev. 01

Graphic Interface AGP
AGP Status enabled, rev. 2.0
AGP Data Transfer Rate 4x
AGP Max Rate 4x
AGP Side Band Addressing supported, not enabled
AGP Aperture Size 128 MBytes

Memory
DRAM Type DDR-SDRAM
DRAM Size 768 MBytes
DRAM Frequency 166.1 MHz
FSB:DRAM 4:5
CAS# Latency 2.5 clocks
RAS# to CAS# 3 clocks
RAS# Precharge 3 clocks
Cycle Time (TRAS) 7 clocks
DRAM Idle Timer 16 clocks
# of memory modules 2
Module 0 Nanya Technology DDR-SDRAM PC2700 - 256 MBytes
Module 1 DDR-SDRAM PC3200 - 512 MBytes

Software
Windows version Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
DirectX version 9.0c

killswitch83 · Post by **killswitch83** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 12:42 am

yeah, you have a C stepping P4 Northwood.....you might have to step the voltage some to get the gains Kerii is talking about. And of course, that means better cooling, of course! I'd look to reputable vendors like Thermalright or even Zalman for that matter. Also make sure you have good system cooling (read: case fans!), and I would even go as far as to see if you can mod that Dell you have for 120mm fans intake and exhaust (noticed CPU-Z readout ID's your board as a Dell). The way I see it, good or even great performance requires performance parts, so you just have to read around really, especially here, which is how I learned about much of the concepts of OC'ing, cooling, and tweaking I know now. BTW, I think you can still get the B stepping P4's in the Northwood core, at least they still had them on Newegg a couple weeks ago while I was looking for prices on the X2 3800+ I'm working on saving for. Hope we've helped some!

Kerii · Post by **Kerii** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 1:02 am

Ehh..... I'm pretty sure the core stepping has nothing to do with the product naming scheme (well, not directly anyway).

The "C" in the product name is to denote HT and an 800mhz FSB. Core stepping is for noting processor design changes like fixed flaws or changes to improve yeilds, etc.

If I interpreted your post wrong, my bad, lol.

killswitch83 · Post by **killswitch83** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 1:10 am

good point, though I wasn't exactly talking about naming scheme, lol

I believe the point allen was trying to convey is that the core stepping interferes with OC overhead. I merely took the stepping directly from CPU-Z readout, and made my stake from there, lol.

Kerii · Post by **Kerii** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 1:17 am

Apologies then, my mistake, lol.

Yeah, you're right, the C1 cores will need a bit of help to get speeds equivalent of the "C series" with D1 cores. Gah, Now I'm starting to confuse myself more, lol. Brain and eyes hurt.....

Bah, I'm done for the day, I need sleep.

killswitch83 · Post by **killswitch83** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 1:19 am

haha, no problem, I know the feeling....after I finish about......say.....5 more beers, I'll go to bed, lol.