I "tested" the 2900 PRO

[leckig 0]

To make it clear: I AM NOT BIASED AGAINST ATI. I could not care less about the brand name. What matters to me is the value of the product. I have had Nvidia and Ati products before, Intel and AMD processors as well, whatever offers better value.

First, I never got it to work. I think that my 600W PSU is not powerful enough for this card.

But the card run, I mean the fan would spin. And this is the whole problem. This card is not extremally loud. It is worse than that. I dont know how to describe how loud it is. I would not be able to tolerate this card even if it worked 3 times better than my 8800 GTS. I do not understand why would Shapphire relase this product at all. I mean if your PC is in another room that is sound sealed, go ahead, buy it.

The pros would be that the card looks really nice. But if someone gave it to me for free to keep, I would sell it. To a deaf person.

I wish I knew whether the card would improve ArmA framerates comparing to my 8800 GTS. But this is just curiosity. Even if the improvement was dramatic, I would not keep it. Out!

[oChaos.DNJ 0]

hmm I would think 600w would be enough to run it, but I dont know your amps on the 12v. Though your able to run a 8800....

Assuming your doing everything correctly..

Maybe you just got a bad card?

It can happen with any component.

[BraTTy 0]

And when they review video cards. Fan db is rated.

Now we know Saphirre 2900pro is most likely loud. Doesn't mean all 2900pros are.

Thanks for the review. Still unable to get it to boot?

[leckig 0]

i think the computer actually boots. I see the hdd light on and flashing. But both of mine screens are blank. I put the 8800 back in, packet up the 2900 pro and will send it back. Again, even if it worked, I would send it back because of the noise.

[libertyordeath776 0]

This is off topic i guess, but since BIOS is mentioned i thought id throw it out here. I went to look at my bios. I have a gforce agp card. My bios is on pci? The other option is agp/onboard. The comp had onboard till i put this agp card in.Shouldnt it be on the agp/onboard? I switched it to agp/onboard and loaded up Arma and see no diff. in performance  when changed? Whats up ?

PLEASE DELETE......posted in hardware....

[-Puma- 2]

This is off topic i guess, but since BIOS is mentioned i thought id throw it out here. I went to look at my bios. I have a gforce agp card. My bios is on pci? The other option is agp/onboard. The comp had onboard till i put this agp card in.Shouldnt it be on the agp/onboard? I switched it to agp/onboard and loaded up Arma and see no diff. in performance when changed? Whats up ?

PLEASE DELETE......posted in hardware....

[libertyordeath776 0]

My comp had onboard vid when new, i bought a agp 8X geforce card for it. I installed it about a year ago. I was reading about Bios stuff and was looking in my Bios and noticed my vid adapter there says PCI? The other option is agp/onboard. My card is in the agp slot, when i look in device manager it says PCI bus slot 1? Why doesnt the device manager say its in agp slot?

[Heatseeker 0]

I've read from a 2900 user that is quite happy with his card, unfortunetly Arma doesnt seem to work with it.

A video card that doesnt like Arma is a useless video card, my 8800 gtx likes Arma so i like the 8800 card even if Arma doesnt take full advantage of it. The north Sahrani grass can still embarass this card though..

I bet you just got a broken card .

[ANG3L 0]

My comp had onboard vid when new, i bought a agp 8X geforce card for it. I installed it about a year ago. I was reading about Bios stuff and was looking in my Bios and noticed my vid adapter there says PCI? The other option is agp/onboard. My card is in the agp slot, when i look in device manager it says PCI bus slot 1? Why doesnt the device manager say its in agp slot?

Some bios give you the option to switch the flavor of the bus port appropriate to the card you have bought / want to use, depending on what your motherboard supports that is.

Ie; pci, agp, pcie, x2pcie Sli/Crossfire

and of course on board that falls into its own category.

In short if you have a external agp card then set the bios to use the agp slot, if the card is pcie then set the bios to use pcie slot. same goes for the older pci ports.

agp on board is simply on board graphics on/off

[leckig 0]

OK guys, I found out what was the problem. Honestly, i was too harsh.

The manual of this card is useless. I found out online that this card requires TWO power cables. Now, the funny thing is that one is standard PCI power cable, that I connected of course. The port that I had left was some weird 8 pin little smaller than MOLEX thingy. So i left it empty.

The secret is (and you, the customer, have to know it...) that you have to haev another PCI power cable or use MOLEX-PCI power converter and plug it in. You will now wonder, how? Yes, you have to plug 6 pin power cable into 8 pin port. If fits, but you have two pins just sticking there doing nothing.

The card runs much more quiet now. It is still louder than 8800 but it is tolerable. It runs ARMA very very good. The graphics are just nicer, sharper and much faster. on my GTS I was getting down to 7 FPS in woods but 60 FPS on desert. Now it never gets below 25.

So yes, it is a good card. Only the manual sucks

[-Puma- 2]

clad u got it solved bro

[Money 0]

I've heard about 8800 cards running fine on 400W PSU's

I honestly doubt 2900 would have a problem on a 600W.

[Dwarden 1125]

such info should be in manual, on retail box, on manufacturer website and told to You be reseller ...

but glad You found it sooner than never

[TheReddog 0]

Personally I will never buy another ATI card, not after the debacle I went through with the x1950Pro AGP. I went through two replacement cards, the damn things would literally shut down after running a game for 15 minutes.

The third brand new replacement I got I didn't even open just sold it on eBay new with no guarantee, the guy who bought it off me hit the same problem. I told him to talk to the manufacturer because I sold it to him new with no guarantee of my own.

Then I built my current system with an 8800GTS and I am very happy with it, the monkeys at ATI can die in a muddy hole.

[Raz0rx 0]

I know numerous people with an X1950Pro, and they've never had such problems (any of them).

I've got an X1950XTX and i've never had problems either, that, AND it runs ArmA fine on max gfx, 1280x1024, view distance 1000... somehow.

Sucks that you hit a bad patch.

[max power 21]

My x1950s xtx / ces seem to run fine. Lately I've only really had time to run them using 3d graphics applications rather than games, but they run fine. I haven't been able to get ArmA to work with crossfire, but I trouble with Arma and Crossfire with my x850s CEs too.

[-Puma- 2]

Personally I will never buy another ATI card, not after the debacle I went through with the x1950Pro AGP. I went through two replacement cards, the damn things would literally shut down after running a game for 15 minutes.

The third brand new replacement I got I didn't even open just sold it on eBay new with no guarantee, the guy who bought it off me hit the same problem. I told him to talk to the manufacturer because I sold it to him new with no guarantee of my own.

Then I built my current system with an 8800GTS and I am very happy with it, the monkeys at ATI can die in a muddy hole.

dude i had the same prob with my 1950pro. The thing is that 1950 series require 450W psu with atleast 25amp on the 12v rail. upgraded psu and havent had a problem since(execpt the msi POS fan died, so i bought zalman vf-700)

[-Puma- 2]

well im stepping into dx10 era myself. just ordered sapphire 2900pro

512mb

btw lecklig is ur card 512mb or 1gb???

[leckig 0]

512.

After some days of testing it I can say now, that (if you can ignore the noise) this card is just like made for ARMA.

In most games it runs slower or the same as my 8800GTS 320MB (at least with my native resolution).

But in ARMA, I just switched everything to NORMAL and it never goes below 25FPS, usually about 35 FPS. the 8800 GTS was on low and in areas with many buildings AND foliage, mainly when I was very close to a bush, it would sometimes go to below 10. So yes, I can recomend 2900 PRO to ARMA players.

I can keep the 2900 PRO for another week and than I will have a decision to make, buy it, or stay with the 8800 GTS.

[-Puma- 2]

overclock the card to XT speeds and u have 2900XT. pro is identical with XT: same amount of shader units, HDMI and 5.1 audio etc, but just lower clocks. allso u can flash it to XT.

[Dwarden 1125]

Pros are cards which failed to meet XT speeds on stability test ...

so there is no warranty it will operate safely on XT speeds ...

You may try and consider urself lucky if it works

[leckig 0]

plus I found out that I would actually have to have this weird new 8 pin power supply cable. So far I am using 6 pin cable in 8 pin connector. This disables overclocking.

[TheReddog 0]

Personally I will never buy another ATI card, not after the debacle I went through with the x1950Pro AGP. I went through two replacement cards, the damn things would literally shut down after running a game for 15 minutes.

The third brand new replacement I got I didn't even open just sold it on eBay new with no guarantee, the guy who bought it off me hit the same problem. I told him to talk to the manufacturer because I sold it to him new with no guarantee of my own.

Then I built my current system with an 8800GTS and I am very happy with it, the monkeys at ATI can die in a muddy hole.

dude i had the same prob with my 1950pro. The thing is that 1950 series require 450W psu with atleast 25amp on the 12v rail. upgraded psu and havent had a problem since(execpt the msi POS fan died, so i bought zalman vf-700)

I was running it off a PSU with the required power, do you think I was born yesterday? That same PSU is now running an 8800GTS happily without a problem.

I also was not the only person by far experiencing this issue, I found out that it is pretty common after googling 'x1950pro+black screen'.

[-Puma- 2]

Personally I will never buy another ATI card, not after the debacle I went through with the x1950Pro AGP. I went through two replacement cards, the damn things would literally shut down after running a game for 15 minutes.

The third brand new replacement I got I didn't even open just sold it on eBay new with no guarantee, the guy who bought it off me hit the same problem. I told him to talk to the manufacturer because I sold it to him new with no guarantee of my own.

Then I built my current system with an 8800GTS and I am very happy with it, the monkeys at ATI can die in a muddy hole.

dude i had the same prob with my 1950pro. The thing is that 1950 series require 450W psu with atleast 25amp on the 12v rail. upgraded psu and havent had a problem since(execpt the msi POS fan died, so i bought zalman vf-700)

I was running it off a PSU with the required power, do you think I was born yesterday? That same PSU is now running an 8800GTS happily without a problem.

I also was not the only person by far experiencing this issue, I found out that it is pretty common after googling 'x1950pro+black screen'.

tell me what PSU u got and we can settle this. 8800GTS recommended PSU is 400W, some ppl have even managed to run 8800GTS in SLI with 400W PSU. 1950 series needs 450W and atleast 25A on the 12V rail.

@leckig u can buy an 8 pin adapter to enable overdrive.

[gL33k 0]

How good is the 2900pro in front of an old' classic X1900XT 512 ?