What a nice person

Thank you and thanks for the great, informative thread.

I wish they sold the 8500 GT in the united states, this sucks.
Oh well, i'm going to buy the X1550 or X1300 , the 2400 pro might not work on XP, isn't that card for Vista/DX10 only?

I would only get the x1550 by Diamond if I were you. That is the only true 128 bit interface card out of all of these. The 64 bit interface of the rest severely cripples and bottlenecks the performance of the others. Take the clock specs and divide by 2 for a point of reference.

The 8500 not being sold in the states isn't so much an issue as long as you are willing to pay more for the best. Just make sure you don't pay VAT if you order from overseas as that doesn't apply to Americans. The 8500 was clearly, far and away the best PCI card, hence my purchase of it, with 280 MHz more memory clock speed at factory settings and much greater overclock potential than the Diamond x1550 due to its much lower power requirements.

I don't there is a piece of hardware or software, created to be Vista compatible that isn't backwards compatible with at least the XP version of Windows. The 2400 has a great price tag, but you pay for what you get and that price is roughly equal to the performance difference between the 2400 and the 8500.

Alright i have a couple questions:

#1 You are right, the diamond version is the best X1550 card. I remember buying a Diamond Version of the Radeon 7000 card, i was able to turn on vertex shaders and pixel shaders and hardware T&L with the perfect 4.3 drivers. Now my first question, um is this information correct:

Because of its smaller design, these cards also offer lower power demands (30 watts), so they run cooler and can be used in smaller cases

Taken from wikipedia, does that message applys to all versions of the X1550 and X1300?

#2 It says 30 watts, but on the website from diamond it says 420watts, or is someone wrong or am i missing something?

#3 Having 64bit is really that bad huh? The 2400 pro is obvious more powerful then the X1500 and X1300, but having 64bit would it really decrease performance in games?

#4 If i would buy the X1300, just saying or the X1550 non diamond version, its a powerful card, but would i see a performance increase from my FX5500 256MB 128bit PCI card?

tHANKS!

Thanks for the questions General:

#1 As for the cards being 30 watts, the x1300 is at least 300 watts, I believe. I'm not sure what the 30 watts figure is pertaining to exactly, but I wouldn't plug in any modern PCI card expecting it to only draw 30 watts.

#2 The Diamond website is correct, you need a power supply that will provide at least 420 watts of power, unless you want to risk frying it prematurely or it not working at all.

#3 Based upon my research, yes having 64 bit memory interface is really that bad. If you don't believe me, Google 64 bit vs 128 bit and read some posts and blogs about how badly this design cripples the capabilities of video cards. The 64 bit channel is much narrower than a 128 bit one, think of a small and large water pipe. The larger one will always send more water through at a time than the smaller one, and the same goes for the memory interface on these cards.

#4 Everyone is telling me that the PCI bus is old and nearly worthless, but I don't believe them personally and I get much better results from my FX5500 over onboard. My best estimate is that even the 64 bit cards would offer an improvement in performance over the FX5500, but nowhere near as dramatic as a 128 bit bus would.

BTW, the apparent difference between the Diamond x1300 & the Diamond x1550 is about 20W in memory clock, so if you can find a Diamond x1300 that is significantly cheaper than the cheapest Diamond x1550, then I would go for that. Diamond x1550 is my next best choice after the Sparkle 8500 GT, followed by the Diamond x1300 and then the Powercolor or Visiontek HD 2400 Pro.

Teklord, the only thing I am going to respond to is the 'PCI is not worthless'. Your are 100% correct. While it may not be nearly as good as PCI-E, or even AGP 8X, it can still put out considerably good performance.

Hi, are you sure the diamond (450/260) is the best one, i think it's the visiontek (550/400) is not bad too? Is the diamondX1550 is a "PRO" like they say here on their website? Be careful, the HIS i-Fan is a the only 64 bits X1550, but it's correctly run HL2.

For my HIS x1550 i-Fan, i need 450watts.

I you have the choice between 128 and 64...

The 2400 pro is not obvious more powerful than the x1550, look at this

gpureview.com will give you good informations...

Good nights

I believe you presume that the Visiontek x1550 is 128 bit as did I initially, but further research, including phone calls to Visiontek, proved that it is only 64 bit memory interface. gpureview.com isn't always correct on their listings, but it seems to be the best resource available for directly comparing cards, despite being inaccurate.

HIS x1550 obliterates Visiontek x1550 in specs, but both are 64 bit and ultimately less powerful than the Diamond 128 bit x1550. CSR at Visiontek quoted the x1550 as being something like anywhere from 350 to 450 in core clock & 533 for memory clock. Call them yourself and ask if you don't believe me.

It is frustrating to read people saying PCI is ancient and utterly slow. Yes, it is the slowest bus interface, but a lot of people do not want to upgrade at this time and they want the best PCI video card value there is. No PCI card is ever going to run Crysis at full settings, but that isn't a goal of mine and there are about 30 years of previous video games, most of which will run on my 8500 GT.

Hi Teklord,
OK, don't worry, I believe you!! I know gpureview make mistakes, but it's a very good adviser.
Is that cause of the 128 bits diamond call their X1550 PCI a "PRO"?

I believe I have seen 64 bit cards calling themselves "pro", so the answer is no.

yea the PCI bus is pretty good, just a few games which i am going to mention that i can play well. Flatout 2 = 35fps and more, Painkiller all editions even overdose = 28fps - 32fps. SOF 3 = 19FPS - 24fps, sometimes goes up to 34fps. And many more. The pci bus obvious is not more powerful then the agp or PCI-E bus, but as we all say its gets the job done with alot of stuff. Would be nice if some companies will make more cards for the pci users. You know every now and then, and who knows they might.

I was shocked to see a 8500 gt card and a 2400 pro. Someone else might release more. I think once i buy the X1300 or X1550 or even the 2400 pro card, that would be it buying PCI cards. I just need a more powerful card at the moment to upgrade from the FX5500 which is pretty good btw, too good at times.

Thanks for all the information guys,

If I understand correctly, 60 fps is the benchmark you want to achieve for best gameplay results. You are way under that, so I would consider upgrading your power supply so you can get better overclock resutls and getting the best PCI card you can. You have to take what you can with the PCI bus, but there are other ways to increase speed including overclocking the CPU and memory sticks.

Well here is the thing, i am using a old gateway computer and my PSU is only at 90watts. It still works like new, i have use a radeon 7000, radeon 9250, radeon geforce 5200 , geforce 5500 which i am using now, to a 6200 card ( evga and bfg ) and i never had any problems with overheating or anything, infact my computer stays cool and cool sometimes cold air is blowing out of the tower, the PSU size was clearly made for this computer and it works perfectly.

Now just a update, due to me having only 90watts, i think my final options are limited. It seems i only can buy either the visiontek versions of the X1550 or X1300 or i can buy the 2400 pro card. But the Diamond Stealth X1550 version, well it says 420watts. So i'm confused, because of all of the cards which i own above, they say the FX5500 and 6200 needs a 250 or 350 watts PSU, but that is not true, because i can run the cards just fine, even tho the 6200 works like crap on my computer, all of them. Not due to the card, but there is no stable drivers supported for that card.

When i was running the BFG version , my temps was always at 39 - 55, never went up 60. The evga version which has no fan, the card got extremely hot after playing UT2003 for only 30 mins haha. But when i was checking the temp, it says 48.

So about me changing my PSU, i rather not. Because i have had this computer for years and everything is working perfectly, and i don't want to risk changing my PSU for another one, and besides my Tower is not small, but i don't even believe they sell PSU's in the same size as the 90watts, but has more in it .

I am buying MS Vista soon, as my secondary computer so the games which i can play now, i will just look foward to having a powerful computer at that point. But right now, i am looking forward to upgrading to my final card from the FX5500.

What do you guys think, because i really don't feel like i should replace the 90 watts and as i said i don't believe they sell higher units in the same size. So i guess i will have to buy a 64bit interface card, out of the 3 , Visiontek versions of X1550 or X1300 or buy the 2400pro.

Also, i had a 64bit inferface card, the 6200 was more powreful then the fx5500, but games didn't run well, because there is no correct driver for the card. Maybe the Radeon versions might fare better and i plan on doing some serious testing with them too. I also plan to upgrade my Ram to 1GB and that will help. But 90watts is pretty good and gets the job done. I guess it was made for this computer for a reason.

Hey guys, i went to bestbuy today and what do you know, shocking i found the 2400 pro pci version , 2 boxes left, so i bought one. Overbought tho, but i plan on doing some testing to make sure i can run all of my games with ease:





Took some pictures

What a good new!! I know that powercolor makes the 2400 pro but I didn't know that Visiontek makes it too! So, I hope you will show us what's in...

And if you have no PCI-Ex, no AGP and no PCI, only USB, you got this :

Information here. It's unbelievable!!

Hey technofill, sapphire makes the 2400, and visiontek and powercolor. The powercolor is only 64 dollars, but does not come with a fan. Also, HIS made a 2400 version too.

Btw that usb device does look amazing, but i just read this 2700 watt or greater power supply ( which can be purchased form our website)



2700 PSU , thats madness lol.

I edit my post, i tell sapphire but i talk about powercolor. Have you informations about the HIS and the sapphire 2400 pro PCI? I don't find some... I've seen that the visiontek is a 64 bits too! . I've find another 2400pro from Diamond Multimedia on NCIX.com and on the diamond multimedia website :



Yes, and 1000 GB for vista well done from Visiontek, it's a good idea for april fools!