smithpd on 17/4/2007 at 05:40

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The 7950 GT AGP arrived this evening, a couple of days late. No problem. The bottom line is, it works great:D, although not exactly as I expected.

First of all, my existing drivers, Forceware 84.21, did not recognize the card. Next, I installed 93.71, and that did not recognize the card either. So I installed drivers from the CD that came with the card. These were also called version 93.71 in the manufacturer's readme file. That one worked. Further inspection shows file version 6.14.10.9382 dated 3/12/2007. That looks to me like 93.82, so I am guessing the readme file is wrong. I attribute all the driver confusion to the fact that the AGP version of the 7950 GT is a brand new card model and not incorporated in older Nvidia Forceware.

Now to Thief. That works also. All three of my versions: Gold, T2, and TDS. This seems to defy conventional wisdom that 93xx is unreliable. As a matter of fact, I had problems with 93.71 with the 6800 GT, so I had to revert to 84.21. But now it works, whatever it is. Go figure.

I cannot claim to have found a generally available, reliable solution because stock drivers don't work yet, but I definitely have one data point.

Is it worth it?

Here are my 3DMark06 scores:
6800 GT: 2351
7950 GT: 4246

Not great by modern standards, but not bad for a 3-year old computer. I am surprized, actually, at the improvement. I thought my clunky Athlon 64 3400+ CPU would limit the scores. Not by much in this case. With the 6800 GT the complex graphics in the first test of the 3DMark06 was very jerky at around 5 FPS. Now it is much smoother at around 12 FPS. This is not meant to be a playable game -- just a test.

Here are my 3DMark 2001 SE scores:
6800 GT: 22805
7950 GT: 26226
Not nearly so much difference here because the graphics tests don't challenge the graphics cards very much (they were running at around 400 FPS), so the tests are CPU limited.

Thief looks and plays exactly the same. I expect that what few slowdowns I have will be less severe.

I am happy with it so far. It looks like a keeper.:) And, based on what Biker and others have said, it looks like the PCI Express version works, too.

My system is:
Asus K8N-E Deluxe motherboard
Athlon 64 3400+, socket 754
XFX GeForce 7950 GT AGP 512 MB
Creative Audigy (1), soon to be X Fi
1 GB memory
WD Raptor 74 GB hard drive
Windows 2000

smithpd on 18/4/2007 at 04:56

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Thanks, bikerdude.

Well, on the second day of operation, the new video card failed. The fan isn't rotating. I have learned that without a fan a 7950 GT can easily climb to over 115 C and develop a bad smell. So, it goes back to Newegg soon, and I'll have to decide where to go from here. My wife needs a new computer, so maybe I'll change my game plan. No matter what, for the sake of Thief, a 7950 GT in one form or another will be my next video card purchase.

Here's another data point. Using these new drivers (93.82) the 6600 GT also works on all three Thief games.

Martek on 18/4/2007 at 19:27

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Also (long shot here), many newer graphics cards have a separate power connector on the card (they don't get all of their power via the AGP slot). If yours had one, be sure it was connected.

The reason I say long shot is because even if your card does have one, I think/thought the onboard fan gets it's power off the bus (the AGP slot) as a precautionary method in case the "other" power was not connected.

Martek

smithpd on 21/4/2007 at 17:39

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I am still interested to know of others experiences with the 7950 GT.

Has anyone any experience with 7950 GT in SLI configuration? That might be the real end of the line....

smithpd on 22/4/2007 at 02:32

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Interesting. Well, at least it ran, which is a good thing. Don't need the speed for Thief anyway. But I am thinking. The Nvidia 680i chipset has suposedly "native" SLI support. I haven't dug deep enough to know what that means, but if it means what I think it should mean, the SLI configuration should look like a single video card to the operating system. Then, why should game support matter? Am I missing something?