Final Verdict

FiringSquad says:

We realize there are many of you with AGP systems who are generally happy with the performance of your system, you just want a bit of a boost for games like Company of Heroes. Perhaps you’re waiting for DX10 games to actually ship before spending the big bucks on a high-end DX10 card. By then the second generation of DX10 hardware should be out anyway. Or perhaps you’re waiting until Vista is out and mature. There’s also plenty happening on the CPU front, with Core 2 getting a 1333MHz FSB and DDR3 next year, not to mention quad-core CPUs hitting mainstream prices and the debut of AMD’s highly anticipated Barcelona core.

The point is, there are plenty of reasons why many AGP users just don’t feel the urge to replace their entire system just yet, and would rather just upgrade the component that matters the most right now for gaming: the graphics card. Think of it as a midlife upgrade if you will.

The debate is, should you upgrade to a new card like the Radeon X1950 Pro AGP, or just junk the idea of a midlife upgrade and swap out your motherboard, graphics, and other components and make the move to PCI Express.

Hopefully this article shed a little light on what kind of performance you could expect from going down the midlife upgrade path (via the PowerColor X1950 Pro AGP), or for the all-out replacement with the PCI Express system.

As you just saw in our benchmarks, in many cases the AGP rig is quite a capable performer. In Quake 4 and Oblivion for instance, the difference in performance was nearly indistinguishable. Company of Heroes, and to a slightly lesser extent F.E.A.R. were the only applications where the PCI Express X1950 Pro card really pulled ahead of its AGP counterpart, with the PCIe board running up to 9% faster in CoH at 1600x1200 with 2xAA/8xAF.

In comparison to the other AGP cards, the Radeon X1950 Pro is clearly in a class of its own right now. With the exception of Quake 4 (where the GeForce 7800 GS quite handily outperformed the X1950 Pro), the X1950 Pro swept all of our benchmarks, sometimes delivering over 1.5 times the performance of the GeForce 7800 GS AGP. Unless you’re a heavy Quake player, the Radeon X1950 Pro is definitely the fastest GPU out there on the AGP platform. It really isn’t all that close either.

PowerColor’s X1950 Pro AGP card stands out due to its unique cooling. PowerColor has partnered with Arctic Cooling to deliver an X1950 Pro card that not only delivers terrific performance, it does so while generating very little noise thanks to its excellent cooler. The fact that the board retails for just $209 makes it an even better bargain: this will be without a doubt one of the best buys on the AGP market when it hits stores next month. Gamers on a budget will want it because of its relatively low price (it’s just $33 more expensive than a 7600 GT AGP based on today’s Pricegrabber pricing, and about $40 less than the Sapphire X1950 Pro AGP currently sells for), while enthusiasts will want it for its cooling.

Because of this, we’re a little worried that demand may outstrip supply initially, leading to artificially inflated street prices. It happens all the time after all. When street prices on PowerColor’s X1950 Pro AGP do settle down however, this is going to be the high-end AGP card to get. Its got a powerful GPU and one of the best coolers on the market already built-in, what more could you ask for if you’re an enthusiast or gamer who wants to upgrade to a higher-end card? With the exception of factory overclocking, we don’t think it can get much better than PowerColor’s X1950 Pro AGP card as it is now.