 | |||
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Gigabyte GV-R465D2-1GI Radeon HD 4650 AGP Review July 09, 2009 |
|
 |
|
| |
Summary: Are you in the market for an AGP graphics upgrade? If so, you know that there aren't a lot of choices out there. One of the newest additions to the AGP market however is Gigabyte's GV-R465D2-1GI, which is based on ATI's Radeon 4650 GPU. Join us as we take a look at this card's capabilities in today's review!
 Gigabyte GV-R465D2-1GI Radeon HD 4650 Review | Page:: ( 1 / 7 ) |
[image]
| <% print_image("01"); %> |
Did you say AGP?
Whatever the reason, there are a number of users out there still gaming happily on AGP-based systems. Many of them just don’t want to shell out the money for a brand new PCI Express PC when their current rig suits them just fine. After all, the GPU plays a huge role in gaming performance right? Considering that most games are either single or dual-threaded, why spend money that you don’t have on a new CPU, motherboard, GPU, and memory, when all you really need to absolutely have is a strong GPU.
[image]
| <% print_image("02"); %> | <% print_image("03"); %> |
To cater to this segment of the graphics market, ATI and their board partners have quietly continued to provide the latest mainstream Radeon GPUs to the public. It’s actually a rather shrewd move on their part, as NVIDIA abandoned the AGP space some time ago with the GeForce 7 generation of GPUs. Those AGP-based GeForce 7800 and 7600 GPUs are all long gone now, leaving the space to ATI alone. Right now on Newegg and other online retailers you can find AGP Radeon cards based on ATI’s Radeon 3650 and 3850 GPUs, and just recently the first AGP-based 4650 cards hit retailers shelves.
Gigabyte is one of the first manufacturers to ship an AGP Radeon 4650; their GV-R465D2-1GI Radeon HD 4650 board has been available on Newegg for a few weeks now. Priced at $94.99, the card has earned a 4/5 star rating so far. Let’s see how the board compares to its PCI Express equivalent.
[image]
| <% print_image("04"); %> | <% print_image("05"); %> |
Radeon 4650 hardware
For starters, the GV-R465D2-1GI ships with the same RV730 GPU that first appeared on the Radeon 4670 last year. RV730 features 320 stream processors along with 32 texture units providing up to 19.2Gigatexels/sec peak texture fill rate. ATI clocks the Radeon 4650 at 600MHz – this is the same speed Gigabyte employs for the GV-R465D2-1GI.
The memory subsystem on Gigabyte’s AGP card is carried over unchanged from its PCI Express cousin as well. All 4650 cards ship with the same 128-bit DDR2 memory interface, with ATI’s reference specifications calling for a minimum of 400MHz DDR2 (800MHz effective) memory (although many PCIe cards ship with much faster memory).
Gigabyte follows these specs to the letter, with the GV-R465D2-1GI shipping with 1GB of DDR2 memory operating at 400MHz, yielding up to 12.8GB/sec of peak memory bandwidth.
[image]
| <% print_image("06"); %> |
The card is a rather distinctive animal in the sense that it’s an AGP card with DVI, VGA, and HDMI outputs, making it appealing whether you’re looking to upgrade an HTPC and need the HDMI output (Gigabyte says that the card doesn’t support HDMI audio output in Windows Vista), or you’re a gamer with a DVI or VGA display who is looking to upgrade to something faster. The HDMI connector is even gold plated, ensuring the highest signal quality.
[image]
| <% print_image("07"); %> | <% print_image("08"); %> |
The GV-R465D2-1GI ships with a dual-slot heatsink/fan unit that runs quietly and does a good job of keeping the RV730 GPU cool. As you can see in the photos, the card’s cooler is made entirely from aluminum. Gigabyte then employs an 80mm fan for cooling. Our AGP testbed is so loud that we couldn’t get good readings that isolate the noise of the Gigabyte card, but it seemed to run quietly for the most part.
[image]
| <% print_image("09"); %> |
Nestled just behind the fan is a six-pin PCIe power connector. This connector is required in order for the card to operate. Here we should also note that some of you with older AGP systems may need to upgrade your power supply for this card: our 300W Sparkle PSU wasn’t powerful enough for the card to run with complete stability. Gigabyte doesn’t provide system requirements, but ATI lists a 400W power supply requirement for the Radeon 4600 series.
[image]
| <% print_image("10"); %> |
The Rialto bridge chip that provides AGP functionality is nestled on the back of the board sans heatsink. It sits just underneath the GPU. Without anything protecting the chip, we’ve got to wonder if someone may accidentally damage it while handling the card.
Software support
The one downside of the GV-R465D2-1GI is that it’s so new it doesn’t work with ATI’s current Catalyst 9.6 driver that’s available to the public. Fortunately the driver Gigabyte provides on the Gigabyte CD is based on Catalyst version 8.62, the same codebase as ATI’s current Catalyst 9.6 driver. The key difference is this is an older beta driver build of Catalyst 9.6, whereas the driver on AMD’s website is WHQL-certified. The beta Gigabyte driver also lacks support for ATI Overdrive, so overclocking isn’t supported at this time – none of the 3rd party utilities we normally use for OC’ing properly detect the card.
Hopefully ATI will add support for AGP Radeon 4650 cards into their monthly Catalyst driver releases.
[image]
| <% print_image("11"); %> |
| System Setup | Page:: ( 2 / 7 ) |
AMD Athlon 64 FX-53
1GB OCZ PC3200 Memory
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Catalyst 9.3 (legacy driver)
Gigabyte GV-R465D2-1GI Radeon 4650
Catalyst 9.6 beta
Windows XP Service Pack 3
34GB Western Digital Raptor (10,000RPM, 8MB cache)
Notes
In order to test the capabilities of Gigabyte’s GV-R465D2-1GI Radeon 4650 card, we dusted off an old AGP testbed based around the ASUS SK8N and AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 CPU. Not exactly state-of-the-art hardware by today’s standards, but five years ago this would’ve been a bleeding-edge PC. We’d planned to test three generations of Radeon hardware, including the venerable Radeon 9700 Pro, ATI’s Radeon X1950 Pro, and the Gigabyte Radeon 4650, but our X1950 Pro AGP is apparently on the fritz, as the card would lock up the moment we booted up a 3D game.
This left us with just one card to compare the 4650 against: the 9700 Pro. This was definitely a less than ideal situation that was complicated by the fact that many of the games we now use for testing require shader model 3.0 hardware (the 9700 Pro is a shader model 2.0 card), and even some of the games that don’t require SM3.0 hardware wouldn’t run with the 9700 Pro: we’re looking at you BioShock and STALKER Clear Sky.
In addition, the 9700 Pro couldn’t run any of the games we tested at resolutions above 1280x1024, so we were limited to 800x600 and 1024x768.
We also tested with Windows XP simply because that’s the OS most AGP users are likely to still be running.
| Call of Duty 4 | Page:: ( 3 / 7 ) |
| Crysis | Page:: ( 4 / 7 ) |
| Left 4 Dead | Page:: ( 5 / 7 ) |
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 6 / 7 ) |
Pros
AGP!: While we feel most of you should’ve upgraded to PCI Express by now (PCIe 4650 cards sell for significantly less than Gigabyte’s GV-R465D2-1GI), if you are one of those gamers who doesn’t want to upgrade your AGP PC just yet, it’s probably refreshing to see that manufacturers like Gigabyte haven’t abandoned you.
No performance compromises: Remember the outcry over the GeForce 7800 GS AGP? Sporting fewer shaders and slower clocks, GeForce users were up in arms over the changes NVIDIA implemented in the 7800 GS AGP.
Fortunately that isn’t the case for the Gigabyte GV-R465D2-1GI Radeon 4650. This AGP card sports the exact same specs as its PCI Express counterpart. This allows the GPU to perform to its fullest potential.
Good cooling: Gigabyte outfits their GV-R465D2-1GI board with a pretty good cooler. Unlike ATI’s reference design, the cooling unit is dual-slot, with an aluminum (rather than copper) heatsink and large 80mm fan. The cooler does a good job of keeping the RV730 GPU cool while also generating little noise.
Sure, it’s a simple cooler -- it doesn’t directly cool the board’s memory modules -- but it gets the job done well, and in the end that’s what counts.
Display outputs: The GV-R465D2-1GI ships with a wide array of display output options. On the backplate of the card you’ll find HDMI, DVI, and VGA outputs. Keep in mind though that audio over HDMI isn’t supported at this time in Windows Vista.
Cons
Driver support: The current WHQL-certified Catalyst 9.6 driver available on amd.com lacks support for the Radeon 4650 AGP GPU, instead Gigabyte relies on a beta derivative of the driver for their GV-R465D2-1GI card.
Hopefully the next driver release direct from ATI will offer native Radeon 4650 AGP support, as the current Gigabyte driver lacks support for ATI Overdrive, which provides hardware monitoring and overclocking functionality. Some users may not feel comfortable using beta drivers either (we didn’t encounter any issues with the beta driver during our testing).
Price: Currently Newegg sells the GV-R465D2-1GI for $94.99; that’s $45 more than the cheapest PCI Express Radeon 4650 card on Newegg. The card is also priced $10 higher than XFX’s Radeon 4650 AGP card, which sports the same clock speeds but with a smaller, single slot cooler.
Lack of dual DVI support:By including a VGA output on the backplate of the GV-R465D2-1GI, you’re out of luck if you need an AGP card with two DVI outputs. The card does support dual VGA displays though thanks to the DVI adapter Gigabyte includes with the card.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 7 / 7 ) |