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ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe

A7N8X-Deluxe Progress Report

I've been searching for a reasonably priced Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4650 1GB AGP video card for sometime now, and finally got one on Ebay. There was one NIB offered from Russia, but the seller wanted over $100 with the shipping. The USPS shipper says it's supposed to be delivered on 12/8, and as soon as it hits the door I'll install it and try to run some benchmarks.
 
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Received the HD4650 AGP 1 GB in this morning's mail and it was DOA. The fan spins up but that's all, no video out. Initiated return through Ebay. Going to reinstall the PNY Nvidia Geforce 7600 GS (512 GB) and close out the mods for this project.
 
Agent Orange said:
Received the HD4650 AGP 1 GB in this morning's mail and it was DOA...
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I contacted the seller and complained that the unit was no good and he informed me that "all sales were final - no returns". After a few volleys back and forth, he wanted to hatch a plot and lay it on the USPS, as there was $50 worth of insurance on the item. At that point I didn't bother contacting him again and notified Ebay. After a day or so, Ebay sent me an email and said that I should wait until December 18th to see if the seller would offer a settlement. On the 19th, and much to my surprise, Ebay emailed me and said that a full refund would appear in my bank account in about 6 days, and even provided a paid shipping label. Let's hear it for Ebay!
 
A7N8X-Deluxe Progress Report

The A7 has performed well this last year with no serious hitches or gotchas. I bought and downloaded some games from GOG, which were of the 'enhanced' variety (Baldur's Gate - Grim Fandango), and found Star Wars: Rogue Squadron somewhere. Star Wars, both sound & video runs fine. The two so-called enhanced version won't load. However, they both run like a champ under W10, so I kept them.

I found a legitimate site and downloaded the original 1998 Baldur's Gate for a few dollars. It came with a key and installed perfectly on the A7. Both the video and audio are okay. More later.
 
Agent Orange said:
Received the HD4650 AGP 1 GB in this morning's mail and it was DOA. The fan spins up but that's all, no video out. Initiated return through Ebay. Going to reinstall the PNY Nvidia Geforce 7600 GS (512 GB) and close out the mods for this project.
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So did you get to keep the card, or did you return it?
 
GiGaBiTe said:
So did you get to keep the card, or did you return it?
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Oh yeah, I returned it (see #85 above). Who ever I bought the thing from used a false return address and Ebay jumped in and took care of it. I'm still in the market for one but not at current Ebay prices. Another thing is some people advertise the product not knowing what form factor they have. Example: PCI vs AGP.
 
eBay are very much on the buyers' side it seems. Which is good, unless you're trying to sell something and having your time wasted by fraudulent would-be purchasers. Ask me how I know.
 
cthulhu said:
eBay are very much on the buyers' side it seems. Which is good, unless you're trying to sell something and having your time wasted by fraudulent would-be purchasers. Ask me how I know.
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I sold an item not too long ago on Ebay and set the sale as for "US" only. Some buyer from Russia got in the way as I originally offered free shipping. That was a big mistake on my part. As a seller, I went round and round with Ebay and they finally got onboard and backed me up. Lesson here is never offer free delivery. It's difficult to be a 'good guy' seller on Ebay these days.
 
I have an XFX 4650 1GB AGP here somewhere. Got it at a decent prices because somebody broke the power plug so I soldered in a new one.
 
Agent Orange said:
Lesson here is never offer free delivery. It's difficult to be a 'good guy' seller on Ebay these days.
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The lesson I learned is don't bother with eBay it you want to sell something headache-free. Use TradeMe instead if you live in New Zealand like I do. I only bothered with eBay in the first place as I thought there'd be much more demand for something useful for cryptocurrency mining internationally therefore I'd get a better price as a result. To my surprise that really wasn't the case.
 
ASUS -A7N8X-E Deluxe

This has nothing to do with the build, but I thought I'd pass this tidbit down. Last week I bricked my old Samsung wireless mono laser printer. I did a real good job on it changing the toner cartridge - lots of plastic went flying around. So, I bought a new Canon M240 for a real good price. It was advertised as having a 'painless' wireless setup routine. Turns out it pretty much was except that the setup CD didn't support W10. No problem there, just down loaded the right drivers and it was a piece of cake from there on out. Since the A7 was near by, I shoved the original Canon CD in, and lo-and-behold, XP installed all the Canon printer drivers. The new printer works fine on the old gamer.
 
ASUS -A7N8X-E Deluxe Update

I finally scored a Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 1 GB for the A7. I got the thing for $21.50 in the original box and packaging, along with all of the accessories except the CD and manual. I located the driver set and 'hot fix' directly from the Sapphire web site. The Catalyst 14.4 drivers would appear to install but were non-functional and there was no Catalyst Control Center (CCC). The 'Hot Fix' and a video card BIOS update were also downloaded. The 'hot fix' was evidently tailored for AGP and totally fixed all of the 14.4 short comings. Back up in #82, GiGaBiTe warned that the driver would be an issue. I suppose I got lucky on that count. When I get some time I'll try to do some bench marks on a few games.
 
ASUS -A7N8X-E Deluxe Update

I believe that the Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 AGP w/ 1 GB is the top of the heap for this type build. The CCC works as advertised and the display is only limited by the monitor's specs. My current setup is 1360 x 768 @ 62 HZ & Highest (32 bit) color. These setting are by no means max, but conform to several of the games that I play the most. If you currently have or in intend to build a similar period gamer, I would highly recommend the 4650. Caveat: Pricey and hard to source. Must have patience.
(I firmly believe that some of the Ebay sellers monitor this forum, have a pretty good idea of what people are looking for, and price accordingly).

URL for the 4600 series drivers: http://www.sapphiretech.com/productdetial.asp?Pid=6D6C83B8-8009-4C58-A88E-26BE69A510ED&lang=eng

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Honestly, a 7800gs is a better preposition for a beefy AGP card. It is a native AGP offering, unlike the HD46x0 using a weird bridge chip that causes compatibility issues. While still not cheap, you can generally find them between $60-100 on Ebay with decent availability. There are some rare Gainward 7800gs cards which are actually using full blown 7900GT parts, but these use bridge chips and likely have the same compatibility issues.

The 7800gs is a slightly slower card than the HD46x0 and lacks DX10 support, but if you're trying to play DX10 games on an ancient AGP system, you got your priorities backwards.
 
AMD had Radeon drivers specific to AGP cards on their website last I looked.

AGP systems should be limited to DX9 gaming or earlier. My high end AGP systems tend to use cards like the 7600GS, 6600/6800GT, x1950, HD2600 etc. I recapped a bunch of old Athlon XP and socket 754 era AGP boards and made systems out of them for fun a few years back. 1GB cards will eat up system ram on XP under 3GB usable on a 4GB system. The good gaming AGP cards generally had 256MB and some had 512MB. Games that needed more VRAM were better of PCIE cards anyway.
 
Unknown_K said:
AMD had Radeon drivers specific to AGP cards on their website last I looked.

AGP systems should be limited to DX9 gaming or earlier. My high end AGP systems tend to use cards like the 7600GS, 6600/6800GT, x1950, HD2600 etc. I recapped a bunch of old Athlon XP and socket 754 era AGP boards and made systems out of them for fun a few years back. 1GB cards will eat up system ram on XP under 3GB usable on a 4GB system. The good gaming AGP cards generally had 256MB and some had 512MB. Games that needed more VRAM were better of PCIE cards anyway.
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ATI Radeon AGP cards using the 14.4 drivers require the "hot fix" driver set. The 1 GB 4650 is here to stay.
 
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