"crippled" mobility x1600

Hi everyone!

I got a question/problem with my mobility x1600 128mb video card:

Few months ago i bought a new laptop, an Asus A6kt(Q057) series which i thought would do great in the games im constantly playing.The specs looked ok at that time but now i realise that the video card, the ati mobility x1600 isnt so great at all! Why? Cause its a "crippled" x1600 that has only 64bit bus width...
I found out about a program(RaBIT) that can modify the bus width of the card(in this case from 64bit to 128bit), but the question is: has anyone tried this, does it work?
Is there any other way to "transform" the bus witdh from 64bit to 128bit or if i flash the cards bios with a 256mb 128bit x1600 bios would that work?

Hope to get some feedback and i will give you more details if you want

Thanks

 

How can I find out, whether the x1600 in my Samsung X60 is using a 64bit or a 128bit bus? In an article on this forum it was stated that only nVidia is using 64bit buses with their low-end cards (Go7400 and so). I supposed that with x1600 I am on the safe side.

Dragosul: what is the 3dMark score of your computer/card? If it will be a completely different number (lower) to that of an X60, I guess we are still on the safe side with a 128bit bus.

 

The program i used for determining my bus width was Ati Tray Tools but i believe that Everest also reported me that.
Regarding the 3dmark score i know i had some picture of it but i dont know where i put it...I'll do another bench tonight or maybe tomorrow and i'll let you know the score.
Till then, i would apreciate if more experienced users on this forum would give us a hand resolving this problem.

Thanks

 

Have you tried playing some games?

 

What? The RV530 core (that's your X1600) requires at least a 128bit bus...in fact even that is downgraded from the original 256bit bus ATI intended. I think the last known ATI core to use 64bit mem bus was one of the earlier RV4xx series cards. I don't think your software is accurate...run a game or a benchmark and see. The moment something starts loading textures into some of that expensive DDR2 memory you've got there, you'll know.

 

I did a bench, 3DMark06 and the result is:
1474 3DMarks


How do you find this score?

Another thing that i noticed, is that only a part of 128Mb mobility x1600 could have the 64bit problem and never the 256Mb ones.

Waiting for oppinions.

 

As this review states, 3dMark05 score for a 256MB ATI x1600 is 2264. Unfortunately there is no 3dMark06 score. I don't know too much about 3dMark, but if these numbers are comparable, the results are sad.

Furthermore I have checked Ati Tray Tools on my X60, which said the memory bus bandwidth was 128bits. So it really might be that only models with 128MB VRAM are crippled to 64bit bus. Anyway, this is a very annoying news.

I regret that I can't help you with the bios flashing and bus bandwidth setting. To be honest this is the first time I've hear that it might be possible.

 

I ran a test of 3DMark05 and the score is 3273


But if you look more closely, you will see in that review that the score, 2264, is for an x1400 128mb vram if im not mistaken.

I would like that other users who have x1600(preferably 256Mb vram) and did the 3DMark tests(05 and 06) to show me their scores.

 

I know Apple runs a crippled X1600 in their MacBook Pro, but it's just down clocked and that's mostly for speed/heat reasons.

 

As stated earlier, this score is for an X1400.

Your score is fine, although on the lower end of the spectrum for X1600's only because of the 128MB of VRAM instead of 256MB. In other words, I'm almost positive you're running on a 128bit bus. My 256MB gets 4000 in 3DMark 05 on stock settings, quite a bit higher if I overclock.

 

I apologize for my mistake. I did not realize (or I simly forgot) that Samsung X60 had several configurations. Now I am starting to be curious to know my 3dMark score. Too bad the download is 600Mb. I think I will leave it.

 

Just to say that a 64-bit bus is a physical quantity that can not be changed with tweaks or hacks. With only 128MB equiped, the rest of the bu basically ends in the void.

 

http://ati.amd.com/products/mobilityradeonx1600/specs.html

it says it has a 128 mb bus

there are two versions of the ati x1600 that came out, one with ddr2 and one with ddr3. the memory speed of the ddr version also called the hd is higher

I cant find anything describing a x1600 with a 64 bit memory interface. can you show us where it says 64 bit?
on the spec it says it has 64 bit hd rendering support...maybe thats what its saying

 

http://www.alave.cz/ati-sapphire-x1600-pro-256mb-64bit-ddr2-dvi-tv-o:p:187626

 

Here is the picture of the specs from Ati Tray Tools:



What do you think of this, it might be an error or my guess was right?
How do you find my 3DMark score?

Other comments would be apreciated.

 

ok now ive found it all over heres a random thread

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?p=2521820

so you have the version that is ddr2 and also 64 bit bus.

So now at least I know that I think Ill have to research rabit


your score is significantly lower than the x1600 in most machines.

Its better than an x1400 though still.

after all of this I only know as much as you already knew when you started the thread lol. You are correct in everything.


to get a fair comparison of other users with x1600 128 bit you have to find some rare machines. msi 1039 is one and their is asus z92t almost qualifies but it is x2 part of your score is also the cpu, the turion...

ice tea is employed in the mobile gpu field I would trust his word that it cant be bios altered unless i can find something different....

 

I dont know what to say...I thought that only 128Mb versions can have "the option" of a 64bit memory width.
From that link i understand that not only the mobility x1600 can have this problem but desktop video cards can have it too.

P.S. I have a sugestion, if what we wrote here proves to be correct then someone on this forum(admin/moderator) should write in a topic("The Mobile Graphics Card Info Page" would be an idea) for those who are willing to buy a laptop with the mobility x1600, to be careful when choosing this card(i.e 64bit bus width)

 

yes the x1600 should have 2 listings.

 

That's weird X1600 has only 64bit memory interface. Oh, how many pipelines come with 64bit's X1600?

 

The amount of pipelines is by default independent of the bus width. Two seperate features. Maybe they locked some, but that seems unlikely.

 

It could be true but I still don't like the idea of a 64bit bus feeding the RV530 core. The problem with a reduction from 128bit to 64bit isn't the reduced addressing space (trust me, 64bit addressing will be sufficient for quite a few years), it's the simultaneous reduction in memory bandwidth. I believe the equation is speed (mhz) * bus width (bits) / 8(bits in a byte) = transfer rate in MB/s. As many of you know, memory bandwidth is very important in computing in general and graphics in particular, because this is where bottlenecking occurs. So you will notice more "lag" as textures are loaded from video memory to be processed, and consequently your frames will drop and gameplay goes to crap.

 

Here in Finland, they are selling laptops with Mobility Radeon X1600 128MB hypermemory model with 64bit bus and the "normal" X1600 with 256MB 128bit bus. The keyword is Hypermemory because if it uses it then there is 64bit memory bus.

 

I dont know about that, as far as I know both types use hypermemory so I dont think the "keyword" you talked about can give us a clue about the bus width.I might be wrong though...

So, as a conlclusion, what do you think I should do? Some of you said that there is no way i can get this card from a 64bit to 128bit one(using rabit or flashing the cards bios)
Any other hints?

 

In wikipedia you can see that there is two models of radeon X1600 officially:

MR X1600 HM RV530 90 nm 445/350 4:12:4:5 1780 556 64-bit 5.6 GB/s 32-128 MB local RAM.
MR X1600 RV530 90 nm 445/350 4:12:4:5 1780 556 128-bit 11.2 GB/s

And all the models with 256MB ram are without Hypermemory here so then you can be sure what you get. Of course there can be some variations between notebook manufactures.

 

you do nothing

as stated above, you can't change it to 128 bit because that is a PHYSICAL feature on the video card.

be happy since 3200+ 3dmark05 isn't bad at all