I don't know extacly what it's going fix. I don't really know what's wrong with the AGP's. What's wrong with them?
I have an ASUS AH6350 on AGP with 512MB DDR2 which has a bloody low performance matched to the old 6600GT with 128MB DDR3.
I have no directx problems whatsoever, BUT....
3DMark2006
HD3650 - 1700 points
6600GT - 1670 points
And here I went nuts...
COUNTER STRIKE SOURCE - Stress test
1440x900 AAx6 AFx16 dx9
model detail - high
texture detail - high
water detail - reflect all
shader detail - high
shadow detail - high
HD3650 - 37.25fps vs. 6600GT - 59.75fps
Crysis - HOC Benchmark - 800x600 Low details
HD3650 - min 5, avg 13, max 24 fps
6600GT - min 19, avg 31, max 62 fps
Crysis - HOC Benchmark - 1024x768 Medium details
HD3650 - min 1, avg 7, max 14 fps
6600GT - min 3, avg 8, max 12 fps
Live For Speed - full details on 1440x900
HD3650 - 15-20fps
6600GT - ~60 fps
This all was benchmarked on A64 3000+@2.3GHz, 3x512MB DDR, MOBO nForce3 250g and WinXP SP2 with Catalist 8.4 + HotFix.
My old 6600GT outperformed the new HD3650 on AGP!!!!
As you see this sucks.
BUT I got really angry and tried the HD3650 AGP on modified XP (Tiny XP - Beast edition from eXPerience), which has all the unnecessary stuff removed from the original XP image.
+ Manually installed just the driver from the last Hotfix (not from catalyst 8.4)
Then I got what I expected from this card.
3DMark2006 up to 2800 points, before I had 1700
CS Source - 101fps vs. 37fps before
Crysis - HOC Benchmark:
800x600 Low details - min 28, avg 40, max 69 fps vs. before: min 5, avg 13, max 24 fps
1024x768 Medium details - min 13, avg 21, max 34 fps vs. before min 1, avg 7, max 14 fps
LFS 1440x900 - 85~90fps before 15~20fps
So afterall I can say that there are two problems:
1. ATI drivers needs to be fixed and finally optimized.
2. Something has to be changed in WinXP too, because I installed just the driver from the last Hotfix into my original WinXP, but no improvements on fps performance.
2800 points in 3DMark2006 I was able to get only with combination of an illegal, cut and tweaked XP and pure drivers from the last Hotfix.
Sorry guys, but this is not the way I want to get the RV630's real performance. So I am hardly waiting for the 8.5 Catalyst too and hope I can have the wished fps rates!!!