ATI Radeon X1650 XT AGP

The ATI Radeon X1650 XT AGP is an end-of-life graphics card from AMD, built on the RV560 chip using the Ultra-Threaded SE architecture and fabricated on TSMC’s 80 nm process. It targets the AGP 8x interface, making it a late-generation option for legacy systems. The card integrates 312 million transistors on a 230 mm² die, with a transistor density of 1.4M per mm², and it occupies a single slot with no auxiliary power connectors.

Power and Cooling

The Radeon X1650 XT AGP carries a thermal design power (TDP) of 55 W. This modest figure places it in the low-power segment for its era, allowing the card to operate without any dedicated power connectors. The board draws all its power from the AGP 8x slot itself, which simplifies installation in older systems that lack extra PCIe power headers.

For system integration, the suggested power supply is rated at 250 W. This recommendation is notably conservative, reflecting the card’s frugal power draw and the typical platform requirements of AGP-based motherboards from that period. Because there are no external power connectors, cable management is trivial; the card relies entirely on slot power, which also reduces potential points of failure.

Cooling is handled by a single-slot design. The absence of a dual-slot cooler means the card fits into compact chassis, but the thermal solution must be adequate for the 55 W envelope. The data does not specify the cooler type, so it is reasonable to assume a reference blower or low-profile heatsink with a fan, sufficient for the power draw but not over-engineered.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The Radeon X1650 XT AGP does not include dedicated ray tracing cores or tensor cores. Its feature set is defined by the Ultra-Threaded SE architecture, which predates hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI-based upscaling. Instead, the card relies on traditional rasterization and programmable shaders.

API support is limited to DirectX 9.0c (shader model 9_3) and OpenGL 2.1. There is no Vulkan support, as that API did not exist during the card’s release window. This means the X1650 XT AGP cannot run modern games that require DirectX 10 or higher, nor can it leverage any ray tracing or mesh shader features found in contemporary GPUs.

The architecture’s strength lies in its pixel and texture throughput. The card has 8 texture mapping units (TMUs) and 8 render output units (ROPs), producing a pixel rate of 4.320 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 4.320 GTexel/s. These figures are balanced for its era, allowing it to handle early DirectX 9 titles with moderate settings, but they place it firmly in the legacy category for any modern workload.

Memory Subsystem

The card is equipped with 512 MB of GDDR3 memory, which was a common capacity for high-end AGP cards of its generation. The memory operates at 680 MHz, yielding an effective data rate of 1360 Mbps. This is paired with a 128-bit memory bus, resulting in a total bandwidth of 21.76 GB/s.

For high resolutions, this bandwidth is a limiting factor. At 1280x1024 or 1600x1200, the card can manage older games, but the 128-bit bus restricts fill-rate-heavy scenarios. The 512 MB capacity is sufficient for textures of that era, but modern high-resolution texture packs exceed this VRAM, causing swapping or reduced quality. The 21.76 GB/s bandwidth is about half of what contemporary mid-range cards offered, so memory-intensive effects like high-detail shadows or anisotropic filtering will tax the subsystem.

The GDDR3 type is standard for the period, offering lower latency than DDR2 but not the higher capacities of later GDDR4 or GDDR5. For AGP users, this was a practical compromise, as the interface itself already bottlenecked data transfer compared to PCIe.

How It Compares

The nearestRivals field is empty in the FACT PACK, so no direct competitor names or scores are provided. However, the percentileVsAllGpus value of 50 indicates that the X1650 XT AGP sits exactly at the midpoint of all GPUs ever benchmarked in the database. This places it in the median performance tier, meaning half of all GPUs are faster and half are slower.

In the context of its own generation, the card’s position between the Radeon R400 AGP (predecessor) and Radeon R600 (successor) is clear. The R400 line was older and less capable, while the R600 moved to a newer architecture. The X1650 XT AGP bridges that gap for AGP users, offering a performance uplift over its predecessor without the need for a new motherboard.

Because no rival data is listed, comparisons must be qualitative. The card’s 55 W TDP and lack of power connectors make it a drop-in upgrade for systems with 250 W power supplies. Its AGP 8x interface is backward compatible with AGP 4x slots, though at reduced bandwidth. The display outputs—2x DVI and 1x S-Video—cater to CRT and early LCD monitors, with dual DVI enabling dual-display setups without adapters.

Benchmark Performance

The FACT PACK lists an avgBenchmarkScore of 0, which is unusual and likely indicates that no standardized benchmarks were recorded for this specific card in the database. Consequently, there are no exact scores or deltaPct values to analyze against rivals. The percentileVsAllGpus of 50, however, provides a statistical anchor: this card performs better than 50% of all GPUs in the database, which is a surprisingly strong position given its age and AGP interface.

Without rival scores, the performance narrative must rely on the card’s specifications. The pixel rate of 4.320 GPixel/s and texture rate of 4.320 GTexel/s are identical, suggesting a balanced design where pixel and texel throughput are equal. This is typical for cards with 8 TMUs and 8 ROPs at the same clock speed. In DirectX 9.0c games, this balance handles fill-rate-bound scenes adequately, but shader-bound scenes may expose the lack of dedicated shader units (shadingUnits is null, meaning the architecture uses unified shaders or a fixed configuration not listed).

The memory bandwidth of 21.76 GB/s is the primary constraint. For comparison, if a rival card had a 256-bit bus, it would roughly double this figure, but no rival data is available. The effective memory clock of 1360 Mbps is moderate for GDDR3, and the 128-bit bus halves the potential throughput compared to wider-bus designs. This means that at resolutions above 1024x768, the card will likely become memory-limited, especially with anisotropic filtering or anti-aliasing enabled.

The absence of a boost clock or base clock in the FACT PACK suggests that the card runs at a fixed frequency, as was common for AGP-era GPUs. This simplifies thermal behavior—no dynamic clock variation—but also means no headroom for adaptive performance. The 55 W TDP aligns with the lack of power connectors, and the single-slot cooler should maintain stable operation under sustained load.

In summary, the X1650 XT AGP is a median performer by database percentile, but its practical utility is confined to legacy DirectX 9 titles. Its 512 MB VRAM and 21.76 GB/s bandwidth are adequate for 2006-era games at 1024x768 or 1280x1024 with medium settings, but they fall short for any modern workload. The card’s end-of-life status and AGP interface make it a niche product for retro builds or office systems, where its 55 W draw and no-connector design are advantages. The data does not support claims of exceptional performance, only a balanced, mid-tier offering that served its purpose at launch and now occupies the 50th percentile of all GPUs.