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The new Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro AGP became available in UK online stores just before Christmas and I was lucky enough to be able to grab hold of one. It may be a blessing to those who are not ready yet to move on to the PCI-Express platform. That may sound fine and dandy to those with a tower or desktop system, but what about Small Form Factor (SFF) owners, namely the Shuttle XPC?

In my previous post, my initial research led me to believe that the Leadtek WinFast 7600GT AGP would be the best solution for my Shuttle SB65G2 (with a G2 case). With the release of the Sapphire X1950 Pro AGP at only £30.00 extra, the answer has never been clearer. However, with it’s length almost covering an A4 sheet and the presence of two molex connectors, I was worried that I may have made the wrong choice. Have I?

In my previous post I wanted to get the best AGP video card for my Shuttle SB65G2 and narrowed it down to the Leadtek WinFast 7600GT AGP. As also mentioned, there were two problems; the availability of the Leadtek card, and the imminent release of the Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro AGP.

The Sapphire cards have just been released here in the UK and online stores are currently selling them for about £150.00. This card would be ideal since it retains the single-slot-solution condition needed for use in a Shuttle unit.

I’ve recently sold off all my desktop machines in favour of the Small Form Factor (SFF) ones. I’m currently in possession of a Shuttle XPC SB65G2 with an Intel 865PE chipset running on 2Gb Kingmax PC3200 DDR memory (maxed out) and an Intel Prescott 3.4Ghz (fasted processor it will take). Despite the fact that it’s a rather ageing Pentium 4 (Core 2 Duo just came out two months ago) machine with an AGP 8x slot, it still performs relatively well. It had a Sapphire Radeon 9700 Pro in it, and by “had”, I mean I sold it off on eBay very recently in hope to gather some cash for its successor.

This entry is serving as a reminder to myself for the following wretched, irritating and completely unnecessary issue:

SYMPTOM: Upon booting up from a Windows XP installation CD, the screen blanks and the system freezes right after displaying “Setup is inspecting your computer’s hardware configuration”. The system has been known to run Windows XP perfectly before and there has no changes to the hardware.

SOLUTION: Use a partition manager utility to delete any active partitions on the hard drive. Try running the setup again and you will get pass the “Setup is inspecting…” screen.

7:55AM BST
I got up early this morning to check up on any responses regarding the submission of my first plugin on WordPress.org last night at midnight. Does anyone know if they are having problems with their web hosting? Are they transferring their domain names to different servers? Could it just be unreachable from this side of the pond?

Worse still, could somebody have tripped on a wire while watching the World Cup? Hehe.

I guess we’ll just we have to wait and find out.

10:00AM BST
It’s still unreachable. Anyone has better luck?

12:25PM BST
Looks like all is well now.