Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-28, 21:37:

Recommended specs back in those days meant "The game will run at 25fps most of the time." […]
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AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-28, 18:08:

I didn't even think about it being CPU bound since I was 150Mhz over the recommended specs... […]
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Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-28, 17:09:

Descent III will run much better on a faster CPU as well. I noticed a pretty huge difference going from a Pentium II to a Pentium III 850, even with a Voodoo 3.

I didn't even think about it being CPU bound since I was 150Mhz over the recommended specs...

The attachment Untitledsp.jpeg is no longer available

Unfortunately the board only has dip switches up to 500Mhz 🙁 so I can only go up 50Mhz more... unless I try to just jam a 700Mhz PIII in there and see what happens.. hmm..

Recommended specs back in those days meant "The game will run at 25fps most of the time."

Graphics settings also have a pretty huge impact on that game, and some scenes are significantly heavier than others.

Also, if you put a PIII with a higher multiplier in there, if it works at all it will run at that multiplier because these CPUs were mostly multiplier locked. So, if the board is set to 500Mhz (5x100), and you drop a 933 (7x133) in there you'll still get a 700Mhz PIII (7x100). If you own a slotket of some kind to use Socket 370 CPUs that would be a big help.

Interesting I'll give it a go!! I also went against my better judgement and went all the way with the GPU and bought a Radeon 9100 PCI 😁 I've heard they are hard to find. Hopefully it works, I'll know next week when it arrives. 😀

Also let me know when you want to sell me that FX-57 ;D any news??

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-29, 14:23:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-28, 21:37:

Recommended specs back in those days meant "The game will run at 25fps most of the time." […]
Show full quote

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-28, 18:08:

I didn't even think about it being CPU bound since I was 150Mhz over the recommended specs...

The attachment Untitledsp.jpeg is no longer available

Unfortunately the board only has dip switches up to 500Mhz 🙁 so I can only go up 50Mhz more... unless I try to just jam a 700Mhz PIII in there and see what happens.. hmm..

Recommended specs back in those days meant "The game will run at 25fps most of the time."

Graphics settings also have a pretty huge impact on that game, and some scenes are significantly heavier than others.

Also, if you put a PIII with a higher multiplier in there, if it works at all it will run at that multiplier because these CPUs were mostly multiplier locked. So, if the board is set to 500Mhz (5x100), and you drop a 933 (7x133) in there you'll still get a 700Mhz PIII (7x100). If you own a slotket of some kind to use Socket 370 CPUs that would be a big help.

Interesting I'll give it a go!! I also went against my better judgement and went all the way with the GPU and bought a Radeon 9100 PCI 😁 I've heard they are hard to find. Hopefully it works, I'll know next week when it arrives. 😀

Also let me know when you want to sell me that FX-57 ;D any news??

The Radeon 9100 PCI should be quite beefy for games of that era. I managed to snag one back in ~2012 or so, which was before I was really seeking "retro" gear. It just so happened that I had an old Dell Dimension 4500S desktop with a P4 2.4Ghz (actually, I still have it!) which I used for a couple different low-power tasks, since it was a rock solid system that ran quiet and had surprisingly low power consumption... but due to the integrated graphics, it was limited to PCI expansion cards. For whatever reason, I felt the need to beef up this machines gaming capabilities (why? 🤣), and I ended up settling on a Radeon 9100 64MB, which I got pretty cheap. It was hard to find those even at that time, and I'm glad I did. I haven't been searching for them, but after 8+ years of collecting now, I have not found another one in any lots I have picked up.

In retrospective, since I was not using this for "retro gaming", I probably would have been better served by some of the other PCI cards that were made later on... like a 6200, 8400GS or even 9400GT. I think I went for the 9100 because of the 128bit memory bus (kind of irrelevant compared to later cards) and the fact that it was the last time that a previously top tier GPU (R200) was used on a PCI card, even if the clocks and memory capacity were reduced. Imagine if Nvidia decided to drop a full-spec NV30 64MB Geforce 3 in PCI as a budget solution amidst the Geforce FX cards in 2003. It certainly would have stood out as a unique release. 😁

(Also, I think you have the wrong person. I, sadly, do not have an FX-57 to sell. 😮)

digger wrote on 2024-08-29, 10:51:

@Demetrio considering that you are in Italy, one would think that you'd be more partial towards Olivetti computers. 😉

Nice buy, though. There's just something very nice about the IBM PS/2 machines, at least those in the pizza box form factor. It's just a pleasant and robust looking design. The power button alone. 😄

But maybe that's just personal nostalgia, since we had those machines in the computer lab in high school.

In the future, I'll surely get an Olivetti PC, maybe a PCS286 🙂

AlessandroB wrote on 2024-08-29, 12:15:

A strange thing about Demetrio's computer however is that that PS/2 model was built with both the 8086 and the 286 and the 8086 version had a red power selector unlike the 286 which was white like yours....

Didn't know this, maybe the original switch got broken and they just replaced it with a 286 switch 😄

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:15:

The Radeon 9100 PCI should be quite beefy for games of that era. I managed to snag one back in ~2012 or so, which was before I w […]
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AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-29, 14:23:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-28, 21:37:

Recommended specs back in those days meant "The game will run at 25fps most of the time."

Graphics settings also have a pretty huge impact on that game, and some scenes are significantly heavier than others.

Also, if you put a PIII with a higher multiplier in there, if it works at all it will run at that multiplier because these CPUs were mostly multiplier locked. So, if the board is set to 500Mhz (5x100), and you drop a 933 (7x133) in there you'll still get a 700Mhz PIII (7x100). If you own a slotket of some kind to use Socket 370 CPUs that would be a big help.

Interesting I'll give it a go!! I also went against my better judgement and went all the way with the GPU and bought a Radeon 9100 PCI 😁 I've heard they are hard to find. Hopefully it works, I'll know next week when it arrives. 😀

Also let me know when you want to sell me that FX-57 ;D any news??

The Radeon 9100 PCI should be quite beefy for games of that era. I managed to snag one back in ~2012 or so, which was before I was really seeking "retro" gear. It just so happened that I had an old Dell Dimension 4500S desktop with a P4 2.4Ghz (actually, I still have it!) which I used for a couple different low-power tasks, since it was a rock solid system that ran quiet and had surprisingly low power consumption... but due to the integrated graphics, it was limited to PCI expansion cards. For whatever reason, I felt the need to beef up this machines gaming capabilities (why? 🤣), and I ended up settling on a Radeon 9100 64MB, which I got pretty cheap. It was hard to find those even at that time, and I'm glad I did. I haven't been searching for them, but after 8+ years of collecting now, I have not found another one in any lots I have picked up.

In retrospective, since I was not using this for "retro gaming", I probably would have been better served by some of the other PCI cards that were made later on... like a 6200, 8400GS or even 9400GT. I think I went for the 9100 because of the 128bit memory bus (kind of irrelevant compared to later cards) and the fact that it was the last time that a previously top tier GPU (R200) was used on a PCI card, even if the clocks and memory capacity were reduced. Imagine if Nvidia decided to drop a full-spec NV30 64MB Geforce 3 in PCI as a budget solution amidst the Geforce FX cards in 2003. It certainly would have stood out as a unique release. 😁

(Also, I think you have the wrong person. I, sadly, do not have an FX-57 to sell. 😮)

The Radeon 9100 is just the Radeon 8500 LE rebadged .. Im not kidding here its the same GPU same clocks . .same everything so its ok but has all the problems the Radeon 8500 had while being slower than a full 8500. (Not even sure ATI fixed the driver issues the 8500 series had, they were slower than they should have been due to these problems) It being PCI is actually useful here as the PCI bus will be the limiting factor for performance here, but ATI made a real mess of the early 9000 series cards.

The Radeon 9000 is actually newer than the 9100 and also has a 9000 Pro variant which is even faster, the 9200 and 9250 are just 9000 cards with AGP 8x.

I only know these sordid detail because I had to do a little research when buying the 7500, 8500 and 9000 cards for my ATI collection.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:15:

The Radeon 9100 PCI should be quite beefy for games of that era. I managed to snag one back in ~2012 or so, which was before I w […]
Show full quote

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-29, 14:23:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-28, 21:37:

Recommended specs back in those days meant "The game will run at 25fps most of the time."

Graphics settings also have a pretty huge impact on that game, and some scenes are significantly heavier than others.

Also, if you put a PIII with a higher multiplier in there, if it works at all it will run at that multiplier because these CPUs were mostly multiplier locked. So, if the board is set to 500Mhz (5x100), and you drop a 933 (7x133) in there you'll still get a 700Mhz PIII (7x100). If you own a slotket of some kind to use Socket 370 CPUs that would be a big help.

Interesting I'll give it a go!! I also went against my better judgement and went all the way with the GPU and bought a Radeon 9100 PCI 😁 I've heard they are hard to find. Hopefully it works, I'll know next week when it arrives. 😀

Also let me know when you want to sell me that FX-57 ;D any news??

The Radeon 9100 PCI should be quite beefy for games of that era. I managed to snag one back in ~2012 or so, which was before I was really seeking "retro" gear. It just so happened that I had an old Dell Dimension 4500S desktop with a P4 2.4Ghz (actually, I still have it!) which I used for a couple different low-power tasks, since it was a rock solid system that ran quiet and had surprisingly low power consumption... but due to the integrated graphics, it was limited to PCI expansion cards. For whatever reason, I felt the need to beef up this machines gaming capabilities (why? 🤣), and I ended up settling on a Radeon 9100 64MB, which I got pretty cheap. It was hard to find those even at that time, and I'm glad I did. I haven't been searching for them, but after 8+ years of collecting now, I have not found another one in any lots I have picked up.

In retrospective, since I was not using this for "retro gaming", I probably would have been better served by some of the other PCI cards that were made later on... like a 6200, 8400GS or even 9400GT. I think I went for the 9100 because of the 128bit memory bus (kind of irrelevant compared to later cards) and the fact that it was the last time that a previously top tier GPU (R200) was used on a PCI card, even if the clocks and memory capacity were reduced. Imagine if Nvidia decided to drop a full-spec NV30 64MB Geforce 3 in PCI as a budget solution amidst the Geforce FX cards in 2003. It certainly would have stood out as a unique release. 😁

(Also, I think you have the wrong person. I, sadly, do not have an FX-57 to sell. 😮)

Oops!! I think your right. wrong person 🤣. A full Geforce 3 on PCI would have been awesome, missed opportunities! I am excited to bench mark the Radeon 9100 PCI vs my FX 5700LE PCI. the specs are pretty similar all said and done.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:32:

The Radeon 9100 is just the Radeon 8500 LE rebadged .. Im not kidding here its the same GPU same clocks

Yes, like I said, it's an R200 chip with lower clocks than the full 8500 (matching the 8500LE), but is otherwise identical. We all use the same places for research you know. 😁

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:32:

The Radeon 9000 is actually newer than the 9100 and also has a 9000 Pro variant which is even faster, the 9200 and 9250 are just 9000 cards with AGP 8x.

I only know these sordid detail because I had to do a little research when buying the 7500, 8500 and 9000 cards for my ATI collection.

Yes, everything else in the 9000-9250 series is newer than the 8500\8500LE\9100 (R200) because they use the low end RV250 and RV280 cores, which were added as low end parts for the R300 (9500\9700) lineup. The R200 cards have 2 vertex shaders and 8 texture mapping units, where the RV250 and RV280 (9000, 9000 Pro, 9200, 9250, etc.) only have 1 VS and 4 TMUs. This makes a pretty huge difference in performance and is why the 9100 is so much faster than all of the others.

This is why I mentioned the 9100 being very unique, since no other PCI cards after this used previously top of the line GPUs as a low end model.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:40:

Oops!! I think your right. wrong person 🤣. A full Geforce 3 on PCI would have been awesome, missed opportunities! I am excited to bench mark the Radeon 9100 PCI vs my FX 5700LE PCI. the specs are pretty similar all said and done.

I'm sure Nvidia had no trouble moving all of the NV20 chips they had, which is why they never had to go this route and instead opted to make the Geforce4MX as the next low end model. Speaking of which, I don't think I've ever seen a decently specced (128bit DDR, etc.) Geforce 4MX of any type in PCI. The vast vast majority are AGP, and even in that format most are egregiously underspecced for their model number... usually an MX440 with low-clocked 64bit DDR. The number of actually decent 128bit MX440 and MX460 models I've seen has been very small (in fact, the 460 seems to have been barely produced at all). Would have been interesting if lots of MX460 cards were sold with full specs in both PCI and AGP. I'm sure we'd see them being sought after to run 90s games that don't need pixel shaders.

As for your 9100 vs 5700LE, that should be an interesting comparison. I can't say I've ever come across one of those in PCI flavor, so that's a pretty awesome find. Depending on how gimped it is (64bit memory, etc) it may be one of the fastest pre-6000 series PCI cards you can get your hands on. Though, if it does have 64bit memory that will hold it back massively.

If it is 128bit I think the 5700LE will be quite a bit faster in most cases, but it could vary a lot depending on the game and settings. If your 5700LE is only 64bit, it will make things a lot closer though, that's for sure.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:54:

Yes, like I said, it's an R200 chip with lower clocks than the full 8500 (matching the 8500LE), but is otherwise identical. We a […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:32:

The Radeon 9100 is just the Radeon 8500 LE rebadged .. Im not kidding here its the same GPU same clocks

Yes, like I said, it's an R200 chip with lower clocks than the full 8500 (matching the 8500LE), but is otherwise identical. We all use the same places for research you know. 😁

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:32:

The Radeon 9000 is actually newer than the 9100 and also has a 9000 Pro variant which is even faster, the 9200 and 9250 are just 9000 cards with AGP 8x.

I only know these sordid detail because I had to do a little research when buying the 7500, 8500 and 9000 cards for my ATI collection.

Yes, everything else in the 9000-9250 series is newer than the 8500\8500LE\9100 (R200) because they use the low end RV250 and RV280 cores, which were added as low end parts for the R300 (9500\9700) lineup. The R200 cards have 2 vertex shaders and 8 texture mapping units, where the RV250 and RV280 (9000, 9000 Pro, 9200, 9250, etc.) only have 1 VS and 4 TMUs. This makes a pretty huge difference in performance and is why the 9100 is so much faster than all of the others.

This is why I mentioned the 9100 being very unique, since no other PCI cards after this used previously top of the line GPUs as a low end model.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:40:

Oops!! I think your right. wrong person 🤣. A full Geforce 3 on PCI would have been awesome, missed opportunities! I am excited to bench mark the Radeon 9100 PCI vs my FX 5700LE PCI. the specs are pretty similar all said and done.

I'm sure Nvidia had no trouble moving all of the NV20 chips they had, which is why they never had to go this route and instead opted to make the Geforce4MX as the next low end model. Speaking of which, I don't think I've ever seen a decently specced (128bit DDR, etc.) Geforce 4MX of any type in PCI. The vast vast majority are AGP, and even in that format most are egregiously underspecced for their model number... usually an MX440 with low-clocked 64bit DDR. The number of actually decent 128bit MX440 and MX460 models I've seen has been very small (in fact, the 460 seems to have been barely produced at all). Would have been interesting if lots of MX460 cards were sold with full specs in both PCI and AGP. I'm sure we'd see them being sought after to run 90s games that don't need pixel shaders.

As for your 9100 vs 5700LE, that should be an interesting comparison. I can't say I've ever come across one of those in PCI flavor, so that's a pretty awesome find. Depending on how gimped it is (64bit memory, etc) it may be one of the fastest pre-6000 series PCI cards you can get your hands on. Though, if it does have 64bit memory that will hold it back massively.

If it is 128bit I think the 5700LE will be quite a bit faster in most cases, but it could vary a lot depending on the game and settings. If your 5700LE is only 64bit, it will make things a lot closer though, that's for sure.

Don't forget the obscure 128bit/128MB MX4000 made by Sparkle 😀

Since I have several SD memory cards, of various capacities, and since they are quite cheap, these days I would have to select some, empty them of content, and use them for SSD use via IDE SD adapter, or CF SD, currently I do not have an IDE 40PIN SD adapter, but being very useful in bench tests with old PC, I ordered one, which should arrive soon.

With these memory cards, depending on the capacity, you can install various OS, with those of less than 1 GB, DOS and the first Windows, with higher capacities you could install more Windows, or the newer ones like 8 or 10, but only with cards of 64 GB or more.

This could be useful, to see what difference there is between one PC and another, unfortunately with recent Windows there could be problems, which could force you to reinstall everything again.

There is also the problem that a lot flash cards have a hard-coded "removable" bit that prevents them from working as expected or not at all. Some BIOSes also complain with these adapters, warning you that you're not using an 80-pin IDE cable and leaving you performance on the table. A lot of SD adapters also fail to support fast DMA modes, limiting performance even further.

Unfortunately, removable flash media for retro computers is no panacea, and it's often impossible to know the true performance of a card for this purpose without buying one and trying it out.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:54:

Yes, like I said, it's an R200 chip with lower clocks than the full 8500 (matching the 8500LE), but is otherwise identical. We a […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:32:

The Radeon 9100 is just the Radeon 8500 LE rebadged .. Im not kidding here its the same GPU same clocks

Yes, like I said, it's an R200 chip with lower clocks than the full 8500 (matching the 8500LE), but is otherwise identical. We all use the same places for research you know. 😁

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:32:

The Radeon 9000 is actually newer than the 9100 and also has a 9000 Pro variant which is even faster, the 9200 and 9250 are just 9000 cards with AGP 8x.

I only know these sordid detail because I had to do a little research when buying the 7500, 8500 and 9000 cards for my ATI collection.

Yes, everything else in the 9000-9250 series is newer than the 8500\8500LE\9100 (R200) because they use the low end RV250 and RV280 cores, which were added as low end parts for the R300 (9500\9700) lineup. The R200 cards have 2 vertex shaders and 8 texture mapping units, where the RV250 and RV280 (9000, 9000 Pro, 9200, 9250, etc.) only have 1 VS and 4 TMUs. This makes a pretty huge difference in performance and is why the 9100 is so much faster than all of the others.

This is why I mentioned the 9100 being very unique, since no other PCI cards after this used previously top of the line GPUs as a low end model.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:40:

Oops!! I think your right. wrong person 🤣. A full Geforce 3 on PCI would have been awesome, missed opportunities! I am excited to bench mark the Radeon 9100 PCI vs my FX 5700LE PCI. the specs are pretty similar all said and done.

I'm sure Nvidia had no trouble moving all of the NV20 chips they had, which is why they never had to go this route and instead opted to make the Geforce4MX as the next low end model. Speaking of which, I don't think I've ever seen a decently specced (128bit DDR, etc.) Geforce 4MX of any type in PCI. The vast vast majority are AGP, and even in that format most are egregiously underspecced for their model number... usually an MX440 with low-clocked 64bit DDR. The number of actually decent 128bit MX440 and MX460 models I've seen has been very small (in fact, the 460 seems to have been barely produced at all). Would have been interesting if lots of MX460 cards were sold with full specs in both PCI and AGP. I'm sure we'd see them being sought after to run 90s games that don't need pixel shaders.

As for your 9100 vs 5700LE, that should be an interesting comparison. I can't say I've ever come across one of those in PCI flavor, so that's a pretty awesome find. Depending on how gimped it is (64bit memory, etc) it may be one of the fastest pre-6000 series PCI cards you can get your hands on. Though, if it does have 64bit memory that will hold it back massively.

If it is 128bit I think the 5700LE will be quite a bit faster in most cases, but it could vary a lot depending on the game and settings. If your 5700LE is only 64bit, it will make things a lot closer though, that's for sure.

The 5700LE was only 10% faster than my ATI 9200 PCI in 3D Mark 99. I believe it is 64Bit memory, but I don't believe it exists in 128Bit as far as I know. However I need to test it in something else beside 3DMark 99 to get a good glimpse of its power.
It looks like this --> https://www.newegg.com/jaton-geforce-fx-5700l … N82E16814139166

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-29, 17:00:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:54:

Yes, like I said, it's an R200 chip with lower clocks than the full 8500 (matching the 8500LE), but is otherwise identical. We a […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:32:

The Radeon 9100 is just the Radeon 8500 LE rebadged .. Im not kidding here its the same GPU same clocks

Yes, like I said, it's an R200 chip with lower clocks than the full 8500 (matching the 8500LE), but is otherwise identical. We all use the same places for research you know. 😁

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:32:

The Radeon 9000 is actually newer than the 9100 and also has a 9000 Pro variant which is even faster, the 9200 and 9250 are just 9000 cards with AGP 8x.

I only know these sordid detail because I had to do a little research when buying the 7500, 8500 and 9000 cards for my ATI collection.

Yes, everything else in the 9000-9250 series is newer than the 8500\8500LE\9100 (R200) because they use the low end RV250 and RV280 cores, which were added as low end parts for the R300 (9500\9700) lineup. The R200 cards have 2 vertex shaders and 8 texture mapping units, where the RV250 and RV280 (9000, 9000 Pro, 9200, 9250, etc.) only have 1 VS and 4 TMUs. This makes a pretty huge difference in performance and is why the 9100 is so much faster than all of the others.

This is why I mentioned the 9100 being very unique, since no other PCI cards after this used previously top of the line GPUs as a low end model.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:40:

Oops!! I think your right. wrong person 🤣. A full Geforce 3 on PCI would have been awesome, missed opportunities! I am excited to bench mark the Radeon 9100 PCI vs my FX 5700LE PCI. the specs are pretty similar all said and done.

I'm sure Nvidia had no trouble moving all of the NV20 chips they had, which is why they never had to go this route and instead opted to make the Geforce4MX as the next low end model. Speaking of which, I don't think I've ever seen a decently specced (128bit DDR, etc.) Geforce 4MX of any type in PCI. The vast vast majority are AGP, and even in that format most are egregiously underspecced for their model number... usually an MX440 with low-clocked 64bit DDR. The number of actually decent 128bit MX440 and MX460 models I've seen has been very small (in fact, the 460 seems to have been barely produced at all). Would have been interesting if lots of MX460 cards were sold with full specs in both PCI and AGP. I'm sure we'd see them being sought after to run 90s games that don't need pixel shaders.

As for your 9100 vs 5700LE, that should be an interesting comparison. I can't say I've ever come across one of those in PCI flavor, so that's a pretty awesome find. Depending on how gimped it is (64bit memory, etc) it may be one of the fastest pre-6000 series PCI cards you can get your hands on. Though, if it does have 64bit memory that will hold it back massively.

If it is 128bit I think the 5700LE will be quite a bit faster in most cases, but it could vary a lot depending on the game and settings. If your 5700LE is only 64bit, it will make things a lot closer though, that's for sure.

The 5700LE was only 10% faster than my ATI 9200 PCI in 3D Mark 99. I believe it is 64Bit memory, but I don't believe it exists in 128Bit as far as I know. However I need to test it in something else beside 3DMark 99 to get a good glimpse of its power.
It looks like this --> https://www.newegg.com/jaton-geforce-fx-5700l … N82E16814139166

Oh my goodness... what cute little fella... err, yeah, that's not the beefiest 5700LE in the world is it? 😊

Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if that card was 64bit and maybe even underclocked, given it's size. On paper the NV36 core should be a bit better than an FX 5200 or 5500 clock for clock since it has 3 vs 2 vertex shaders. But other than that it has the same pixel\texel rate as an FX 5200 non-ultra... which is not great.

When I mentioned before about the 5700LE maybe being faster than the 9100, I will admit that there was a typo on the GPU wiki chart I was looking at. It said the card had 1500mpixel and 1500mtexel fill rates, but that was a clear miscalculation since the card is supposed to have a 250mhz core clock, 4 ROPs and 4 TMUs. It should be 1000 for both, which is the same as a 5200. (I have fixed the typo!)

The 9100 has 1000mpixel and 2000mtexel (not to mention much higher bandwidth), so there is a good chance it will be much faster in situations that don't benefit from the FX chip being a newer design.

I just watched this youtube video a few days ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9HBDEE3ZPU

about one of the worst PCI sound cards out there
It seems Trident, or beloved (cof cof) video card manufacturer dipped their toes in the audio market with this one

AND LOOK WHAT THE CAT JUST BROUGHT IN !!
I'm so exited I cant wait to try it ! I've heard I'm going to be listening to a lot of piano

They're not the only to do so - S3 did as well, and I have a "Sonic Vibes" PCI soundcard made by them.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 18:22:

They're not the only to do so - S3 did as well, and I have a "Sonic Vibes" PCI soundcard made by them.

Cool ! Is it any good ? I haven't seen a review about S3 audio cards yet :p

Nunoalex wrote on 2024-08-29, 18:29:

PcBytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 18:22:

They're not the only to do so - S3 did as well, and I have a "Sonic Vibes" PCI soundcard made by them.

Cool ! Is it any good ? I haven't seen a review about S3 audio cards yet :p

Sounds fairly good under Windows but that's far as I got to testing it. I'll take it out for a spin at the beginning of the next month hopefully, since I have a MSI MS-6168 that I plan on buying.

Nunoalex wrote on 2024-08-29, 18:29:

PcBytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 18:22:

They're not the only to do so - S3 did as well, and I have a "Sonic Vibes" PCI soundcard made by them.

Cool ! Is it any good ? I haven't seen a review about S3 audio cards yet :p

It seems a lot of existing companies saw the success of Creative and tried to enter the sound card market throughout the 90s. This led to some unexpected and now fairly obscure products hitting the market.

Even Nvidia's first graphics chip, the NV1, included Soundblaster compatible audio right on the card. (not saying it was good, but it was there)

Also, Rockwell normally made dialup modems and modem+sound combo cards back in the day, but there are some dedicated Rockwell sound cards floating around out there, like the RWA010.

Philips sold a bunch of sound cards with either Philips or VLSI audio chips too... even though neither of those companies really had name recognition in the consumer PC hardware space outside of that.

... there are lots of other weird ones out there, but talk of S3 and Trident cards made these come to mind since they are well known brands to PC enthusiasts of the time, but not at all for sound cards. 😁

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-08-29, 13:54:

I have wondered if there are any hardware filters that can sit between a VGA card and a monitor that are able to do some minor processing on the image to clean that up. It shouldn't be difficult to figure out the approximate color of a pixel and sharpen that up. The problem with this idea is always latency. Is it possible to apply any kind of filter like this in real-time without noticable input lag?

Blurry usually means its over filtered or outside used ramdac B/W. Cheap S3 hack I know from back in the day was removing filter section entirely 😮 and letting monitor input filters handle the rest. Doesnt work with LCDs tho 😀

Nunoalex wrote on 2024-08-29, 18:19:

about one of the worst PCI sound cards out there

Now I'm curious how it 'performs' in Wolfenstein 3D. Tuba all the way? 😁

Saw that the seller I bought my previous Soltek SL-75KAV from had another for about the same price but this one has the RedStorm Overclocking BIOS on it, not 100% sure what it does exactly but very interested to find out. Have had a bit of a dig with google and its only made me more curious about it.

Board is in great condition so along with the other one I know have a pair of nice KT133A boards with Barton support and ISA.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-29, 17:00:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:54:

Yes, like I said, it's an R200 chip with lower clocks than the full 8500 (matching the 8500LE), but is otherwise identical. We a […]
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Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:32:

The Radeon 9100 is just the Radeon 8500 LE rebadged .. Im not kidding here its the same GPU same clocks

Yes, like I said, it's an R200 chip with lower clocks than the full 8500 (matching the 8500LE), but is otherwise identical. We all use the same places for research you know. 😁

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:32:

The Radeon 9000 is actually newer than the 9100 and also has a 9000 Pro variant which is even faster, the 9200 and 9250 are just 9000 cards with AGP 8x.

I only know these sordid detail because I had to do a little research when buying the 7500, 8500 and 9000 cards for my ATI collection.

Yes, everything else in the 9000-9250 series is newer than the 8500\8500LE\9100 (R200) because they use the low end RV250 and RV280 cores, which were added as low end parts for the R300 (9500\9700) lineup. The R200 cards have 2 vertex shaders and 8 texture mapping units, where the RV250 and RV280 (9000, 9000 Pro, 9200, 9250, etc.) only have 1 VS and 4 TMUs. This makes a pretty huge difference in performance and is why the 9100 is so much faster than all of the others.

This is why I mentioned the 9100 being very unique, since no other PCI cards after this used previously top of the line GPUs as a low end model.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-08-29, 15:40:

Oops!! I think your right. wrong person 🤣. A full Geforce 3 on PCI would have been awesome, missed opportunities! I am excited to bench mark the Radeon 9100 PCI vs my FX 5700LE PCI. the specs are pretty similar all said and done.

I'm sure Nvidia had no trouble moving all of the NV20 chips they had, which is why they never had to go this route and instead opted to make the Geforce4MX as the next low end model. Speaking of which, I don't think I've ever seen a decently specced (128bit DDR, etc.) Geforce 4MX of any type in PCI. The vast vast majority are AGP, and even in that format most are egregiously underspecced for their model number... usually an MX440 with low-clocked 64bit DDR. The number of actually decent 128bit MX440 and MX460 models I've seen has been very small (in fact, the 460 seems to have been barely produced at all). Would have been interesting if lots of MX460 cards were sold with full specs in both PCI and AGP. I'm sure we'd see them being sought after to run 90s games that don't need pixel shaders.

As for your 9100 vs 5700LE, that should be an interesting comparison. I can't say I've ever come across one of those in PCI flavor, so that's a pretty awesome find. Depending on how gimped it is (64bit memory, etc) it may be one of the fastest pre-6000 series PCI cards you can get your hands on. Though, if it does have 64bit memory that will hold it back massively.

If it is 128bit I think the 5700LE will be quite a bit faster in most cases, but it could vary a lot depending on the game and settings. If your 5700LE is only 64bit, it will make things a lot closer though, that's for sure.

The 5700LE was only 10% faster than my ATI 9200 PCI in 3D Mark 99. I believe it is 64Bit memory, but I don't believe it exists in 128Bit as far as I know. However I need to test it in something else beside 3DMark 99 to get a good glimpse of its power.
It looks like this --> https://www.newegg.com/jaton-geforce-fx-5700l … N82E16814139166

That's really cool that you have one, I had no idea these even existed until now. There's even a bigger one, still only 64-bit memory but the pads are there for a 128-bit version: https://www.newegg.com/apollo-geforce-fx-5700 … N82E16814140041
I wonder if there are any actually out in the wild or if it's only in newegg / product pictures.

edit: ooh and an Albatron card the FX5700LEIP, I was thinking that heatsink looked like an Albatron one: https://www.newegg.ca/albatron-geforce-fx-570 … 82E16814170063R