RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-01-02, 08:25:

Where would be a safe place to download Everest from?

MajorGeeks for example.

Mondodimotori wrote on 2024-12-26, 23:10:

Hello there! Once again I require an help from your collective wisdom. I'm passing on to upgrading the other desktop I've recove […]
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Hello there!
Once again I require an help from your collective wisdom. I'm passing on to upgrading the other desktop I've recovered from emptyin my old grandparents house, this time it's a Socket 370 machine with a Celereon 700, that will be upgraded to a Pentium III 1000.
Unlike the Socket A one (I've talked about it in other threads), this one actually comes with a QDI Advance 10E Mobo that has a 4x AGP 2.0 slot, and currently "boost" an offbrand nVidia Vanta GPU (thus not compatible with official nVidia drivers). It's basically a paperweight that only serves the purpose of displaying video (and a bit too wobbly I might add).
But this AGP slot gives me quite and advantage over the previous PCI only build, that is I have a much larger bucket of options to choose for a GPU.
Currently I've put my eyes on either a geForce4 Ti 4200 or an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, both on a 128bit bus. They look cheap, fast for a pentium III and pretty abundant on the used market.

I know alredy that both these GPUs (the Radeon especially) are extremely overpowered for a Pentium III 1000 Coppermine, but here's what I hope to achieve: I need a GPU that would let me play the widest range possible of Windows 9x games (and maybe some late DOS ones) at a decent combo of resolution/framerate (I currently have a nice 1024x768 monitor with 85hz of refresh rate), so that it could max out the capabilities of the Pentium III processor. I don't neet it to play later games that came out after Windows XP launched (I'm actually planning a build just for that), but I need those older games to work without too many issues with the GPU. And knowing that it was a period of quick technological advancement, I've read even on this forum that some of those early 2000s GPUs would exibit problems in running older titles, even if the drivers for that operating systems / APIs did exists, and even it it was just a few years from those softwares.
What are your suggestions for my case scenario? Will the GPUs I've put my eyes on do the trick, or should I consider other options, maybe from previous hardware generations/vendors? I also like to point out that I don't want to put up the price of a 2024 new GPU for this project, and that's why I excluded the Ti 4600 (and upwards) from that list.

Ethernal gratitude and a future post in "show us your rig" to whoever has a suggestion on the topic.

I'd try with one from the list:
Geforce3 / Ti 200
GeForce4 Ti 4200
GeForce FX5900XT

Dmetsys wrote on 2025-01-02, 06:16:

You definitely got scammed on that card. GTS's were never 64-bit. I think you're dealing with an MX 32MB that someone force flashed to a GTS.

Such cards really exist. Many years ago I had 64-bit GeForce2 Ti and it performned rather poorly.

havli wrote on 2025-01-02, 09:00:

Dmetsys wrote on 2025-01-02, 06:16:

You definitely got scammed on that card. GTS's were never 64-bit. I think you're dealing with an MX 32MB that someone force flashed to a GTS.

Such cards really exist. Many years ago I had 64-bit GeForce2 Ti and it performned rather poorly.

I guess there's one way to find out.... Remove the heatsink and see what GPU is under there.... It seems to be epoxied on though. Not held on with screws.

I didn't express myself well, sorry. 😀
This is not flashed GF2 MX. The GPU is NV15, I am sure of that - that PCB is reference design for NV15. But the memory bus is cut-down to half. But considering the fact GF2 GTS (and in fact all non-MX GF2) were 128-bit most of the time, this could be still considered scam. By the card manufacturer, not the seller.

havli wrote on 2025-01-02, 10:00:

I didn't express myself well, sorry. 😀
This is not flashed GF2 MX. The GPU is NV15, I am sure of that - that PCB is reference design for NV15. But the memory bus is cut-down to half. But considering the fact GF2 GTS (and in fact all non-MX GF2) were 128-bit most of the time, this could be still considered scam. By the card manufacturer, not the seller.

Perhaps it's cheaper to put on four 8mb memory chips rather than eight 4mb ones? I wonder if soldering on another 4 of the same chips would turn this into a 128-bit 64Mb card?

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-01-02, 09:13:

I guess there's one way to find out.... Remove the heatsink and see what GPU is under there.... It seems to be epoxied on though. Not held on with screws.

I wouldn't recommend it. It's easy to accidentally damage the GPU by doing that, especially on hardware from that era.

Voodoo 3 is another card where I absolutely don't recommend removing the glued-on heatsink, unless you're 100% confident in your abilities.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-01-02, 10:25:

I wouldn't recommend it. It's easy to accidentally damage the GPU by doing that, especially on hardware from that era.

Voodoo 3 is another card where I absolutely don't recommend removing the glued-on heatsink, unless you're 100% confident in your abilities.

I wasn't that keen on trying TBH, but I have read somewhere that if you put the card in the freezer, that weakens the bond, and it should come off fairly easily then.

RetroPCCupboard, the card from your pictures is a 128-bit one. Here is memory datasheet https://octopart.com/datasheet/k4d62323ha-qc6 … amsung-10311851. The chips have 32-bit data bus, there are four of them on the board with own visible paths.

Putas wrote on 2025-01-02, 11:53:

RetroPCCupboard, the card from your pictures is a 128-bit one. Here is memory datasheet https://octopart.com/datasheet/k4d62323ha-qc6 … amsung-10311851. The chips have 32-bit data bus, there are four of them on the board with own visible paths.

So I guess that means either the card is broken or HWInfo is wrong. I will try Everest

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-01-02, 08:31:

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-01-02, 08:25:

Where would be a safe place to download Everest from?

MajorGeeks for example.

are you sure that's safe? VirusTotal has a couple of positives on it:

Though, I've not heard of those particular scanners, so may be false positives.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-01-02, 14:35:

are you sure that's safe? VirusTotal has a couple of positives on it:

It's been on there since 2005, so yeah I'm pretty sure.

But you can look for other sources as well, just to be safe. It should be hosted in a bunch of places, being freeware and all.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-01-02, 14:42:

It's been on there since 2005, so yeah I'm pretty sure.

But you can look for other sources as well, just to be safe. It should be hosted in a bunch of places, being freeware and all.

You are probably right. I am just extra cautious when downloading from anywhere other than an official site. Shame that lavalys.com, makers of Everest, used a form that needed submitting to get the download. Because of this, archive.org seems to have failed to capture the original download.

Major geeks seems to be reputable according to my searches. Unlike CNET.com and Download.com, which host files with malware. So, I will have to assume it is a false positive. My linux virus scanner finds nothing harmful in the download.

Putas wrote on 2025-01-02, 11:53:

RetroPCCupboard, the card from your pictures is a 128-bit one. Here is memory datasheet https://octopart.com/datasheet/k4d62323ha-qc6 … amsung-10311851. The chips have 32-bit data bus, there are four of them on the board with own visible paths.

So it seems that HWInfo was reporting the memory bus width incorrectly. Everest says 128 bit

Repo Man11 wrote on 2025-01-02, 05:53:

swaaye wrote on 2025-01-01, 22:40:

I think the NVidia drivers also force AGP 1x depending on the motherboard chipset.

Most of the 3rd party AGP 4x chipsets had problems. Or most of the motherboards were just junk. There were problems with chipsets, motherboard construction, and BIOS configurations.

That sounds correct. The procedure I followed was to set it to AGP 4X in the CMOS settings, uninstall and reinstall the 4in1 drivers in Turbo mode, and finally use Rivatuner to force it into AGP 4x. Uninstalling and reinstalling the Nvidia drivers after doing the first two steps left it in 1x mode. The predictable thing happened once I had done so; it couldn't complete a pass of 3D 2001, crashing with a lot of strange artifacts. But you never know until you try - I knew going in that it probably wouldn't work, but I had to know if I had that rare, lucky combo.

Well, I finally took the shoot and ordered a Ti 4200 from a reputable ebay seller. It's a 64mb ALBATRON Ti 4200 8X, tested and functional, meaning it also support 8X AGP (I won't be able to go over 4X), it also should come with the faster memory than the 128mb version. When I get it I'll try it in my sistem and we'll see how it goes. The offbrand TNT2 I currently have does report 4X AGP, but I can't do much with it since nVidia drivers won't recognize it.

A couple of generic malware alerts from obscure AV software usually means nothing.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-01-01, 18:27:

I hadn't heard of it before either. But that's what HWINFO is telling me:

GeForce 2 GTS has SGRAM memory. Each SGRAM chip is 32-bit wide, so 4 chips equals 128-bit bus. Unpopulated pads are for 64 Mb versions.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-01-02, 19:07:

GeForce 2 GTS has SGRAM memory. Each SGRAM chip is 32-bit wide, so 4 chips equals 128-bit bus. Unpopulated pads are for 64 Mb versions.

I know that now. But didn't didn't until mentioned here. That's the beauty of Vogons. You all spread your knowledge. The passion is clear to see here. Not toxic like some other forums I have been on.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-01-02, 19:07:

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-01-01, 18:27:

I hadn't heard of it before either. But that's what HWINFO is telling me:

GeForce 2 GTS has SGRAM memory. Each SGRAM chip is 32-bit wide, so 4 chips equals 128-bit bus. Unpopulated pads are for 64 Mb versions.

The other GTS I have with 8 SGRAM chips on it and it is 32 Mb but instead of Samsung chips they are Infineon, it looks exactly like the reference PCB but is VisionTek branded.

I also have another GTS with the same 8 Infineon chips that looks identical (also appears Dell branded - stickers and such) to the one with 4 chips (Samsung 32 Mb) but its artifacting so bad I cant get a read from it. When I got it the HS was missing with a few remnants of epoxy on it, so I wonder if the solder balls under the chip are damaged or if its a memory issue.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-01-02, 19:03:

A couple of generic malware alerts from obscure AV software usually means nothing.

Yup, got lots of softwares from MajorGeeks to get my two old machines up and running smoothly again. Never had problems with viruses with those.