Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-09, 11:38:

AlexZ wrote on 2025-02-09, 11:33:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-06, 11:19:

Not amazing by any means but I have a ASUS K8V SE Deluxe as my AGP backup, IIRC this board came with a Semperon 3400+ which is the top Semperon for 754, its no 3700+ but its not a slouch either 😁

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-k8v-se-deluxe

I have ASUS K8N-E Deluxe as a spare. It's an Nvidia nForce3 250Gb version while yours is VIA K8T800. nForce versions don't have the SATA bug.

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-k8n-e-deluxe

Sata bug ?

Nforce boards tend to have their own set of issues though, at least a lot of the ones I have experience with do.

Funny, I just bought a Gigabyte nForce3 250Gb board to be my go to AGP board (mainly so I can keep a single collection of 939 CPUs and bounce between my nF4 PCIe board and the nF3 AGP board).

Back in the day I had a DFI nF2 Ultra B and then I moved to the DFI nF3 250Gb, both using my 6800 GT GS - I remember being slightly underwhelmed by the upgrade and have been meaning to go back and investigate the nF3 platform for a while... I always keep my eyes open for that nF3 Lanparty board but it almost never pops up....

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-06, 11:19:

I have a GIGABYTE GA-K8N51 R 1.0 with the 3700+

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-K8N51GMF-rev-10#ov

Its a compact little board with on board 6100 and sound.

Nice! Just try to keep the temperatures down on that nVidia 6100 chipset - definitely add a fan onto its heatsink if it doesn't have one. These and the GF6150 chipsets are about the worst from the bupgate issue.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-06, 11:19:

Not amazing by any means but I have a ASUS K8V SE Deluxe as my AGP backup, IIRC this board came with a Semperon 3400+ which is the top Semperon for 754, its no 3700+ but its not a slouch either 😁

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-k8v-se-deluxe

Hey, that's the board I have paired up with my 7600 GS / 6800 XT AGP. 😀
I have it in a pretty interesting case too. Need to post it on Vogons one of these days.

zuldan wrote on 2025-02-09, 10:22:

Maybe I can be crowned King of the slowest 9800 card on Vogons. Lmao

And why not? 🤣 MEME hardware is always fun to brag with, IMO.
Also, I like weak (but not terribly weak) hardware probably the best for my frequently used retro rigs, because it's hardware I don't care as much about if it goes bad... and at the same time, it's not something too weak like an FX5200 or Radeon 9200/9250.

zuldan wrote on 2025-02-09, 11:27:

Who just bought this https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/226589177383 😂

Not me either... but this is exactly the type of stuff I used to buy on eBay before when I lived in the US.
A recap is a pretty easy job for me, so when I see a board like that and no one interested, I grab it. Moreover, it up-cycles something that would otherwise go to waste.
Ironically, last month I grabbed 3 Gigabyte boards in total more or less from that era: two socket 462 and one 478. One of the 462 board and the 478 board both needed a recap... and it was the same ordeal as the listing above - failed UCC KZG caps. It's too bad that many of the early ultra-low ESR Japanese cap series were duds, and thus many Gigabyte boards from the s462, 478, 754, and even 939 era suffered from leaking caps. But to their credit, at least they did try and use only good Japanese brands.

momaka wrote on 2025-02-12, 17:26:

Nice! Just try to keep the temperatures down on that nVidia 6100 chipset - definitely add a fan onto its heatsink if it doesn't […]
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Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-06, 11:19:

I have a GIGABYTE GA-K8N51 R 1.0 with the 3700+

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-K8N51GMF-rev-10#ov

Its a compact little board with on board 6100 and sound.

Nice! Just try to keep the temperatures down on that nVidia 6100 chipset - definitely add a fan onto its heatsink if it doesn't have one. These and the GF6150 chipsets are about the worst from the bupgate issue.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-06, 11:19:

Not amazing by any means but I have a ASUS K8V SE Deluxe as my AGP backup, IIRC this board came with a Semperon 3400+ which is the top Semperon for 754, its no 3700+ but its not a slouch either 😁

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-k8v-se-deluxe

Hey, that's the board I have paired up with my 7600 GS / 6800 XT AGP. 😀
I have it in a pretty interesting case too. Need to post it on Vogons one of these days.

zuldan wrote on 2025-02-09, 10:22:

Maybe I can be crowned King of the slowest 9800 card on Vogons. Lmao

And why not? 🤣 MEME hardware is always fun to brag with, IMO.
Also, I like weak (but not terribly weak) hardware probably the best for my frequently used retro rigs, because it's hardware I don't care as much about if it goes bad... and at the same time, it's not something too weak like an FX5200 or Radeon 9200/9250.

zuldan wrote on 2025-02-09, 11:27:

Who just bought this https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/226589177383 😂

Not me either... but this is exactly the type of stuff I used to buy on eBay before when I lived in the US.
A recap is a pretty easy job for me, so when I see a board like that and no one interested, I grab it. Moreover, it up-cycles something that would otherwise go to waste.
Ironically, last month I grabbed 3 Gigabyte boards in total more or less from that era: two socket 462 and one 478. One of the 462 board and the 478 board both needed a recap... and it was the same ordeal as the listing above - failed UCC KZG caps. It's too bad that many of the early ultra-low ESR Japanese cap series were duds, and thus many Gigabyte boards from the s462, 478, 754, and even 939 era suffered from leaking caps. But to their credit, at least they did try and use only good Japanese brands.

Hey Hey . .you leave the FX5200 Alone, I have a very nice 128bit PCI version that has been a test bench workhorse and is exceptionally reliable . .for a FX card that is. (Yes its even slower than the 128 bit AGP version but it is very reliable)
But you can go ahead and bag on the Radeon 9200/9250 all you want, hell I may even join you they were woeful cards that ATI should have kept locked in the basement.

And yeah I was the one who bought that board but I also grabbed the Gigabyte GA-K8NE-RH that was also listed, the K8NE needs a recap but I'm not sure if or when Ill get to it, it may end up in the spares bin for a while as I have other boards that need recaps first.

I will say the GA-K8NE-RH is a very nice looking board essentially being a full refresh of the K8NE. Thankfully this board has caps that look ok and the board has been tested ...so fingers crossed !

And yeah Ill throw a fan on this one too since its also a Nforce board.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-12, 17:42:

Hey Hey . .you leave the FX5200 Alone, I have a very nice 128bit PCI version that has been a test bench workhorse and is exceptionally reliable . .for a FX card that is. (Yes its even slower than the 128 bit AGP version but it is very reliable)

Oh, but I can't, hehe. 😁 You see, I also have a few FX5200 cards myself (both 64-bit and 128-bit).

On a more serious note, I actually quite like them for late 90's retro builds.
And they are reliable cards indeed... but again, so long as they are kept cool. The passively-cooled ones always get a fan from me. And the ones that come with those tiny screamy crappy coolers get replaced by bigger heatsinks (also with a fan.)

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-12, 17:42:

But you can go ahead and bag on the Radeon 9200/9250 all you want, hell I may even join you they were woeful cards that ATI should have kept locked in the basement.

Sorry, but I really don't need anyone else to trash-talk these cards or tell me how lackluster they are 😉 - I had one! ... for many years 🤣 🤣 (actually still have it and occasionally use it.) Back in 2004 when my parents finally agreed that we can upgrade / update the sole house PC (a Pentium II with Win98 and 64 MB of RAM), this is the card we ended up with. I didn't know anything about the hardware back then, so I went along with whatever was suggested to me, based on the budget I had (about $200). I walked out of the store with a late socket A mobo (nForce 2), 1.4 GHz Duron Applebred (a.k.a. Cripplebred), 256 MB of RAM, and a 64MB 64-bit ASUS Radeon 9200 Slow Edition for the grand price of $210 (oh how I still remember this, don't ask. 😁 ) It was quite a low-performer of a system as I learned in the years to follow... but at the time, and especially considering the jump up from my PII, I adored and admired this system for quite some time. Most importantly, I was sooooo hyped I could play Half-Life 2 when it came out. Yes, at despicable 800x600 and 20-30 FPS average... but I re-used the 17" CRT from my PII, so that made it a lot more bearable.

So yeah, I really know how slow the 9200/9250 cards are, because I played and finished many games on my 9200 SE. 😉
What's funny is that a really good buddy of mine had a very similar "lackluster" PC - a Dell with 1.7 Ghz P4 Willamate, 256 MB of RAM, and an ATI Rage video card. When we tried to play GTA VC and NFS Underground on it, the card could not properly render anything at all for whatever reason. So we joke that the ATI Rage was meant to just make the user rage. Unlike my parents, his mother gave him a bit more of an allowance to upgrade that PC, so he quickly upped the RAM to 512 MB and replaced the Rage with a GeForce FX5200. This brought the system pretty much on-level (or ever so slightly better) to mine. By that time, though, I did a "secret" upgrade to our family PC and replaced one of the 128 MB sticks with a 512 MB cheapo one from eBay, totaling my RAM to 640 MB. So the race between my buddy and I was on: who had the better... or as we joked, less shitty PC. For whatever reason, mine would load slightly faster due to the slightly higher amount of RAM... and for whatever reason, the 9200 SE seemed to support DX9 features a lot better in most games than his FX5200. But then, his FX5200 was overall faster... so it was a slight trade off in visual effects for better (relatively speaking) FPS.

Anyways, enough of me rambling here about that system. Had my fun with it back then and still have fun talking about (or even trash-talking about it) now. 😉

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-12, 17:42:

And yeah I was the one who bought that board but I also grabbed the Gigabyte GA-K8NE-RH that was also listed, the K8NE needs a recap but I'm not sure if or when Ill get to it, it may end up in the spares bin for a while as I have other boards that need recaps first.

Oh, that sounds all too familiar to me now. 😁
I also have quite the line up of "spare" boards waiting for either a recap or other work.
I'll probably get them all done if I have another lifetime.
Actually have caught up on that list quite a bit. Just need to get to testing them all out now (properly, that is.)

ciornyi wrote on 2025-02-05, 18:33:

65C02 wrote on 2025-02-05, 17:57:

zuldan wrote on 2025-02-05, 07:18:

Here we go, The Grand Reveal..................What are your thoughts? Any way to tell if it's Pro or SE? […]
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Here we go, The Grand Reveal..................What are your thoughts? Any way to tell if it's Pro or SE?

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I think that's an SE. I have the same style of card in my Athlon XP system. It is branded as a Radeon 9800SE and has the same style of memory (rectangular chips, 128 bits) and core. However mine has a Radeon 9700 type HSF and a floppy power connector. I believe it scored 4200 pts in 3DMark03.

Radeon 9800 se has memory 290mhz and 3.3 ns memory chips bga or tsop . This card have 5ns chips... It is still 9800 se but cuted even worse.
Here is 9800 SE by saphire

Both of the 9800 SE cards that I've had looked like this (I know for sure one was a Sapphire, the other likely was as well). When I found the guides for how to unlock the extra pipelines with Omega drivers, they mentioned that the best 9800 SE cards were 256 bit, so very close to an actual 9800 Pro when unlocked. Curious to know if anyone here has ever had one of those and/or knows what to look for visually to tell the difference ?

Repo Man11 wrote on 2025-02-13, 16:31:

ciornyi wrote on 2025-02-05, 18:33:

65C02 wrote on 2025-02-05, 17:57:

I think that's an SE. I have the same style of card in my Athlon XP system. It is branded as a Radeon 9800SE and has the same style of memory (rectangular chips, 128 bits) and core. However mine has a Radeon 9700 type HSF and a floppy power connector. I believe it scored 4200 pts in 3DMark03.

Radeon 9800 se has memory 290mhz and 3.3 ns memory chips bga or tsop . This card have 5ns chips... It is still 9800 se but cuted even worse.
Here is 9800 SE by saphire

Both of the 9800 SE cards that I've had looked like this (I know for sure one was a Sapphire, the other likely was as well). When I found the guides for how to unlock the extra pipelines with Omega drivers, they mentioned that the best 9800 SE cards were 256 bit, so very close to an actual 9800 Pro when unlocked. Curious to know if anyone here has ever had one of those and/or knows what to look for visually to tell the difference ?

Its quite simple ,9800 se 256bit based on 9700 pro pcb , however its possible unlock 4 extra pipelines at any 9800 se card its just luck based . It wont be 9800 pro but would be faster anyway. here you can read more

ciornyi wrote on 2025-02-13, 16:41:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2025-02-13, 16:31:

ciornyi wrote on 2025-02-05, 18:33:

Radeon 9800 se has memory 290mhz and 3.3 ns memory chips bga or tsop . This card have 5ns chips... It is still 9800 se but cuted even worse.
Here is 9800 SE by saphire

Both of the 9800 SE cards that I've had looked like this (I know for sure one was a Sapphire, the other likely was as well). When I found the guides for how to unlock the extra pipelines with Omega drivers, they mentioned that the best 9800 SE cards were 256 bit, so very close to an actual 9800 Pro when unlocked. Curious to know if anyone here has ever had one of those and/or knows what to look for visually to tell the difference ?

Its quite simple ,9800 se 256bit based on 9700 pro pcb , however its possible unlock 4 extra pipelines at any 9800 se card its just luck based . It wont be 9800 pro but would be faster anyway. here you can read more

It looks like the biggest tell is the memory chips. And yes, I recognize that it's always the luck of the draw when you do this sort of thing, same with the extra cache on a K6-2+, extra cores on certain CPUs, etc. And a cooler upgrade is mandatory if you are going to run it unlocked, the stock cooler is barely adequate under normal. My 9800 SE for comparison.