Re: Pentium overdrive 83 MHz - overclocking options?

Posted on 2011-02-17, 19:02

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Message to overclocked POD 83 owners - please try running Quake 1.06 (free download shareware version), and see if you can get it to run at all, and if you can, what is your timedemo demo1 score? Thanks a lot. It has been like 5 years since I played with the POD but I'm pretty sure I had Quake …

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Re: Pentium overdrive 83 MHz - overclocking options?

Posted on 2011-02-17, 17:14

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

At 160mhz, the AMD [5x86] is roughly equal to a P90. As long as we're not talking 3D games. In that case it might be only a bit more than half as fast... However, the 486 POD also has the added bottleneck of having around quarter the bus bandwidth on a 486 board (maybe less in practice). With its …

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Re: 9x retro rig sound: SB128? Or Vortex? Or...

Posted on 2011-02-17, 03:26

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The link is to a util called PCI Latency Tool 3.1 v2 .

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Re: I accidentally a CRT monitor.

Posted on 2011-02-16, 23:05

by

by swaaye

in Milliways

in Milliways

Dominus wrote: Can *anyone* please fix the topic 😀 it's driving me nuts... 😀 I'm thinking of it as "I accidentally _____ a CRT monitor." 😉

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Re: 9x retro rig sound: SB128? Or Vortex? Or...

Posted on 2011-02-16, 21:48

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Any of the sound cards that do hardware processing can be affected by PCI latency problems. I've definitely heard pops and clicks from Vortex 1 and 2. Intel-based boards aren't guaranteed trouble-free either. Sometimes the video card is the cause of the problem because the video driver would tweak …

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Re: Voodoo 4 vs Voodoo 5

Posted on 2011-02-16, 21:42

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

None of the Voodoo chips support AGP texturing though so AGP is particularly worthless for them. The only advantage in this case is that AGP is a distinct bus so you aren't loading PCI down. But I don't think back then that we had hardware that was likely to saturate PCI. If you ran RAID 0 it was …

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Re: Geforce FX Super Thread

Posted on 2011-02-16, 21:37

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I got the piece of garbage FX 5200 64-bit Edition running 1680x1050 on DVI. :D Driver 93.71. Add custom 1680x1050 resolution. Set it to CVT Reduced Blanking. Success. It works very nicely as a 2D card. The Radeon 7500 was not ideal because those cards don't show anything on DVI until you get into …

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Re: I accidentally a CRT monitor.

Posted on 2011-02-16, 21:35

by

by swaaye

in Milliways

in Milliways

leileilol wrote: a vga cable ZAPPED me once 🙁 Well that explains everything. 😁

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Re: New (to me) socket 7 motherboards

Posted on 2011-02-15, 22:24

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

you'll have to excuse my ignorance... Is there any benifit to keeping the EDO modules rather than using regular SDRAM DIMMS? EDO DIMMs are just 64-bit wide EDO sticks. They offer the same performance as a pair of EDO SIMMs. Nothing special aside from fitting in a DIMM slot. SDRAM is faster but it …

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Re: 9x retro rig sound: SB128? Or Vortex? Or...

Posted on 2011-02-15, 22:21

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Vortex's big advantage is with 2 speaker 3D sound. It has a really cool ability there that Live can't touch... But Live has advantages too like VASTLY superior MIDI. 😀 Too bad it doesn't have a DB header!

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Re: New (to me) socket 7 motherboards

Posted on 2011-02-15, 19:47

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It does look like an EDO DIMM. Those are rare alright. An interesting choice considering it has 72 pin SIMM slots. My guess would be that the IT dept bought a load of EDO DIMMs for servers and just used them in this as well. Maybe these were used as budget servers.

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Re: New (to me) socket 7 motherboards

Posted on 2011-02-15, 18:58

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

TX97s are quality boards. See if you can put a K6-2+ or 3+ in there. 😉 http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm They should be safe from the badcaps era.

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Re: 9x retro rig sound: SB128? Or Vortex? Or...

Posted on 2011-02-15, 18:16

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I will say that AudioPCI chips aren't ideal for anything other than OEM PC builders wanting to fulfill their feature checklist in as mediocre and cheap a way as possible. I suggest a Vortex 2 or a Live! because games from those days tend to work best with these cards. For example, I found that …

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Re: 1990s PC Hardware Magazine Review Archive

Posted on 2011-02-15, 18:12

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

leileilol wrote: Yeah, same. A Voodoo2 sorts it all out until 2002 which by then even a Geforce2MX will keep you on until 2005. It is interesting to ponder how much hardware you should have avoided. 😁 Yup stick with a Voodoo2 until Radeon 9700 or so! Hindsight is fun!

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Re: radeon 9600XT artefacts

Posted on 2011-02-15, 18:10

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Did you save a backup of the original BIOS? You can find a BIOS archive over on TechPowerUp.

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Re: 1990s PC Hardware Magazine Review Archive

Posted on 2011-02-14, 23:25

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Don't miss http://cgw.vintagegaming.org/ He's scanning mags again. 😁

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Re: Geforce FX Super Thread

Posted on 2011-02-14, 22:02

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I did some fun digging over at Beyond3D for FX hardware info. Here is the gist of how the hardware works. NV30 (5800) : 3 VS, 4 pixel pipes, 4 ROPs Double Z pixel pipe = 1 FP32 ALU handling 2 TMUs + 2 FX12 Mini-ALU (each one can do 2 MULs or 1 ADD or 1 MAD) NV35/38 (5900/5950) : 3 VS, 4 pixel pipes, …

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Re: Geforce FX Super Thread

Posted on 2011-02-14, 20:34

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cool site. $10 more gets you a HD 2600 Pro :D http://www.pricefalls.com/products/Visiontek-256MB-VisionTek-Radeon-HD2600Pro-Video-Card-AGP-8x-Dual-DVI-TV-OUT-900166-VT26P256AGP/id/14901294 But 2400 and 2600 are pretty slow cards really... 2400 Pro is sort of the FX 5200 of the DX10 era. I am sure it …

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Re: Geforce FX Super Thread

Posted on 2011-02-14, 19:28

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Aside from the fact that you probably would not want to use it with that cooler on it (very noisy), that is a sweet card right there. I haven't heard one myself but every now and then I come across somebody who really hated that blower. And the design is awfully similar to The Dustbuster. The X800 …

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Re: Geforce FX Super Thread

Posted on 2011-02-14, 17:21

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Mobility 9700 is in between 9600 Pro and 9600 XT. It is based on RV360. There's a Mobility 9800 that's based on X800 but only has 8 pipelines enabled. :D And those pipelines were unlockable with some modding. I think this came out before the desktop X800 was even out. I think that R300 and R350 …

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