mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

F2bnp wrote:

vetz wrote:

I think the cracked pirated version will come to your rescue
🤣

Yep... 😜

What about just buying an old copy that was printed back in '04?

Steam is required on the install and then you can't as far as I know stop the automatic updating 🙁

filipetolhuizen wrote:

-Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB at AGP 2X. I couldn't get this or any other card to run at AGP 4X, even with the CPU/FSB at 1.4/133. Chrome and a few other programs would cause the system to hang when AGP 4X was enabled. The slower AGP doesn't seem to be hurting system performance.

VIA chipset from the 90's, that's the reason. Only the Intels were stable at the time. Nvidia drivers have compatibility modes for several problematic chipsets (which probably disables the AGP 4x mode). Don't know about ATI.
I cannot get a Geforce 2MX to run on a PV133 without random blackouts at all.

That sucks. I had this CPU running at 1.58/150 on an 815 based board, and it managed to hit just over 12k on 3DMark01SE (faster than the AXP 2400 on my flimsy ECS board). But I'd rather have the slightly lower CPU/AGP performance of the VIA chipset and be able to use 1.5GB of RAM. SP3 with AV is a little slow with 512MB.

vetz wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

F2bnp wrote:

Yep... 😜

What about just buying an old copy that was printed back in '04?

Steam is required on the install and then you can't as far as I know stop the automatic updating 🙁

Damn. 🤣 How about using an old copy, then cracking it? I don't like the idea of using a pirated copy outright, but I don't see a problem with cracking a copy I actually own.

Damn. 🤣 How about using an old copy, then cracking it? I don't like the idea of using a pirated copy outright, but I don't see a problem with cracking a copy I actually own.

You can try, but the pirated version is a hacked one with Steam completely taken out/disabled. A Google search shows that there are a nosteam patch/crack, but I have not tested it.

If you own the game, does it matter what version you are using? For me it doesn't.

vetz wrote:

On a P3 I do not think the performance difference is that big tbh. X800/Geforce 6 series cards were made for P4 / Athlon XP's in the 2-3 ghz range.

Hmm ... Geforce 6 (that is from 6600GT through to 6800Ultra) and X800/X850 series were made with Athlon 64 in mind. XP's were reaching the end of their viable shelf life with the power of the A64 and low price tag to boot. I ran my 9800pro in a P4 3.4 rig and the year after upgraded to an A64 3400+ with a 6800XT AGP.

Iris030380 wrote:

vetz wrote:

On a P3 I do not think the performance difference is that big tbh. X800/Geforce 6 series cards were made for P4 / Athlon XP's in the 2-3 ghz range.

Hmm ... Geforce 6 (that is from 6600GT through to 6800Ultra) and X800/X850 series were made with Athlon 64 in mind. XP's were reaching the end of their viable shelf life with the power of the A64 and low price tag to boot. I ran my 9800pro in a P4 3.4 rig and the year after upgraded to an A64 3400+ with a 6800XT AGP.

According to this

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=31&card2=441

You'd have been better off to just keep using your 9800 Pro. 6800 XT looks like a downgrade to me.

6600GT is competitive with a 9800 Pro so the 6800 XT looks like it would be faster but not by a lot. Not like a 6800 GT would be.

There were at least 8 variants of 6800. GPU companies like their mind games...

swaaye wrote:

6600GT is competitive with a 9800 Pro so the 6800 XT looks like it would be faster but not by a lot. Not like a 6800 GT would be.

There were at least 8 variants of 6800. GPU companies like their mind games...

Though, again, would it really matter on a CPU-bottlenecked system?

Wouldn't compatibility and feature set be more important? (and performance with maxed out features, particularly if that pushes things far enough for the CPU to stop being the bottleneck)

swaaye wrote:

6600GT is competitive with a 9800 Pro so the 6800 XT looks like it would be faster but not by a lot. Not like a 6800 GT would be.

There were at least 8 variants of 6800. GPU companies like their mind games...

It looks to me like 6600 GT vs 6800 XT would be too close to call from the paper specs.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=190&card2=441

6800 XT was made from crippled 6800 chips, so it's not going to perform like even a vanilla 6800 would.

Some 6800XT cards could be unlocked, though, if you flashed a 6800 GS BIOS to them and then it would be faster than a 9800 Pro or a 6600GT but you had to find one that didn't have a crippled chip on it.

The 9800pro and the 6600GT are not similar in performance at all. In fact in Doom 3 in high detail the 6600GT will max out the games engine at 50fps consistantly, compared to about 25fps on the 9800pro. It's not even close. It's 100% faster. Same is true with almost every real world benchmark. The 6600GT is competing with the x800 series, albeit not the x850XTPE or GTO2. But as a mid range card, nvidia released the almost perfect speed for value card with the 6600GT.

Also, the 6600GT and 6800XT are very close at stock, with the 6600GT beating the 6800XT at lower resolutions, but the XT can almost always be unlocked with rivatuner. It's a no brainer. They cost the same money when I bought mine - and within 10 minutes of installing the drivers I had unlocked the XT to GT speeds. Boosted my 3Dmark score from 9k to 12k. But it cost £100 less than the 6800GT.

Show me 12k on 3DMark 03 with a 9800pro.....

Perhaps the 9800pro is about the same level as a 6800LE, but again 50% of those can be unlocked too. At least 2 pixel pipes and 1 vertex.

Think of it as .... the 5950ultra is on a level with the 9800pro - but the 6 series cards from the 6600GT and upwards DICK on the 5950ultra. Lets be realistic.

That the 6600gt is faster than the 9800pro is no question, but the original discussion started if there would be any big performance increases on a P3. The CPU is the bottleneck.

I agree with the 6800XT being a better card than the 6600GT, it was 256bit memory and unlocked it was pratically a 128meg 6800GT with lower memory/cpu clock.

6600GT might be far too fast for a P3 to max out, but it's still a better retro choice than a Radeon because NV's drivers support some old school rendering features that ATI couldn't be bothered with. It's also a better for some old OpenGL games that are essentially written for NVIDIA cards.

It's unfortunate, but it's not easy to come up with a practical reason to choose ATI. Unless you want to play with Smartshaders perhaps. 😉

Would a PIII-S Tualatin 1.4 GHz w/4X AGP feel the difference between a 6200 and a 6600GT?

On some games it would, on others it would not. It would depend on how CPU intensive the game was.

Resolution is also a factor because you can shift the bottleneck entirely to the GPU, particularly with a low bandwidth 6200.

AGP 2x is probably a bottleneck but I don't think that AGP 4x will be very beneficial because it's not that much faster and these systems have rather limited memory bandwidth.