I like it 😀
I at one time build something similar, a 1200MHz Thunderbird (also 12*100MHz) on an ASUS A7V with some spare GF MX card iirc.
You didn't add a case exhaust fan?

Feel free to add more pics of the insides 🙂

Tetrium wrote on 2022-09-08, 10:12:

I like it :) I at one time build something similar, a 1200MHz Thunderbird (also 12*100MHz) on an ASUS A7V with some spare GF MX […]
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I like it 😀
I at one time build something similar, a 1200MHz Thunderbird (also 12*100MHz) on an ASUS A7V with some spare GF MX card iirc.
You didn't add a case exhaust fan?

Feel free to add more pics of the insides 🙂

I like it the more I play with it. The Radeon is killing it in Direct3D-mode in UT/Deus Ex, or basically any game I choose to throw at it, even at higher resolutions. It's shocking that it goes head to head with a GeForce 3 while obviously being much less demanding power/heat-wise. Just look at that tiny heatsink they put on it:

Here's a better side-view of the case internals while I've been cleaning it up today:

Despite little heat being generated by other components, the Athlons run toasty. Thunderbirds especially were kind of notorious, so I decided to fit the case with a Nexus 80mm exhaust, as well as replace the CPU fan with an identical pair. For the CPU it's not a perfect fit, because the heatsink is smaller in size, but I managed the mount regardless:

I stashed much of the excess cables up by the opticals, where they likely wont't bother anybody:

Oh yeah, and here's the updated front with the "new" Samsung SW-252F CD-RW drive I got to replace one of the HP ones:

Next I will be closing the case up and seeing if the fan-arrangement is enough to cool the system that it won't go up in smoke, and secondly that I will ever want to turn it on with the amount of noise fans tend to generate...

As a sidenote to those who are looking for good optical drives to put into their retro-builds, the Samsung SW-252F has excellent read-performance. I have an older game disc that is in pretty bad shape. It utilizes audio tracks for in-game music, and weaker drives will skip or stutter during playback of certain tracks. The Samsung drive handles this disc as if there was nothing wrong with it.

edit: Included firmware version R806 as well as the SFDNDOS.EXE flash-utility as an attachment, since these were a bit of pain to find.

I had a similar rig back in the early 2000s, except my GPU was a GeForce 2 MX400.

You would probably get slightly better performance with such a period correct Nvidia card and early drivers like 7.76 since they don't have that much CPU overhead.

Great rig, sensible components, and not "underdog" at all. Radeon 9200 is probably around GF3 performance wise. Most of them had DVI, unlike GeForce.
And yes, GeForce2 Pro and MX usually went with ~1GHz Pentiums III and Athlons.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-09-10, 09:49:

I had a similar rig back in the early 2000s, except my GPU was a GeForce 2 MX400.

You would probably get slightly better performance with such a period correct Nvidia card and early drivers like 7.76 since they don't have that much CPU overhead.

I actually started my tests with an MX400, but it just runs out of steam at 1024x768 in Unreal Tournament, for example. The Radeon just runs laps around it. It's more closely matched in performance to a GeForce 3. The GeForce 2 MX is a great card for some of these older comps, though - don't get me wrong! The one thing that a GeForce would bring that would be nice to have with the Radeon is working OpenGL...

...and yes, I know about paletted textures and table-fog.

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-10, 10:07:

Great rig, sensible components, and not "underdog" at all. Radeon 9200 is probably around GF3 performance wise.

Well... I decided on the name based on the fact that the system is built around AMD, VIA and ATi, rather than Intel, Intel & nVidia - as is often popular. Right you are though, the underdog packs some punch. 😉

leonardo wrote on 2022-09-10, 10:35:

I actually started my tests with an MX400, but it just runs out of steam at 1024x768 in Unreal Tournament, for example.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Performance wise, the MX400 should be roughly equal to the original GeForce from 1999. A GeForce 2 GTS would open up some of those higher resolutions, but I'm not sure if it would outdo the Radeon 9200, and it's definitively more costly. If your 9200 has a 128-bit memory bus, then its performance is indeed in the ballpark of a GeForce 3.

...and yes, I know about paletted textures and table-fog.

On the plus side, you have EMBM support on the Radeon 9200. With an Nvidia card, you would need a GeForce 3 or higher to get that feature.

Great build. Interestingly it runs 95. Is there a compatible hw monitoring utility such as CoreTemp that also works with 95?

Bruno128 wrote on 2022-10-11, 23:00:

Great build. Interestingly it runs 95. Is there a compatible hw monitoring utility such as CoreTemp that also works with 95?

I have not looked into hardware monitoring utilities for Windows 95 (mainly because most of my hardware has little in the way of sensors), but I would be happy to hear recommendations!

If I find a good one, I'll be sure to append my guide with it.

I have a Radeon 9250 with a 128bit memory bus.
I find that it sits between my Radeon 7500 and Geforce 2 GTS, depending on the game/benchmark.
Definitley not as fast as a my FireGL 8800 using Radeon 8500 drivers.
But mine doesn't have that high of a core speed, and will not overclock at all.

I have a Athlon 1400c build but I haven't tried this card in that build, only in the PII 1GHZ build. Perhaps I should see how it performs sometime.

Case either looks to be a donation of mine or they all yellow the same way?

HWiNFO32 is 95-compatible since v.6.24. Question is whether software would be able to access the reading from 95. This Asus m/b almost certainly has at least some h/w monitoring. Being a 5V VRM s462 board I think checking on voltages once in a while won't hurt.

A001 wrote on 2022-10-13, 13:00:

Case either looks to be a donation of mine or they all yellow the same way?

Could be - I honestly don't remember! Small world, huh? 😁

Jasin Natael wrote on 2022-10-12, 16:48:

I have a Radeon 9250 with a 128bit memory bus. I find that it sits between my Radeon 7500 and Geforce 2 GTS, depending on the g […]
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I have a Radeon 9250 with a 128bit memory bus.
I find that it sits between my Radeon 7500 and Geforce 2 GTS, depending on the game/benchmark.
Definitely not as fast as a my FireGL 8800 using Radeon 8500 drivers.
But mine doesn't have that high of a core speed, and will not overclock at all.

I have a Athlon 1400c build but I haven't tried this card in that build, only in the PII 1GHZ build. Perhaps I should see how it performs sometime.

I'll use your comment as a convenient excuse to rant on how both nVidia and ATi started doing "tiers" in their graphics card names - something I absolutely dislike.

It does not make sense to me that a Radeon 9000 is faster than a 9200, or that a 9250 is slower still!
A bigger number should mean better performance! 😉

I could sort of understand the naming convention behind GeForce Ti vs MX, or Radeon xxxx Pro vs non-Pro, but good lot of non-tech savvy consumers bought graphics cards with ludicrous names only to find the graphics cards they bought were barely faster than their previous one, or were even slower in some cases...

Bruno128 wrote on 2022-10-13, 14:08:

HWiNFO32 is 95-compatible since v.6.24. Question is whether software would be able to access the reading from 95. This Asus m/b almost certainly has at least some h/w monitoring. Being a 5V VRM s462 board I think checking on voltages once in a while won't hurt.

You know what, I do remember that HWiNFO has some monitoring features built-in, even though I've mainly used it for gathering system information. I would prefer an ultra-light tray-utility of sorts. Something that would alert for HDD S.M.A.R.T. issues, or trip on customizable temperature/fan/voltage values as well as allow fast viewing of said values on-demand...

I know some people like to have their monitoring apps like the console of a nuclear power plant, but I'm rather interested in lightness and minimalism - especially considering that a lot of hardware that runs Windows 95 really doesn't have the system resources to spare. Maybe this build can handle something a bit heavier, but I still like my setups really lean...