TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

ASUS FX5950 with Arctic NV5 cooler here. Never had any problems with it. I use it regularly with my Pentium 4 machine.

Great card. Probably one of my favorites in my collection.

Yup. Love my MSI 5950 Ultra as well. I'm not using it tough since it tends to get pretty hot and these cards have a tendency to die due to thermal stress. I have a couple of Quadro FX 3000 cards (FX 5900 Ultra) and I use those. If they die, they can be easily replaced.

I keep the 5950 Ultra in a display case, and occasionally take it out to mess around with it and for benchmarks.

Skyscraper wrote:

Faster is not always better but yes if you are dual booting with Windows XP to play early DirectX 9 games then you need somethin […]
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Faster is not always better but yes if you are dual booting with Windows XP to play early DirectX 9 games then you need something faster like the Geforce 6 series. This does not make the card "better" at running older DX6 - DX8 games in Windows 9x though.

Saying that other FX series cards (or their Quadro brothers) are better than the Asus V9950 Ultra 256M is not really true from my point of view. For me beeing able to run the 45.23 driver is kind of important as it's the one I found the best. The peformance difference at stock when going from a FX5900 Ultra to a FX5950 Ultra (I have compared them in the same fast 9x system) is slim and Asus used very overclockable memory on their V9950 Ultra so the differnece in overclocked speed is also slim. The Asus V9950 Ultra stock cooler sucks though and needs to be replaced.

My experience with ATI cards in Windows 9x isn't as great as yours but perhaps they can be just as good or better depending on the driver. I usally go with Nvidia + Voodoo II in Windows 9x so I can't say I really know for sure. One of the reasons for me going with Nvidia over ATI with Win 9x systems is that the Nvidia cards (in my experience) handles overclocked AGP bus better. Perhaps I need to test ATI cards in Win 9x again to see if I'm missing out.

On topic.

I bought some Rambus memory as I can't find my box filled with Rambus memory. 😁 I'm messing with an i850 system and the 768MB the motherboard came with is not really enough for XP.

Ah, you were referring to that particular model. Well, I still don't agree it's the best w98 card, since I've had countless driver issues with FX series cards (like I said, one driver version works with some games, another works with others), and since switching to a Radeon 9800 PRO those went away (Catalyst 6.2), but I do agree that the V9950 is a great card.

I fancy the FX series myself - there's something about them I can't really put my finger on. Maybe because it's because I owned a 5200 Ultra back in the day.

Skalabala wrote:

Some K6 lottery 😁 Finally! K6 project is going slow.
Date code 0328 😁 Thats 2003 week 28. 400Mhz 1.6V k6 3+

You sure about the datecode? I don't remember the K-6 III being produced in 2003.

blurks wrote:

Skalabala wrote:

Some K6 lottery 😁 Finally! K6 project is going slow.
Date code 0328 😁 Thats 2003 week 28. 400Mhz 1.6V k6 3+

You sure about the datecode? I don't remember the K-6 III being produced in 2003.

Could be March 28 instead...especially since it looks like there's also a copyright symbol followed by a year on those processors.

yawetaG wrote:

blurks wrote:

Skalabala wrote:

Some K6 lottery 😁 Finally! K6 project is going slow.
Date code 0328 😁 Thats 2003 week 28. 400Mhz 1.6V k6 3+

You sure about the datecode? I don't remember the K-6 III being produced in 2003.

Could be March 28 instead...especially since it looks like there's also a copyright symbol followed by a year on those processors.

AMD K6 CPUS is year/month as well, i found a pic of a K6-2 350 dated from 2002, model is K6-2/350AMZ and is aparently an Embedded model, i guess embedded models were used for longer time

kanecvr wrote:

Yup. Love my MSI 5950 Ultra as well. I'm not using it tough since it tends to get pretty hot and these cards have a tendency to die due to thermal stress. I have a couple of Quadro FX 3000 cards (FX 5900 Ultra) and I use those. If they die, they can be easily replaced.

I keep the 5950 Ultra in a display case, and occasionally take it out to mess around with it and for benchmarks.

I think if you're that worried about thermal stress, you can just down-clock it for normal use. Unless you say the Quadro variants have better components in general?

dexvx wrote:

kanecvr wrote:

Yup. Love my MSI 5950 Ultra as well. I'm not using it tough since it tends to get pretty hot and these cards have a tendency to die due to thermal stress. I have a couple of Quadro FX 3000 cards (FX 5900 Ultra) and I use those. If they die, they can be easily replaced.

I keep the 5950 Ultra in a display case, and occasionally take it out to mess around with it and for benchmarks.

I think if you're that worried about thermal stress, you can just down-clock it for normal use. Unless you say the Quadro variants have better components in general?

Quadro's generally speaking tend to have a lower leniency in terms of component quality. Better caps, better solder materials, etc just better built all around. There designed for use in mission critical enviroments. The Quadros are also clocked slightly lower on the memory if i recall correctly. But if you're worried about thermals an Arctic NV5, some Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste, and ram sinks and you're good to go. That's the way mine is setup. If anything takes this card down it won't be thermals. Just make sure you're case has proper venting.

Retarded case and fan decisions do more to kill component's than anything else.

So why does the Quadros (and FireGL) go for a fraction of the consumer grade items? They should technically be rarer because I would image their production numbers to be much smaller than the consumer versions.

Also picked this up:

dexvx wrote:

So why does the Quadros (and FireGL) go for a fraction of the consumer grade items? They should technically be rarer because I would image their production numbers to be much smaller than the consumer versions.

You see more of them around because they were in workstations in medium to large size businesses. When they are done with them, they often go to recycling centers, some of which onsell components like you see on those large electronic recyclers pages on eBay and on the net.

Consumer goods just get thrown out eventually, not many people keep their old personal PCs. They just go into the rubbish or collected by the local council (or country equivalent) to be recycled normally.

The people who do keep them either enjoy PCs or just forgot they had them. The former are more likely to research their value and sell them at a price they feel is appropriate. They are often selling to us fellow computing/retro computing enthusiasts and collectors. With the workstation cards, these businesses get them in such large quantities at a time and stock costs money to hold, it is in their best interests to sell them as fast as they can which often means lower prices.

They also need to consider the market they are mainly targetting -- not retro computer lovers but other businesses that need to replace broken parts in their current hardware. They have to take into consideration that spares need to be sold at a price that makes it worth buying a spare from them as opposed to just replacing the entire system. The exception to this rule is industrial equipment that is used in, well, industrial CNC machines and other such fun items. They are VERY expensive to replace, so they know they can sell those motherboards for $500-$800 each for a Pentium II/III/4 era board. It may not sell quickly, but someone will pay it eventually. That's because those machines are designed to work with very specific hardware, often down to the board revision.

So were there less made? Probably. But more "survived" because of the environment they came from. 😀

x0zm_ wrote:

You see more of them around because they were in workstations in medium to large size businesses. When they are done with them, […]
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dexvx wrote:

So why does the Quadros (and FireGL) go for a fraction of the consumer grade items? They should technically be rarer because I would image their production numbers to be much smaller than the consumer versions.

You see more of them around because they were in workstations in medium to large size businesses. When they are done with them, they often go to recycling centers, some of which onsell components like you see on those large electronic recyclers pages on eBay and on the net.

Consumer goods just get thrown out eventually, not many people keep their old personal PCs. They just go into the rubbish or collected by the local council (or country equivalent) to be recycled normally.

The people who do keep them either enjoy PCs or just forgot they had them. The former are more likely to research their value and sell them at a price they feel is appropriate. They are often selling to us fellow computing/retro computing enthusiasts and collectors. With the workstation cards, these businesses get them in such large quantities at a time and stock costs money to hold, it is in their best interests to sell them as fast as they can which often means lower prices.

They also need to consider the market they are mainly targetting -- not retro computer lovers but other businesses that need to replace broken parts in their current hardware. They have to take into consideration that spares need to be sold at a price that makes it worth buying a spare from them as opposed to just replacing the entire system. The exception to this rule is industrial equipment that is used in, well, industrial CNC machines and other such fun items. They are VERY expensive to replace, so they know they can sell those motherboards for $500-$800 each for a Pentium II/III/4 era board. It may not sell quickly, but someone will pay it eventually. That's because those machines are designed to work with very specific hardware, often down to the board revision.

So were there less made? Probably. But more "survived" because of the environment they came from. 😀

There's also the fact the average bonehead isn't smart enough to get Quadros to load the ID modded GeForce drivers. With Quadro drivers you get 3 things primarily:

Extreme Stability, there designed with this in mind.
Performance equivalent to greased lightning in OpenGL.
More precise rendering in some cases (Usually regards to color accuracy and float point)

The stability is because in a work environment stability and not losing time due to crash's is generally more important, not to mention in medical imaging environments that can end with worse consequences. The drivers are extremely geared towards the OpenGL framework employed in most professional 3D environments. It also has the side effect of making OpenGL games run just as fast.

That being said, you lose some specialized gaming features (special AA modes etc), and you take a hit on Direct3D performance.

For most people, this makes the Quadro's unacceptable.

dexvx wrote:

Also picked this up: […]
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Also picked this up:

Very nice, 1996 😲 ! 2meg or 4meg?

dexvx wrote:

kanecvr wrote:

Yup. Love my MSI 5950 Ultra as well. I'm not using it tough since it tends to get pretty hot and these cards have a tendency to die due to thermal stress. I have a couple of Quadro FX 3000 cards (FX 5900 Ultra) and I use those. If they die, they can be easily replaced.

I keep the 5950 Ultra in a display case, and occasionally take it out to mess around with it and for benchmarks.

I think if you're that worried about thermal stress, you can just down-clock it for normal use. Unless you say the Quadro variants have better components in general?

Yes this is true. The latest date code I have seen so far is 0337 The letters after that is the stepping code

A Slot 1 Pentum II 350.

Now I need to decidd whether to use this or a Slot 1 PIII 450 for a Voodoo 3 system.. If only I had another Slot 1 board so I could use this for my Voodoo 2, alas I have to make do with a 166MMX@233MHz.

dirkmirk wrote:

Very nice, 1996 😲 ! 2meg or 4meg?

I think the ISA version maxes at 2 MB.

Also, along the same vein of Quadro discussion, are FireGL's worth it for Radeons?

Picked up a lot of 13 PCI sound cards on eBay.

From the horrid picture, I can tell:
1x S3 Sonic Vibes
2x Yamaha YMF-724 or similar
2x Aureal Vortex (not sure if Vortex 1 or 2)

The others I have no idea what they are, but it was worth it for the few I could tell.

Yay for nasty out of focus cell phone pics where you can't really tell much of anything except for shapes.

I got two things for free today:
1. HP Z400 workstation, slot 1366, cpu still unknown, 8gb ram, 320gb sata drive and Quadro 4000. System did run before being gifted, a bit of dust in it but for the rest fully functional.
2. HP elitedisplay E231, not a single scratch or dead pixel. 😲

I also received a socket 3 motherboard, CHICONY CH-471A (VER. 3) which unfortunately has a bit of transport damage. The board was neatly packed but the whole edge of the cardboard box was ripped open. 😠 One of the resistors next to the power connector is broken and I don't know the value of the resistor. The whole board is covered in exactly the same looking resistors, which if I measure them have two different values... No mark is left on the broken resistor so will have to take some pictures and hope somebody can help me with this.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

dexvx wrote:

kanecvr wrote:

Yup. Love my MSI 5950 Ultra as well. I'm not using it tough since it tends to get pretty hot and these cards have a tendency to die due to thermal stress. I have a couple of Quadro FX 3000 cards (FX 5900 Ultra) and I use those. If they die, they can be easily replaced.

I keep the 5950 Ultra in a display case, and occasionally take it out to mess around with it and for benchmarks.

I think if you're that worried about thermal stress, you can just down-clock it for normal use. Unless you say the Quadro variants have better components in general?

Quadro's generally speaking tend to have a lower leniency in terms of component quality. Better caps, better solder materials, etc just better built all around. There designed for use in mission critical enviroments. The Quadros are also clocked slightly lower on the memory if i recall correctly. But if you're worried about thermals an Arctic NV5, some Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste, and ram sinks and you're good to go. That's the way mine is setup. If anything takes this card down it won't be thermals. Just make sure you're case has proper venting.

Retarded case and fan decisions do more to kill component's than anything else.

I'd rather not risk having my only working 5950 ultra die, so I'll stick to the quadro cards. I have two of those and they are cheap to buy - and plentiful.

kanecvr wrote:

Yup. Love my MSI 5950 Ultra as well. I'm not using it tough since it tends to get pretty hot and these cards have a tendency to die due to thermal stress. I have a couple of Quadro FX 3000 cards (FX 5900 Ultra) and I use those.

Fair enough. I paid 25 for mine shipped with said cooling modifications done before hand on Amibay. I guess I got Lucky. I'd imagine you could probably get those 5900 based Quadros up to 5950U clocks anyways.

For me, buying something like this and not using it would be like buying a stock car to drive on Sundays. A complete waste. Unless something is exceedingly rare (for example the FX5800 Ultras) in which case I'm more likely to save it for special occasions.

That being said, uh isn't pulling a card in and out for benchmarking and crap often just as risky as leaving it in? I'm always worried about accidentally damaging stuff removing it from cases or similar.

Might just be a case of the lesser of two evils.

dexvx wrote:

dirkmirk wrote:

Very nice, 1996 😲 ! 2meg or 4meg?

I think the ISA version maxes at 2 MB.

Your card has 2MB. But there were also 4MB models on ISA bus.

Got this 486 CPU cooler in the mail today.... Never used.

brostenen wrote:

Got this 486 CPU cooler in the mail today.... Never used.

I've got that same exact cooler 😀 No complaints, it works great.