Hi! you can use a nice 6600GT AGP... I have the same setup!

jcarvalho wrote:

Hi! you can use a nice 6600GT AGP... I have the same setup!

Thanks for your reply, maybe I've got that board: I'll check this night

I concur, also have a GF6600 on my Pentium 4 build and it works a treat. A 6800 Ultra would be even nicer. GF7600 to 7950 will push it to its limits.

If you prefer ATI, a Radeon 9700/9800/X800 will also fit the bill.

yes I think 6600GT is a solid choice (basically a little better than the previous gen high end like 9800 and FX5900s)
7 series is maybe more adequate for the early dual core days (64 X2, Pentium D), but could also work well, to give some extra performance for perhaps higher res/AA

The Geforce 7600GS AGP is often cheap, its a DDR2 card with 128 bit memory bus and 800 MHz memory. With the memory overclocked to 1000 MHz its pretty much as fast as a Geforce 6800GT with the power draw of a 6600GT.

I had lots of issues with the 6600GT AGP because it uses the AGP bridge chip. 3 cards are not working, all reference cards, 1 reference card works sometimes and the only card that always works is a non reference version.

Faster options are the 6800GT but also look at ATI's X800 range of cards.

I've got this Sparkle model with nice heatsink, 6800GT [reference pic.]:

But I'm sure I've ATI X800 model board also somewhere... I must confess I've always felt more comfortable with nVidia - I must try more configurations...

The ATI cards from that era are actually really good. It does depend a lot on the game though. Doom 3 for example runs better on the 6800 GT, I think all OpenGL games do.

Games such as Far Cry or Half-Life 2 however run better on the ATI cards for example.

According to this page:
http://ark.intel.com/products/27466/Intel-Pen … GHz-800-MHz-FSB
The SL7E5 is a D0 stepping. Those run hotter / draw more power than E0 and later. You already have the chip, but if you notice a significant heat problem or you're worried about overstressing the motherboard VRM, then an E0 or later stepping would probably help.
If you're only concerned with older games and applications, then a Northwood (512KB) chip would probably perform better and will be cooler for sure.

Video card choice depends what era of games you care about it being able to play.
The 6600GT is good, but the 7600GS might be somewhat better in later games (that you may or may not care about running on this machine). My 6600GT was running very hot so I stopped using it. I don't know if they're actually hotter chips than the 7600GS or if it was just a heatsink/fan problem.
There are more powerful AGP cards but they tend to get expensive and might not be needed, depending what you care about being able to run.

I like the Radeon 9800 Pro family of cards, but they seem prone to dying. Apparently they need better cooling.
The "9" family of Radeons draws a lot of power from the 5v rail, while the "X" generation draws more power from 12v.
The X850 family cards might be pretty good, I don't know much about them. I think they lack some feature support that later XP games could require, but again you might not care about running those.

My P4P800 dlx went through 4 video cards before I retired it in 2008. Ti4200, Ati 9800xt, 7800gs, and Ati HD3850. I had upgraded the cpu to
a Pentium M though with CT-479 adaptor, but the P4 2.6c that it originally had was bottlenecking the 7800gs.

If You are really keen go for one of these http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&i … Text=7800gs+agp

I agree with Phil, an Ati x800 or Nvidia 7600 is probably as far You need.

Here the PSU I've found for this build, and a real pic of my Sparkle VGA:

And this is one of my SKT 478 heatsinks... could it be good for this CPU?

I think that Heatsink is for a standard Northwood Pentium 4. Yours is a Prescott and they run a lot hotter.
I would probably install it temporarily and get one with a copper core or go for an old Zalman cooler
if You can find one.

Imperious wrote:

I think that Heatsink is for a standard Northwood Pentium 4. Yours is a Prescott and they run a lot hotter.
I would probably install it temporarily and get one with a copper core or go for an old Zalman cooler
if You can find one.

Ok, I will follow your advice and I will use it only for testing this config!

Mmmh... first attempts failed... the motherboard is powered, but I can't get video signal. I tried replacing the AGP video card, but the situation remains the same... now I'm reading about the compatibility of 3.2GHz version of Pentium 4, perhaps this motherboard has old BIOS rev, and does not support this CPU yet...

Indrid Cold wrote:

Mmmh... first attempts failed... the motherboard is powered, but I can't get video signal. I tried replacing the AGP video card, but the situation remains the same... now I'm reading about the compatibility of 3.2GHz version of Pentium 4, perhaps this motherboard has old BIOS rev, and does not support this CPU yet...

I would test some other memory, Asus Socket-478 boards love to play dead and it's mostly memory related.

You are right: after changed RAM it's booting again to life. I'm testing with only one bank of DDR400, different from the couple I've posted before. I've changed the CPU too, following your advice - Pentium 4 Northwood SL6WS 512kb 2.6ghz:

Good news. I think that's exactly the same 2.6c cpu mine had, was good for up to 3.12ghz stable, no more at all, although I did
manage to run benchmarks at 3.25ghz once.

Imperious wrote:

Good news. I think that's exactly the same 2.6c cpu mine had, was good for up to 3.12ghz stable, no more at all, although I did
manage to run benchmarks at 3.25ghz once.

This is good, thanks for your information - I've managed to understand the trouble: I've made a mistake putting the RAM banks... same error about dual DDR and correct colours scheme of slots 😜

My old (and still ALIVE - great mobo!!!) Abit AN9-32x - if I remember right - used a different scheme, about dual DDR correct mounting and same/different colour of slots...

I'm using Maxtor 40gb IDE as storage, and my old Pioneer slot-in DVD IDE - now some testing with XP without SP: