ODwilly wrote:

Oh hey, quick note you can usually OC the crap of the 9550's. Depending on the memory specs and cooling you should be able to get it to 9600 clocks.

It has the stock cooler on it and original drivers. The drivers themselves have worked fine and from all reports from 2001 and 2002, ATI was kicking the crap out of nVidia until they came out with the 6800 Ultra, which was in 2004, by the way. That and the system is the ONLY one I have that's AMD (not counting the recently acquired AMD K6-2 300MHz), so since it originally came with a Radeon and I've badged the case to say Radeon...I'd kinda like to stay with ATI for this build. I already have a 7800GTX in my laptop and it DOES play F.E.A.R., Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Half-Life 2, Portal, and Phantasy Star Universe. Hell, it'll probably play The Witcher 1 as well. I just haven't copied all the game files over yet. I'd need something bigger than the 16GB USB thumb drives I have now.

Use Powerstrip to overclock the card. As long as you have good case airflow and active cooling you should see a a few FPS boost. Nice thing is it has a built in stability tester.

candle_86 wrote:

elod wrote:

I see no use in using Morrowind as a reference for this config. You'll never be able to run it properly. Crank up the view distance, install a texture mod but do that on a 2005+ PC. I'd even try running it on my hd6850 if it had an older Windows.
Back in the day I ran it on a Palomino 1700+ and upgraded the graphics card to a GF3Ti200. It worked, but I would not want to repeat the experience today.

Also, no video card of that era is worth $100. The most I payed until now was about $18 for a nice boxed Leadtek Geforce 5700FX. Oh, the Voodoos were a bit more. $35 for a PCI Banshee, $20-25 for V3 2000.

Thats not true an FX5800 Ultra is easily worth $100

As for Other cards, if your stuck on ATI look for the Radeon 9700TX, its between a Pro and a non pro and was dell exclusive, it's also cheap when they show up, like dirt cheap

Why is the 5800fx worth that much? I've seen two 5900 based Quadros around lately for about $20.

elod wrote:

candle_86 wrote:

elod wrote:

I see no use in using Morrowind as a reference for this config. You'll never be able to run it properly. Crank up the view distance, install a texture mod but do that on a 2005+ PC. I'd even try running it on my hd6850 if it had an older Windows.
Back in the day I ran it on a Palomino 1700+ and upgraded the graphics card to a GF3Ti200. It worked, but I would not want to repeat the experience today.

Also, no video card of that era is worth $100. The most I payed until now was about $18 for a nice boxed Leadtek Geforce 5700FX. Oh, the Voodoos were a bit more. $35 for a PCI Banshee, $20-25 for V3 2000.

Thats not true an FX5800 Ultra is easily worth $100

As for Other cards, if your stuck on ATI look for the Radeon 9700TX, its between a Pro and a non pro and was dell exclusive, it's also cheap when they show up, like dirt cheap

Why is the 5800fx worth that much? I've seen two 5900 based Quadros around lately for about $20.

they are actually rare, only produced for a few months before nvidia replaced them with the FX5900, so it only existed for about 3 months

Since when did 9800XT cards get so expensive? A year ago, you couldn't give the damn things away on eBay. It's why I still have mine. Perhaps it's time to part with it and recover a few bucks.

By the way, 9600XT is also a fine card and is probably more in line with your Athlon XP 1800+. They also run much cooler and consume much less power. I might consider parting with my 9800XT, but I'll definitely keep my 9600XT. It's a great card for a legacy HTPC that won't need to push things. It also works really well with emulators and the ATI HDTV Wonder cards.

elod wrote:

Why is the 5800fx worth that much? I've seen two 5900 based Quadros around lately for about $20.

Because people didn't like the leafblower. This internal jet-engine, high cost and poor performance compared to Ati at the time got so much bad press that NVidia quickly released the FX5900 to fix the FX5800's issues and possibly not many people wanted to buy one second hand so not many are left.

And on top of that, NVidia even released a video in which they kinda mocked themselves and its legendary status went on to many people wanting one.

Low supply, high demand, high prices.

KT7AGuy wrote:

Since when did 9800XT cards get so expensive? A year ago, you couldn't give the damn things away on eBay. It's why I still have mine. Perhaps it's time to part with it and recover a few bucks.

By the way, 9600XT is also a fine card and is probably more in line with your Athlon XP 1800+. They also run much cooler and consume much less power. I might consider parting with my 9800XT, but I'll definitely keep my 9600XT. It's a great card for a legacy HTPC that won't need to push things. It also works really well with emulators and the ATI HDTV Wonder cards.

Many of the R9800s died of overheating I presume (due to poor cooling and perhaps also people overclocking it to death).
I have a weak spot for R9600 and especially the XT variant 😀 (yes I may be biased here)

Well, whatever I end up getting, I have no intention of overclocking anything.

-Except my i7-6700K.

Because it's water-cooled.

I'm still staring at this X850xt PE card on E-bay. I don't like the $100, but it's brand-new, never been used, in the original box - still shrink wrapped. Pretty sure it's still overkill on the system, but at this point, much better than the 9550.

FFXIhealer wrote:

Well, whatever I end up getting, I have no intention of overclocking anything. […]
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Well, whatever I end up getting, I have no intention of overclocking anything.

-Except my i7-6700K.

Because it's water-cooled.

I'm still staring at this X850xt PE card on E-bay. I don't like the $100, but it's brand-new, never been used, in the original box - still shrink wrapped. Pretty sure it's still overkill on the system, but at this point, much better than the 9550.

If you really want an x800 where are you located, i have an x800 XT All in Wonder AGP ill give ya for the cost of shipping

Lake Charles, bro. You're in Texas?

KT7AGuy wrote:

By the way, 9600XT is also a fine card and is probably more in line with your Athlon XP 1800+. They also run much cooler and consume much less power. I might consider parting with my 9800XT, but I'll definitely keep my 9600XT. It's a great card for a legacy HTPC that won't need to push things. It also works really well with emulators and the ATI HDTV Wonder cards.

Tetrium wrote:

I have a weak spot for R9600 and especially the XT variant 😀 (yes I may be biased here)

Some XTs had low memory clock, under Radeon 9600 Pro-level and the Radeon 9600 Pros were slower than the older Radeon 9500 Pro. Four pixel pipelines vs. eight pixel pipelines.

Kropotkin wrote:

KT7AGuy wrote:

By the way, 9600XT is also a fine card and is probably more in line with your Athlon XP 1800+. They also run much cooler and consume much less power. I might consider parting with my 9800XT, but I'll definitely keep my 9600XT. It's a great card for a legacy HTPC that won't need to push things. It also works really well with emulators and the ATI HDTV Wonder cards.

Tetrium wrote:

I have a weak spot for R9600 and especially the XT variant 😀 (yes I may be biased here)

Some XTs had low memory clock, under Radeon 9600 Pro-level and the Radeon 9600 Pros were slower than the older Radeon 9500 Pro. Four pixel pipelines vs. eight pixel pipelines.

There were quite a bit of R9600 variants and I suppose these had a bit longer production run for OEM use? Not sure there.

But the R9600 and R9600XT I have are both the Sapphire ones and the XT one is basically the vanilla one, except for roughly 50% faster clock speeds.

Tetrium wrote:

Kropotkin wrote:

KT7AGuy wrote:

By the way, 9600XT is also a fine card and is probably more in line with your Athlon XP 1800+. They also run much cooler and consume much less power. I might consider parting with my 9800XT, but I'll definitely keep my 9600XT. It's a great card for a legacy HTPC that won't need to push things. It also works really well with emulators and the ATI HDTV Wonder cards.

Tetrium wrote:

I have a weak spot for R9600 and especially the XT variant 😀 (yes I may be biased here)

Some XTs had low memory clock, under Radeon 9600 Pro-level and the Radeon 9600 Pros were slower than the older Radeon 9500 Pro. Four pixel pipelines vs. eight pixel pipelines.

There were quite a bit of R9600 variants and I suppose these had a bit longer production run for OEM use? Not sure there.

But the R9600 and R9600XT I have are both the Sapphire ones and the XT one is basically the vanilla one, except for roughly 50% faster clock speeds.

The basic core quite awhile actually, it is the 9550, 9600, 9600Pro, 9600 XT, X600, X600Pro, X600 XT, x1050

The default variant of the Radeon 9600 XT is as fast as the Radeon 9500 Pro, but I'm not sure how much driver optimization plays a role. Without shader model 2.0-optimization the Radeon 9500 Pro/9600 XT beats the Geforce FX 5950 Ultra. With shader model 1.4 or different setups the Radeon 9600 XT/9500 Pro is Geforce FX 5900 XT/5800/5900-level.

So I spun up Doom 3 on this system today - yes with the old Radeon 9550 entry-level card. Defaults put it at Medium Settings @ 640 x 480, which I immediately bumped up to 1024 x 768. But even at Medium settings, I still got stuttering framerates. It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't want to play the game like that. So I dropped everything down to Low Settings, 640 x 480, and turned off all Advanced Settings and restarted. Now, the game ran smoothly, but comparatively looked like crap. So, yeah. Looking to definitely upgrade this shit card. The 9800xt card would more than triple the graphics power of the 9550, according to what I've read about the specs.

MOperations/sec: 1000 -> 3296
MPixels/sec: 1000 -> 3296
MTexels/sec: 1000 -> 3296

Doubles Pixel Shaders, Vertex Shaders, Texture Mapping Units, and Render Output Units.

I know you already said you don't want to upgrade the CPU, but I think you should. They're really cheap and your board can handle at least an Athlon XP 2600+. It can probably support an even faster CPU than that, but that's what I saw officially supported with the last BIOS available.

I'm not sure why you're stuck on the 9800XT. It looks like they're expensive nowadays. Why not consider a 6800 card? With one of those your CPU would be the bottleneck, not the GPU. They're pretty common and cheap too.

Because this is the ONLY system I own with an AMD processor and Radeon graphics. Everything else has, at it's heart, an nVidia graphics chip and an Intel processor (Pentium 3 + TNT2, Pentium M + 7800GTX, i7-860 + GTX 480, i7-6700K + GTX 980ti). And because I have a 2005 laptop that has a 2.1GHz Pentium M and a GeForce Go 7800GTX, which is so powerful compared to this rig that it's just easier to open it up, boot it up, and play. This is SUPPOSED to be a lesser powerful system - hence the CPU not getting upgraded and ALSO hence not considering ANY NVIDIA PRODUCT AT ALL (a.k.a. so please stop recommending them). The 9800xt seems to be the most powerful card in the 4x AGP area, even though it supports 8x, without straying too close to what I already have in the GeForxe 7800GTX area. And if I can get one for $25 + shipping, that'd be sweet as well, though I don't see that happening.

Besides, I've already badged the case with a brand new ATI Radeon sticker...

My builds all have spheres of influence. This build needs to fall between the 600MHz Pentium III with the TNT2 and the Voodoo2 SLI -- and the Windows XP laptop with the 7800GTX.

Spheres of influence.

FFXIhealer wrote:

Because this is the ONLY system I own with an AMD processor and Radeon graphics. Everything else has, at it's heart, an nVidia […]
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Because this is the ONLY system I own with an AMD processor and Radeon graphics. Everything else has, at it's heart, an nVidia graphics chip and an Intel processor (Pentium 3 + TNT2, Pentium M + 7800GTX, i7-860 + GTX 480, i7-6700K + GTX 980ti). And because I have a 2005 laptop that has a 2.1GHz Pentium M and a GeForce Go 7800GTX, which is so powerful compared to this rig that it's just easier to open it up, boot it up, and play. This is SUPPOSED to be a lesser powerful system - hence the CPU not getting upgraded and ALSO hence not considering ANY NVIDIA PRODUCT AT ALL (a.k.a. so please stop recommending them). The 9800xt seems to be the most powerful card in the 4x AGP area, even though it supports 8x, without straying too close to what I already have in the GeForxe 7800GTX area. And if I can get one for $25 + shipping, that'd be sweet as well, though I don't see that happening.

Besides, I've already badged the case with a brand new ATI Radeon sticker...

My builds all have spheres of influence. This build needs to fall between the 600MHz Pentium III with the TNT2 and the Voodoo2 SLI -- and the Windows XP laptop with the 7800GTX.

Spheres of influence.

FFXIhealer, how about a R9600XT?
The Sapphire one I mentioned earlier actually has decent clocks and it may be a lot cheaper than R9800any.
There were also a couple OEM ones, like the 9800XL I think. Perhaps one of these isn't as terrible expensive either? And both are ATi, should suit your needs 😀

If I don't win this auction for the 9800xt, I'll look into that. Thanks. Just want something better than this garbage 9550. Man, I was such a noob back in 2004.

*mutter* God I hate you guys....

So now I'm looking at CPU upgrades. /facepalm

The Abit KX7-333 MB is version 1.0 and only has BIOS support directly for up to 2200+ with a "13x or higher" multiplier. Some forums say it'll go up to 2600+. Question is...there's two or three different 2600+ CPUs. Thoroughbred CPUs come in 133MHz FSB clocks (2.13GHz) and 166MHz versions (2.01GHz). The MB can ramp all the way up to 250MHz FSB, though the AGP/PCI dividers only go to 5:2:1, so anything over 166 would also overclock the AGP and PCI bus. The 166FSB 2600+ also comes with a die shrink from 180nm to 130nm as well as a voltage drop from 1.75V to 1.65V, so I can assume it runs cooler (a.k.a. I wouldn't need to get a bigger heatsink/fan).

Then there's the question of if I DO upgrade the CPU, what the hell do I do with the old one? I already have a 350MHz Pentium II laying around not being used anymore...

FFXIhealer wrote:

*mutter* God I hate you guys.... […]
Show full quote

*mutter* God I hate you guys....

So now I'm looking at CPU upgrades. /facepalm

The Abit KX7-333 MB is version 1.0 and only has BIOS support directly for up to 2200+ with a "13x or higher" multiplier. Some forums say it'll go up to 2600+. Question is...there's two or three different 2600+ CPUs. Thoroughbred CPUs come in 133MHz FSB clocks (2.13GHz) and 166MHz versions (2.01GHz). The MB can ramp all the way up to 250MHz FSB, though the AGP/PCI dividers only go to 5:2:1, so anything over 166 would also overclock the AGP and PCI bus. The 166FSB 2600+ also comes with a die shrink from 180nm to 130nm as well as a voltage drop from 1.75V to 1.65V, so I can assume it runs cooler (a.k.a. I wouldn't need to get a bigger heatsink/fan).

Then there's the question of if I DO upgrade the CPU, what the hell do I do with the old one? I already have a 350MHz Pentium II laying around not being used anymore...

I never used that particular board and the one time I used a KT333 board I ended up using a Palomino 2000+, but apparently your board does support Thoroughbred (dunno about Barton). The 0.18µm is probably the Palomino. Thoroughbred and Barton are 0.13µm.
These CPUs were locked and I don't remember if I ever tried an Athlon XP on a board that supposedly had troubles with the higher multipliers.
The A7Vs I used (KT133, 100MHz FSB max) couldn't get the unlocked Thunderbirds (=predecessor or Palomino) running at the highest CPU multipliers, but this may not apply to your setup.

Well you could use your old chip the same way we do...stoooore it and sometimes look at it! 😁