I'd go for anything Geforce 4 Ti - even 4200Ti is good enough. ATI had 9500 Pro and 9700 Pro, later 9800 Pro and XT.

JTD121 wrote:

Not sure what was equivalent on the ATi side at the time; maybe 9700/9800 Pro/XT?

I really like the old versions of Tom's VGA Charts.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vga-chart … -iii,730-4.html

I have that exact PC. 😀 Mine came with a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card, but otherwise, it's got the same P3-933, 512MB. I can tell you that my 9800 Pro does not work in this system. I'm not sure if the universal AGP slot doesn't pull enough power, but I do know this card works in other systems. Just a heads up for you.

I have a bunch of benchmark results on this system with different video cards (including a Rage 128 Pro). I'd post them, but the spreadsheet format is not conducive to screenshotting. I can PM the spreadsheet to you if you like.

Out of the cards I tested, the GF3 Ti200 is fastest, followed closely by the FX5200 128-bit. But I haven't tested a Ti4xxx, which I'm sure would be the fastest.

clueless1 wrote:

I'm not sure if the universal AGP slot doesn't pull enough power, but I do know this card works in other systems. Just a heads up for you.

I believe the 9800 Pro is an 0.8v AGP 3.0 card, which has the same connector as a 1.5v agp card and would mechanically fit in a 1.5v keyed or universal AGP slot but is not electrically compatible.

Original Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb is an 3.3v/1.5v AGP 8x card.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Original Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb is an 3.3v/1.5v AGP 8x card.

This is the card I have.

I guess there is just something weird with the design of the R(V)350 core 9000-series radeons where they just don't like some older boards, I have a 9600PRO in my possesion but I don't currently have any proper AGP systems, so I tried it in my cheap 845GV box with an "AGP Express" slot and it wouldn't work, AGP express is really just an AGP slot connected to an AGP to PCI bridge of some sort. The motherboard manual says it will work with older 9000 series radeons based on the R300 core like the 9500 and 9700 but not newer cards like the 9600 and 9800. However FX series geforce cards seem to work fine in it.

Safe bet is a GF3 Ti or a GF 4 Ti as anything faster is going to bottleneck much like my dual p3 rdram systems do with my 9800 xt and 7900 gs agp. If you decide to go with newer cards please don't use the uber low end cards like the fx 5200 that had countless millions of budget gamers regretting life.

nforce4max wrote:

If you decide to go with newer cards please don't use the uber low end cards like the fx 5200 that had countless millions of budget gamers regretting life.

P3 will probably be the biggest bottleneck , wouldn't an FX5200/FX5500 be more than enough for a Pentium III.

FX5200/5500 are ok for dx7/8 era games but they are weak sauce and rather use a fancier and faster 4400 or 4600 Ti.

nforce4max wrote:

FX5200/5500 are ok for dx7/8 era games but they are weak sauce and rather use a fancier and faster 4400 or 4600 Ti.

While I don't disagree with that, a 128bit fx5200 or fx5500 would be pretty well on par with a Geforce 3 which is probably about the fastest GPU I would put in a Pentium III system. I would think that a fast Geforce4 card would be bottle necked by the Pentium III and would find better use in a P4 or AXP machine.

i486_inside wrote:

nforce4max wrote:

FX5200/5500 are ok for dx7/8 era games but they are weak sauce and rather use a fancier and faster 4400 or 4600 Ti.

While I don't disagree with that, a 128bit fx5200 or fx5500 would be pretty well on par with a Geforce 3 which is probably about the fastest GPU I would put in a Pentium III system. I would think that a fast Geforce4 card would be bottle necked by the Pentium III and would find better use in a P4 or AXP machine.

Agreed. The 128-bit FX5200 works well on this system. I've used it quite a bit and it's on par with the GF3 Ti200, and cheaper and easier to find. It should handle any game that you'd play on a P3-933 system.

Ah, so my thinking was correct. I'm not really in this for necessarily a 'period correct' retro computer, though it does lend itself to not pushing any of its stats higher than it can handle.

I'll be on the lookout for a GF3/4 higher-end Ti card then.

Would anyone want this (physically) broken Voodoo 5 5500, then? I know it's physically broken because I can see it; can take pictures if you'd want it as a project. I don't know enough about the electronics to fix the one thing I can see is not working.

How broken is it? I am one of those people who even take systems that have been left out in the rain.

Radeon 8500 is time appropriate for the system and both faster than the Ti4200 and looks better (better AF and mipmapping). Get that.

I purchased a new P3-733 when I purchased my Voodoo 5500 back in the day. Well I had P3-450 but the 5500 would not fit in that old case so figured if I needed a new case might as well buy a new system also.

Anyway when the P3-1000 was popular you would have an ATI 8500 or equivalent Geforce. The 5500 was not around for all that long and died a quick market death. IF you like being different a Kyro 2 would be an alternative.

nforce4max wrote:

How broken is it? I am one of those people who even take systems that have been left out in the rain.

Well, it looks about 90% alright, besides some dust. Again, the system booted, and beeped a bunch (didn't look up beep codes) but went on to boot with no display.

Here is the physically broken area that I can see:

Didn't realize this thing was 'broken' so much as just bent a bit? Upon closer inspection after removal, I saw this was actually not bent, but more cracked and tilted? Not sure if repairable, but if you (collective you) want it, just cover shipping. I'll have to find an anti-static bag large enough for it; have plenty of packing material floating about 😀

Jorpho wrote:

JTD121 wrote:

Not sure what was equivalent on the ATi side at the time; maybe 9700/9800 Pro/XT?

I really like the old versions of Tom's VGA Charts.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vga-chart … -iii,730-4.html

At least we agree on this. 😊