I think the 7600 SFF has 2x PCI and 1x AGP. As you noted, the issue is finding a card that fits within the low profile. And if you found one, you'd almost certainly have to remove the bracket.

Check here http://www.hw-museum.cz/vga/vga-list?category=Voodoo

Voodoo3 is probably your best (only?) bet. A Voodoo2 would be out of the question, those are far too large and you'd be bottlenecked by the GPU anyway, which starts around a p2 400 mhz (check out phil's voodoo2 scaling project).

There are a few V3 that at a --glance-- may fit in a SFF machine, sans the bracket, for example the Voodoo3 2000 AGP Rev C4... the challenge would be actually finding one. But i can't guarantee this would work.

Honestly, I would forgo the SFF and use something else for a 3dfx retro rig. Just seems far too limiting for hardware selection, unless you got a SFF with a riser board that would accept full size cards.

isn't the V3 much bigger than the V2?

I think some PCI Banshees like the Diamond Monster Fusion PCI or Gainward 4000 (both with modified slot bracket) are your best bet for an SFF case without AGP. I can't say wether they fit for sure though.

What kind of riser could be used in a case like that?
Think I got a HP PCI riser from a old lowprofile p4 motherboard.
If needed I could try to dig in my stuff for it.

filurkatten wrote on 2022-12-03, 14:34:

What kind of riser could be used in a case like that?
Think I got a HP PCI riser from a old lowprofile p4 motherboard.
If needed I could try to dig in my stuff for it.

in the dc7600 sff, expansion slots are vertical and directly on the mobo, thus necessitating low profile brackets/cards. im thinking a pci riser board needs its slots on the right (when looking at the rear) but would also need to modify the case, assuming you can get it to fit/seat nicely to begin with.

Thanks for the replies. How should I add riser board if I found any? I cannot quite imagine right now the outlook of the case with it.

Edit: I think I found riser for the dc7600 sff. Is that it?
(https://www.ebay.com/itm/143727128610)

That's a pretty late (and inconveniently sized) machine for 3dfx games. You may be better off just using a newer low-profile GPU with good compatibility for older games. Most can even run a Glide wrapper if some of the games you want to play are 3dfx only.

I'm thinking something cheap like an FX 5200/5500, GeForce 4MX with 128bit DDR (a bit hard to find) or a Quadro of that performance level.

cemoooo wrote on 2022-12-03, 15:58:

Thanks for the replies. How should I add riser board if I found any? I cannot quite imagine right now the outlook of the case with it.

Edit: I think I found riser for the dc7600 sff. Is that it?
(https://www.ebay.com/itm/143727128610)

That would probably work if you want to spend that much. But its really hard to tell how the fitment will be and you'll probably want something with 2 pci slots. Theres also stuff like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/134313167552 , other HP riser boards like for the d530 sff, and seems like there are similar offerings from jet way, dell, enlight etc. I have no idea if there would be issues using third party or other OEM adapters, but I would assume its just like any other bus and should just work. Just make sure you get the right orientation.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2022-12-03, 16:17:

That's a pretty late (and inconveniently sized) machine for 3dfx games. You may be better off just using a newer low-profile GPU with good compatibility for older games. Most can even run a Glide wrapper if some of the games you want to play are 3dfx only.

I'm thinking something cheap like an FX 5200/5500, GeForce 4MX with 128bit DDR (a bit hard to find) or a Quadro of that performance level.

Yes I agree, not ideal for 3dfx cards. You can almost certainly get a superior gpu which will far surpass voodoo levels and also be small enough to fit in a SFF if you take off the bracket. Pretty sure the dc7600 has an AGP slot too so that opens up options for 'later' cards.

I think motherboard doesn't have any AGP slots. At least it is what the manual says. What will be the best GPU for me then? It needs to be low-profile, PCI and have a good backward compatibility with old games.

cemoooo wrote on 2022-12-03, 16:40:

I think motherboard doesn't have any AGP slots. At least it is what the manual says. What will be the best GPU for me then? It needs to be low-profile, PCI and have a good backward compatibility with old games.

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong machine but when I google HP DC7600 SFF motherboard I see a board with PCI-Express and PCI slots? There may be a few PCI-E GPU options but it's hard to say for sure without doing some digging. In general, the oldest things you're going to find in that range that are SFF compatible are Geforce 6200 cards. There may be some FX-based Quadros on PCI-E, though I'm not positive on that...

Looks like any of the PCI-E options that are Geforce FX-based AND low profile are basically unobtainium... so don't bother looking for those.

I'm not sure if a Geforce 6200 PCI-E (do NOT get ones that are labeled Turbo Cache!!) would be better or an ATi X300, X550 or X600 (there are many variants of these). None of these are really ideal. If I remember correctly, the Geforce 6000 series is when they started to change and lose a bit of their compatibility with older titles (like Table Fog and 8bit palletized textures... though I don't know how much that would affect your usage).

A PCI FX 5200 or 5500 may be your best bet for a low profile retro gaming card, but even those are getting tough to find cheaply unless you see one that's mislabeled.

You could just find the cheapest decent PCI card you can locate that's 3D capable and start your adventure there while waiting for a better card to show up later. Playing with a PCI Riva 128 or TNT2 M64 would probably be tolerable for the oldest games and you'd really appreciate moving up to something faster when you find it. Or you could just try the integrated Intel GMA950 graphics. They were really bad by 2004-2005 standards, but still definitely faster than a Voodoo card. Would just be a matter of compatibility and drivers...

I guess we never discussed the operating system you're planning to use though... since this is a later machine, it may be a real struggle to get it running with Windows 9x.

Actually I was thinking about using Windows 98 for the games. Why this would be a problem? I saw some YouTube videos and they are using P4 + 3dfx cards for retro gaming.

I should try the Intel GMA then if the compatibility won't be an issue. I really focus on the games that published pre-2001.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2022-12-04, 03:06:

Looks like any of the PCI-E options that are Geforce FX-based AND low profile are basically unobtainium... so don't bother looki […]
Show full quote

Looks like any of the PCI-E options that are Geforce FX-based AND low profile are basically unobtainium... so don't bother looking for those.

I'm not sure if a Geforce 6200 PCI-E (do NOT get ones that are labeled Turbo Cache!!) would be better or an ATi X300, X550 or X600 (there are many variants of these). None of these are really ideal. If I remember correctly, the Geforce 6000 series is when they started to change and lose a bit of their compatibility with older titles (like Table Fog and 8bit palletized textures... though I don't know how much that would affect your usage).

A PCI FX 5200 or 5500 may be your best bet for a low profile retro gaming card, but even those are getting tough to find cheaply unless you see one that's mislabeled.

You could just find the cheapest decent PCI card you can locate that's 3D capable and start your adventure there while waiting for a better card to show up later. Playing with a PCI Riva 128 or TNT2 M64 would probably be tolerable for the oldest games and you'd really appreciate moving up to something faster when you find it. Or you could just try the integrated Intel GMA950 graphics. They were really bad by 2004-2005 standards, but still definitely faster than a Voodoo card. Would just be a matter of compatibility and drivers...

I guess we never discussed the operating system you're planning to use though... since this is a later machine, it may be a real struggle to get it running with Windows 9x.

sorry, you're both right, PCI and PCI-E

the low profile requirement is something that really puts a damper on things

as for the 'voodoo' - only really necessary if you want to play glide games and are generally better suited to slower machines

cemoooo wrote on 2022-12-04, 19:06:

Actually I was thinking about using Windows 98 for the games. Why this would be a problem? I saw some YouTube videos and they are using P4 + 3dfx cards for retro gaming.

I should try the Intel GMA then if the compatibility won't be an issue. I really focus on the games that published pre-2001.

P4 machines spanned a relatively large period of time actually, so they can range from very early 2001 to mid 2006 pretty easily. This means there are a lot of different configurations of motherboards and other components in P4 machines. It's possible that the DC7600 works just fine with Windows 98SE, but given that it was made after Microsoft stopped supporting 9x there's a possibility that you could run into driver issues with the chipset, integrated audio, drive controllers, as well as resource (IRQ, DMI and I\O) conflict issues.

Again, it might work fine. I haven't attempted to set up too many PCI-E based Windows 98 machines, but I experienced basically all of the above with the couple of newer systems I installed 98SE on.

I would just throw a drive in the system, install Windows 98SE and see if you can install the minimum drivers needed to get proper storage speed (without it dropping the drive controller into some horrible compatibility mode), sound and accelerated graphics. If you can get all of those working acceptably, try some games and see if it's sufficient to run what you want to run. If there are graphical issues, then some low-profile GPU may be an improvement, though as discussed before the selection for Win9x gaming cards will be fairly limited without an AGP slot.

Keep in mind, you want to keep your hard drive under 160GB and run the machine with no more than 512MB of RAM to avoid issues with the OS. I think there are workarounds for both of those, but it's easier to just not cross those limits if you have the parts on hand to do so. Nothing you run on the machine will benefit from a massive hard drive or greater than 512MB of RAM (or even 256MB for that matter).

PCI riser for dc7600 SFF is spare part 371921-001. That on eBay is for a USDT.
https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/getpdf.aspx/c04 … 63768.pdf?ver=3