Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-02-08, 04:17:

I have a modified 16mb Verite v2200 card, that a user of this forum modified for me, we used a faster sgram chips but it didn't help the overclock nor the performance, I remember I posted some information about it some years ago but then I kept it in a electrostatic envelope, it's not easy to find V2200 nor easy, I remember I bought a faster version of an ati card with sgram but I would need another card and the availability of the user to make the modification once again.
Performance wise there was no difference between 8 and 16 mb, while there are for sure from 4 to 8 (I remember I had a 4mb Qdi card with Rendition v2x00).

according to my experience 65mhz for the 003 rev chips is the maximum. probably a certain silicon batch could handle more.

and i found no performance difference in the memory clock, i maybe wrong about that, tho.

anthony wrote on 2024-02-08, 20:05:

LeCarl wrote on 2024-02-08, 04:11:

5. Do you know more about the Anthony Zxclxiv Dormouse rendition board found on vgamuseum? (it look like the ultimate cute Rend […]
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5. Do you know more about the Anthony Zxclxiv Dormouse rendition board found on vgamuseum?
(it look like the ultimate cute Rendition board with 5ns memory! wow ;o )
I would really like a board like this with holes for attach fan/heatsink...
But really this board is PERFECT! simple, it have less useless components and connectors, a beauty!
(I would pay good for a board like this... but RED!!! 😉 )
here: https://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item … on-verite-v2200

ok, i may consider red pcbs batch in the future. of you may try to find proto v2200 boards, one of these was red as i remember.

btw now my card look little different : https://www.zxc64.com/video_cards/0_62922_ren … ck_v2200_based/

Hi Anthony,

OH OK! I get it now! YOU do all the nice retro ultimate board WOW!!!!

I seen your board everywhere , (especially the voodoo), strange that google not found you easily for the Rendition board (maybe bad referencing) I did search an evening for this , no result...

Good lord, the Renditon heritage matte black and gold is VERY sexy, I like it, it's perfect, nice color choice (no red anymore) 😉
(I have a nice tualain 1400, best stpping, cusl2 , 2 micron memory., 2 voodoo 2 12mb. for this... ;D )

Maybe, I would ask

1. How it overclock max with/without an heatsink? if the 5 ns memory chip could make not memory limited ;D

2. SGram vs SDram? (sdram win? )

3. it's writtent/seen that AGP not provide extra performance on Rendition? true? (what about a 44mhz pci? stable?)

Honest your board is too much nice to dirt/experiment watercoling and tweaking (cooling solution need to be glued, no holes)
(if you have a board with cosmetic defect, I would like to torture it... a board that are less nice would be great too... ;D )

I will take time to think what I will do with this (I will not loose time to try to find/modify an old board myself.. )

I like so much Rendition, as GPU history, ultimate board is a great idea, thanks for made it ;D

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-02-08, 04:17:

I have a modified 16mb Verite v2200 card, that a user of this forum modified for me, we used a faster sgram chips but it didn't help the overclock nor the performance, I remember I posted some information about it some years ago but then I kept it in a electrostatic envelope, it's not easy to find V2200 nor easy, I remember I bought a faster version of an ati card with sgram but I would need another card and the availability of the user to make the modification once again.
Performance wise there was no difference between 8 and 16 mb, while there are for sure from 4 to 8 (I remember I had a 4mb Qdi card with Rendition v2x00).

Yes, 4 mb is short, 8 mb better, maybe 16 mb, the driver do not know how use the extra 8 mb ?

anthony wrote on 2024-02-08, 20:08:

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-02-08, 04:17:

I have a modified 16mb Verite v2200 card, that a user of this forum modified for me, we used a faster sgram chips but it didn't help the overclock nor the performance, I remember I posted some information about it some years ago but then I kept it in a electrostatic envelope, it's not easy to find V2200 nor easy, I remember I bought a faster version of an ati card with sgram but I would need another card and the availability of the user to make the modification once again.
Performance wise there was no difference between 8 and 16 mb, while there are for sure from 4 to 8 (I remember I had a 4mb Qdi card with Rendition v2x00).

according to my experience 65mhz for the 003 rev chips is the maximum. probably a certain silicon batch could handle more.

and i found no performance difference in the memory clock, i maybe wrong about that, tho.

yes , ok I seen the answer for some of my question here klate

so, 65 mhz overclock is strange just a little over a 62Mhz, for some original board use it and it's very reliable without heatsink on some cards (usually colder GPU would overclock far more? )
(or it's the driver issue? bios? power strip or edit the INI? somethig wrong, sure... or internally locked/ ''fused'' in consumption)
maybe another crystal?

I remember had an asus TNT1 with an heatsink/fan that killed all other competitor in bench (seen in tomahardware)... by a good 15-20% versus passive as my memory... (?)

I remember seen that Rendition had problems with GPU quality

I mean , it can't explain 2% overclock from 62MHZ andgive the same result with a naked GPU versus good fan/heatsink... 😉

------ I need to push it to 90-100mhz to compare to voodoo 2 and Nvidia riva 128... 😉

LeCarl wrote on 2024-02-09, 04:26:

I need to push it to 90-100mhz to compare to voodoo 2 and Nvidia riva 128... 😉

How about downclocking those two to Vérité levels?

LeCarl wrote on 2024-02-09, 04:10:

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-02-08, 04:17:

I have a modified 16mb Verite v2200 card, that a user of this forum modified for me, we used a faster sgram chips but it didn't help the overclock nor the performance, I remember I posted some information about it some years ago but then I kept it in a electrostatic envelope, it's not easy to find V2200 nor easy, I remember I bought a faster version of an ati card with sgram but I would need another card and the availability of the user to make the modification once again.
Performance wise there was no difference between 8 and 16 mb, while there are for sure from 4 to 8 (I remember I had a 4mb Qdi card with Rendition v2x00).

Yes, 4 mb is short, 8 mb better, maybe 16 mb, the driver do not know how use the extra 8 mb ?

I have no idea, for sure the 16mb were detected or probably the card won't take performance benefit of the 16mb?
I'm curious to see the performance difference between sdram and sgram, usually the latter one was faster.

LeCarl wrote on 2024-02-09, 04:26:

yes , ok I seen the answer for some of my question here klate […]
Show full quote

yes , ok I seen the answer for some of my question here klate

so, 65 mhz overclock is strange just a little over a 62Mhz, for some original board use it and it's very reliable without heatsink on some cards (usually colder GPU would overclock far more? )
(or it's the driver issue? bios? power strip or edit the INI? somethig wrong, sure... or internally locked/ ''fused'' in consumption)
maybe another crystal?

I remember had an asus TNT1 with an heatsink/fan that killed all other competitor in bench (seen in tomahardware)... by a good 15-20% versus passive as my memory... (?)

I remember seen that Rendition had problems with GPU quality

I mean , it can't explain 2% overclock from 62MHZ andgive the same result with a naked GPU versus good fan/heatsink... 😉

------ I need to push it to 90-100mhz to compare to voodoo 2 and Nvidia riva 128... 😉

rendition did chips binning and 003 chips are close to its silicon limit. this chip is weak and cold. it doesn't benefit from higher bus speed, higher memory clock. more memory adds not much. i tested it only in vquake tho. but at 512x384 in vquake it provides smooth gameplay close to 60fps @62mhz.

no need in heatsink at all.

Putas wrote on 2024-02-09, 04:45:

LeCarl wrote on 2024-02-09, 04:26:

I need to push it to 90-100mhz to compare to voodoo 2 and Nvidia riva 128... 😉

How about downclocking those two to Vérité levels?

hahhaha yes but I won't do this, well, the idea is not to make the riva 128/voodoo2 bad, it's to make the Rendition to same level (well as Anthony's comment, it seem's impossible to achieve more than 65 mhz...

anthony wrote on 2024-02-09, 18:44:

LeCarl wrote on 2024-02-09, 04:26:

yes , ok I seen the answer for some of my question here klate […]
Show full quote

yes , ok I seen the answer for some of my question here klate

so, 65 mhz overclock is strange just a little over a 62Mhz, for some original board use it and it's very reliable without heatsink on some cards (usually colder GPU would overclock far more? )
(or it's the driver issue? bios? power strip or edit the INI? somethig wrong, sure... or internally locked/ ''fused'' in consumption)
maybe another crystal?

I remember had an asus TNT1 with an heatsink/fan that killed all other competitor in bench (seen in tomahardware)... by a good 15-20% versus passive as my memory... (?)

I remember seen that Rendition had problems with GPU quality

I mean , it can't explain 2% overclock from 62MHZ andgive the same result with a naked GPU versus good fan/heatsink... 😉

------ I need to push it to 90-100mhz to compare to voodoo 2 and Nvidia riva 128... 😉

rendition did chips binning and 003 chips are close to its silicon limit. this chip is weak and cold. it doesn't benefit from higher bus speed, higher memory clock. more memory adds not much. i tested it only in vquake tho. but at 512x384 in vquake it provides smooth gameplay close to 60fps @62mhz.

no need in heatsink at all.

ok thanks for the info,

so it was the same for me then

I think I remember my s220 V2100 at 60/120 was warm , too hot for finger but not burn hot
I did put an nice 15mm tall 486 pentium 1 over it (an d never had any problems)

I feel this strange behavior, it's not as we know overclock usually,
for me it's almost impossible that the chip can't do more than 65 mhz, it's why I want a fast memory board to dirt, I will put anchor for peletier and big heatsink/fan or watercooling.
(I have some very nice premium dual stage peletier TEC from astronomy camera, I did build years ago and still have some, if the chip consume less than 5W, I will push it to -30 degres Celsius easy...)

Maybe it have something with latency or internal/external wait state for memory, something hang on the chip? voltage?

I did check the lithography, it's .350nm... but I guess it's bad early process, Riva 128 is .350 too and clocked at 100 mhz (I guess better late process, the gpu is one year later...)

Rendition sales spec sheet
''The Rendition Verite V2200 is fabricated in a 0.35 micron 3-metal CMOS process.''

Riva 128 wiki
''The graphics accelerator consists of 3.5 million transistors built on SGS-Thomson's 5LM 350 nm fabrication process and is clocked at 100 MHz''

I read that rendition had a lot of quality problems... but... let's see 😉

I think it worth the experiment 😉

LeCarl wrote on 2024-02-10, 03:05:

Putas wrote on 2024-02-09, 04:45:

LeCarl wrote on 2024-02-09, 04:26:

I need to push it to 90-100mhz to compare to voodoo 2 and Nvidia riva 128... 😉

How about downclocking those two to Vérité levels?

hahhaha yes but I won't do this, well, the idea is not to make the riva 128/voodoo2 bad, it's to make the Rendition to same level (well as Anthony's comment, it seem's impossible to achieve more than 65 mhz...

I recognize the value of comparing cards at the same clock. But what would be the point of pushing the card to the "same level"?

LeCarl wrote on 2024-02-10, 03:57:

Riva 128 is .350 too and clocked at 100 mhz (I guess better late process, the gpu is one year later...)

It is not later though.

Thanks for information

About fifteen years ago I was overclocking Diamond multimedia S220 4mb. I managed to achieve a maximum stable frequency of 78 MHz using a simple volt mod. The card worked at this frequency both with and without a radiator. To be on the safe side, I installed a small radiator. The maximum achievable frequency turned out to be 80 MHz, but after a couple of minutes artifacts appeared in the image in the form of multi-colored pixels. Attempts to cool the card with a fan had no effect. When increasing to 81 MHz the card froze. I don't remember what memory was used on that card, the GPU/RAM ratio was ½.

LeCarl wrote on 2024-02-10, 03:57:

ok thanks for the info, […]
Show full quote

anthony wrote on 2024-02-09, 18:44:

LeCarl wrote on 2024-02-09, 04:26:

yes , ok I seen the answer for some of my question here klate […]
Show full quote

yes , ok I seen the answer for some of my question here klate

so, 65 mhz overclock is strange just a little over a 62Mhz, for some original board use it and it's very reliable without heatsink on some cards (usually colder GPU would overclock far more? )
(or it's the driver issue? bios? power strip or edit the INI? somethig wrong, sure... or internally locked/ ''fused'' in consumption)
maybe another crystal?

I remember had an asus TNT1 with an heatsink/fan that killed all other competitor in bench (seen in tomahardware)... by a good 15-20% versus passive as my memory... (?)

I remember seen that Rendition had problems with GPU quality

I mean , it can't explain 2% overclock from 62MHZ andgive the same result with a naked GPU versus good fan/heatsink... 😉

------ I need to push it to 90-100mhz to compare to voodoo 2 and Nvidia riva 128... 😉

rendition did chips binning and 003 chips are close to its silicon limit. this chip is weak and cold. it doesn't benefit from higher bus speed, higher memory clock. more memory adds not much. i tested it only in vquake tho. but at 512x384 in vquake it provides smooth gameplay close to 60fps @62mhz.

no need in heatsink at all.

ok thanks for the info,

so it was the same for me then

I think I remember my s220 V2100 at 60/120 was warm , too hot for finger but not burn hot
I did put an nice 15mm tall 486 pentium 1 over it (an d never had any problems)

I feel this strange behavior, it's not as we know overclock usually,
for me it's almost impossible that the chip can't do more than 65 mhz, it's why I want a fast memory board to dirt, I will put anchor for peletier and big heatsink/fan or watercooling.
(I have some very nice premium dual stage peletier TEC from astronomy camera, I did build years ago and still have some, if the chip consume less than 5W, I will push it to -30 degres Celsius easy...)

Maybe it have something with latency or internal/external wait state for memory, something hang on the chip? voltage?

I did check the lithography, it's .350nm... but I guess it's bad early process, Riva 128 is .350 too and clocked at 100 mhz (I guess better late process, the gpu is one year later...)

Rendition sales spec sheet
''The Rendition Verite V2200 is fabricated in a 0.35 micron 3-metal CMOS process.''

Riva 128 wiki
''The graphics accelerator consists of 3.5 million transistors built on SGS-Thomson's 5LM 350 nm fabrication process and is clocked at 100 MHz''

I read that rendition had a lot of quality problems... but... let's see 😉

I think it worth the experiment 😉

Something to keep in mind is that on these old processes the power density and just outright power consumption was so low that your bottleneck was almost always electrical. It's easy to get tripped up on this since we've been flipped the other way around for the last 20 years now. A voltage mod is going to be your path to higher clocks but you'll definitely need that big cooling solution you're talking about then. Just be aware that those poor transistors can only take so much so think baby steps as you turn up the volts.

it may be a good idea to boost its vcore to lets say 3.6v. never tried this yet.

higher core clock should help a lot.

anthony wrote on 2024-02-11, 16:14:

it may be a good idea to boost its vcore to lets say 3.6v. never tried this yet.

higher core clock should help a lot.

Agreed, 3.6 volts seems reasonable for that node. I know AMD ran their 350 nm K6 at 3.2 and I believe the Riva 128 was rated to 3.6 volts. Granted, different fabs varied a bit in their processes but they were more similar than not.

Hi, I just got some old scrapped V2200 AGP card, it seems to be this version: https://www.vgamuseum.info/images/vlask/rendi … erite2200fb.jpg
so I expect 8MB (2 chips on fron side, 2 on back side).
The card is dead, no signal comming to monitor. Visual inspection didn't revealed any bent pins on memory or scratched traces, etc. BIOS is in OTP ROM 27C512 so coudn't be a a bad flash. So my conclusion is that it has some connection problem under the BGA chip. Did someone else have same problem and succeeded with reflow? This chip was not so cool as 3dfx but I though a bit more rare nowdays so it may worth a try to relive it. I would try if reflow would help and then maybe doing a regular reball...

RayeR wrote on 2024-03-07, 17:20:

BIOS is in OTP ROM 27C512 so coudn't be a a bad flash.

OTP EPROMs don't last forever. I have one dead nVidia TNT2 with failed OTP EPROM.

analog_programmer wrote on 2024-03-07, 18:33:

RayeR wrote on 2024-03-07, 17:20:

BIOS is in OTP ROM 27C512 so coudn't be a a bad flash.

OTP EPROMs don't last forever. I have one dead nVidia TNT2 with failed OTP EPROM.

It is also possible to flip bits in OTP EPROMS by trying to program them again after the initial programming. Any '1' bits in the chip remain susceptible to being flipped to a '0'. When this happens the chip is bricked, since you can never flip them back to a '1'

I know, it happened to me once on an old OAK ISA VGA. There was quite a lot flipped bits (clearly seen on 1st page of dump) but it was ~10 older card than this. Sure, I can dump it in programmer and calc ROM checksum before trying anything else...

analog_programmer wrote on 2024-03-07, 18:33:

OTP EPROMs don't last forever. I have one dead nVidia TNT2 with failed OTP EPROM.

Ups, TNT2 is not so old, I wouldn't expect ROM problems here... But in your case it seems to be combination of ROM and BGA issues. Before you was messing with ROM you get some garbaged screen so it means your BIOS was OK yet but you had some VRAM or connection to VRAM chips issues. VideoBIOS is protected by simple 1-Byte checksum so in most cases of some corruption it wouldn't load at all and you got just blank screen. BTW OTPs are same EPROM chips but in cheaper plastic package. They can be erased by strong X-rays but it's not reccomended to do this at home 😀 So rather replacing by some common flash or EPROM is better. For reading a correct dump it sometimes helps to vary with memory voltage - my programmer is smart enough to do 2 dumps at Vccmin and Vccmax and compare if match. I already dumped all chips that I could pull out of my cards and MBs to have a backup but somewhere there are soldered...
So as you probably fixed your VideoBIOS the only remaining chance is to try reflow...