VOGONS


First post, by stinkydiver

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Hello fellow Vogons

I wanted to share a rather fortuitous purchase of video cards I made on the weekend. All for 1$. There were 9 in total orgianllaly, one being a Geforce 4 MX which I decided to biff because of swollen caps (I kept the heat-sink however). The rest appear to be in good condition but I have yet to test them.

They are as follows:
Prolink TNT2 32MB
Star-Force 815 Geforce2 GTS
Gainward TNT2 M64 32MB
ASUS A9250 TD 128MB (Radeon 9250)
Unknown - AS2000 (Cool purple PCB)
1290A (TNT 16MB?)
Ati Rage Mobility-P
Ati Rage IIC

Can any one identify the mystery purple card? Any comments on the order of best to worst in terms of value and performance?

See pictures here: https://imgur.com/a/MwAgf

Take that there and put it in here

Reply 1 of 19, by Radical Vision

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I did have before 2 purple cards, now i have only 1, both was Radeon 9200 and the other was GEforce FX5200...
But your looks different, so to me it looks like nVIDIA TnT or something like that... Best way to find out just plug it in some PC and look in windows...

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088

Reply 2 of 19, by stinkydiver

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I've done a bit of reading and those Rage cards seem pretty useless...

I've already got a Geforce2 Ti so I think I'll conduct some over-clocking experiments to see what kind of performance I can get out of the GTS

Will be interesting to see who is the top competitor out of the TNT cards also

Take that there and put it in here

Reply 3 of 19, by Radical Vision

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TNT it will be Ultra followed by TNT Pro of course...

For you maybe the ATi cards are useless, for me on other hand they are priceless, as ATi is still alive in AMD with the Radeon. I collect all of the ATi/Radeon old cards i can get i have like 70% completed collection, just missing few cards like ATi Wonder ISA, ATi Rage Fury MaXX, Radeon 9800XT, Radeon x850XT, Radeon HD4670... Mostly the AGP series, don`t care much for the PCI ones..

https://imgur.com/a/3aZU1

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088

Reply 4 of 19, by stinkydiver

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Lovin' the ghetto fan you have rigged on the ATi Radeon x1650XT. Those PCI cards you have are pretty rare I would think. I don't often see a Mach64 pop up for sale where I am. Could be good in a early 90's machine paired with a voodoo 1.

Interestingly enough I did some benchmarking awhile back with a TNT 16MB vs TNT2 M64 with 3DMark99 and the difference was negligible...

Take that there and put it in here

Reply 5 of 19, by shamino

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stinkydiver wrote:

one being a Geforce 4 MX which I decided to biff because of swollen caps (I kept the heat-sink however).

This would be a good card to use for soldering practice. It's a good skill to have, especially if you're collecting this old hardware, and the best way to practice it is with a card/board that you don't care much about.

Reply 6 of 19, by Radical Vision

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Hah funny the ghetto mod on 1650 is from the previous owner, not me... But i have also Ghetto modded Radeon HD4670 PCI ex that is back up card, as i did sell my Radeon R9 280X when the prices was UP, and then i did use the Palit HD4670 on my Am4 machine, but the stock fan is really annoying, so i did remove it and slap 80mm fan there that is quiet....

Not sure if the ATi Mach 64 is so rare, there is also Ati Machi 32 i think, i want to find really badly the ATi Wonder ISA and ATi Rage Fury Maxx......

Well most nVIDIA cards from one series and different class like Pro, Ultra, TI are about the same. For example the GEforce 2 MX 400 and GEforce 4 MX 440 was like the same cards or at least i did read somewhere that thing not 100% sure...
But is the same if you compare cards like GEforce FX5900 to GEforce 5900XT, to FX 5950 Ultra, or like GEforce 6800 to GEforce 6800 Ultra....

Have also mods on ABIT NF7 V2 the cooling system, the big chipset is using cooler from Slot 1 CPU that i cut, and the VRM cooler is from some cutted heatsink...
Also dedicated fan for my main machine on the chipset, on the VRM, and on the TitaniumHD, as the audio card gets too hot, without doing nothing so this is not acceptable for me, the chipset temps seems a little bit more then i want them so i slap fan there, and for the VRM cooling, well Gigabyte did really poor crap job on the cooling there so i fix it with 2 fans...

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Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088

Reply 7 of 19, by Ozzuneoj

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stinkydiver wrote:
Hello fellow Vogons […]
Show full quote

Hello fellow Vogons

I wanted to share a rather fortuitous purchase of video cards I made on the weekend. All for 1$. There were 9 in total orgianllaly, one being a Geforce 4 MX which I decided to biff because of swollen caps (I kept the heat-sink however). The rest appear to be in good condition but I have yet to test them.

They are as follows:
Prolink TNT2 32MB
Star-Force 815 Geforce2 GTS
Gainward TNT2 M64 32MB
ASUS A9250 TD 128MB (Radeon 9250)
Unknown - AS2000 (Cool purple PCB)
1290A (TNT 16MB?)
Ati Rage Mobility-P
Ati Rage IIC

Can any one identify the mystery purple card? Any comments on the order of best to worst in terms of value and performance?

See pictures here: https://imgur.com/a/MwAgf

The TNT2 and Geforce cards are all good for DOS and Windows 9x gaming. Very compatible and fast enough to never be a bottleneck for unaccelerated graphics. The Geforce 2 GTS is nice... they're fairly uncommon because they aren't usually labeled very well. I'm not sure what the purple one is.

The most curious card of the bunch is that wacky little Rage Mobility AGP card. I've never ever seen a GPU specifically made (and marked) for mobile-use stuck on an AGP card. While its probably pretty much useless, if someone likes to collect ATi cards or is into oddball computer components, that has to be a pretty odd card. I see a LOT of old video cards and I've never seen one of those. Plus, it is made by a third-party, which wasn't very common for ATi at that time since they built and sold all of their own cards for quite a while (like 3dfx did toward the end). After looking it up see these cards ARE out there, but still... its an odd little thing and it definitely doesn't look like its made by ATi, but they didn't start selling chips to third parties until the Radeon 8500 series.

Last edited by Ozzuneoj on 2018-02-12, 20:51. Edited 1 time in total.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 8 of 19, by xjas

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Ozzuneoj wrote:

The most curious card of the bunch is that wacky little Rage Mobility AGP card. I've never ever seen a GPU specifically made (and marked) for mobile-use stuck on an AGP card. While its probably pretty much useless, if someone likes to collect ATi cards or is into oddball computer components, that has to be a pretty odd card. I see a LOT of old video cards and I've never seen one of those. Plus, it is made by a third-party, which wasn't very common for ATi at that time since they built and sold all of their own cards for quite a while (like 3dfx did toward the end).

I've got one of those. It came out of a dual-P3 server with no onboard video (the Rage was used as a server chip for way longer than its shelf life as a consumer GPU.) There's a picture of it here. I wish mine had the VESA feature header though. It would probably be a fine DOS/2D card (Mach64 core AFAIK.)

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Reply 9 of 19, by Radical Vision

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Lol Rage mobility chip on desktop vboard card, who the hell did that..... Maybe the people at ATi was drunk when they did this (if was them).....

Reply 10 of 19, by havli

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The purple card might be GeForce 2 MX 200. The bios chip in dip package is weird, but on these ultra lowend cards anything is possible.

HW museum.cz - my collection of PC hardware

Reply 11 of 19, by stinkydiver

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shamino wrote:
stinkydiver wrote:

one being a Geforce 4 MX which I decided to biff because of swollen caps (I kept the heat-sink however).

This would be a good card to use for soldering practice. It's a good skill to have, especially if you're collecting this old hardware, and the best way to practice it is with a card/board that you don't care much about.

Darn, I wish I thought about that at the time. My soldering skills are next to none so ill make sure to do this in future...

Take that there and put it in here

Reply 12 of 19, by RogueTrip2012

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The Purple card looks to be a sis 305 video card from this page: https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php … driverid=121518

Your Geforce 4 MX card you biffed was probably the best card of the lot from what I see. Maybe the Radeon 9250.

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Reply 13 of 19, by Tetrium

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RogueTrip2012 wrote:

The Purple card looks to be a sis 305 video card from this page: https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php … driverid=121518

Your Geforce 4 MX card you biffed was probably the best card of the lot from what I see. Maybe the Radeon 9250.

I'm not seeing any AGP card on that page?
I tried to find that purple graphics card, but was unable to. That purple PCB does remind me of AOpen, they used to love making purple PCBed graphics cards during that era. Another company that liked using purple PCB was ECS.

If you want to know what GPU it is, best way would be to temporarily remove the heatsink and use the opportunity to maybe put some new TIM on there 😜

And I'd agree, the GF4MX was a good card to keep.

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
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Reply 14 of 19, by stinkydiver

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Turns out the purple card is a Geforce2 MX400!

Running some 3DMark99 bench marks and it comes out at the bottom, even after the 16MB TNT...

All the card fans were noisy as heck when I tested them. Thankfully after applying a little high grade machine oil to the bearings they sound smooth and quiet now 😀

Take that there and put it in here

Reply 15 of 19, by Scubs

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stinkydiver wrote:

I've done a bit of reading and those Rage cards seem pretty useless...

How so? Thier a nice card for early 9x systems for playing games like mechwarrior 2 and resident evil 2 in 3d.

stinkydiver wrote:

All the card fans were noisy as heck when I tested them. Thankfully after applying a little high grade machine oil to the bearings they sound smooth and quiet now 😀

Oil will only work temporarily, you need to repack the bearings or replace them if they have flat spots.

Reply 16 of 19, by stinkydiver

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Scubs wrote:
stinkydiver wrote:

I've done a bit of reading and those Rage cards seem pretty useless...

How so? Thier a nice card for early 9x systems for playing games like mechwarrior 2 and resident evil 2 in 3d.

Check out the 3DMark score for the Rage IIC...
EyITLuw.png

Unfortunately I couldn't get the Mobility Rage to play nice with the OS. The drivers installed OK but upon booting into Windows 98 the desktop would load and then immediately I would get a black screen with pixels and the mouse cursor..

OQztazd.jpg

stinkydiver wrote:

All the card fans were noisy as heck when I tested them. Thankfully after applying a little high grade machine oil to the bearings they sound smooth and quiet now 😀

Scubs wrote:

Oil will only work temporarily, you need to repack the bearings or replace them if they have flat spots.

Not planning on using them full time for anything yet so no biggie.

Take that there and put it in here

Reply 17 of 19, by dionb

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stinkydiver wrote:
Check out the 3DMark score for the Rage IIC... https://i.imgur.com/EyITLuw.png […]
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Scubs wrote:
stinkydiver wrote:

I've done a bit of reading and those Rage cards seem pretty useless...

How so? Thier a nice card for early 9x systems for playing games like mechwarrior 2 and resident evil 2 in 3d.

Check out the 3DMark score for the Rage IIC...
EyITLuw.png

Uhuh. Compare a Voodoo 2 to a Radeon DDR and it would also suck...

The RageII is two full generations older than what you're comparing it to there, so no wonder it scores badly. It's a chip from 1996, so a fair comparison would be against the Voodoo 1 and the S3 Virge. The only reason it was stuck on an AGP card was to give ATi a low-end option and shift some unsold inventory - just like S3 did with the Virge on AGP, incidentally.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the Mobility Rage to play nice with the OS. The drivers installed OK but upon booting into Windows […]
Show full quote

Unfortunately I couldn't get the Mobility Rage to play nice with the OS. The drivers installed OK but upon booting into Windows 98 the desktop would load and then immediately I would get a black screen with pixels and the mouse cursor..

OQztazd.jpg

Possibly a driver issue, but might also be dud video memory. Did you try really low res (640x480@16 colours)? I'd recommend booting with a Linux LiveUSB/CD to rule out drivers.

Reply 18 of 19, by stinkydiver

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dionb wrote:

The RageII is two full generations older than what you're comparing it to there, so no wonder it scores badly. It's a chip from 1996, so a fair comparison would be against the Voodoo 1 and the S3 Virge. The only reason it was stuck on an AGP card was to give ATi a low-end option and shift some unsold inventory - just like S3 did with the Virge on AGP, incidentally.

Well thank makes more sense. I'd far prefer it on a PCI bus, as like you said it would pair well with a voodoo 1 for a mid 90's rig. The fact that it says 1998 on the card threw me off.

Take that there and put it in here

Reply 19 of 19, by Scubs

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stinkydiver wrote:
dionb wrote:

The RageII is two full generations older than what you're comparing it to there, so no wonder it scores badly. It's a chip from 1996, so a fair comparison would be against the Voodoo 1 and the S3 Virge. The only reason it was stuck on an AGP card was to give ATi a low-end option and shift some unsold inventory - just like S3 did with the Virge on AGP, incidentally.

Well thank makes more sense. I'd far prefer it on a PCI bus, as like you said it would pair well with a voodoo 1 for a mid 90's rig. The fact that it says 1998 on the card threw me off.

Thoses were common cards for low end oem systems. Its better to compare to a virge, voodoo1 or mystique