I’m thinking of stuffing a better GPU into my Shuttle SK41G since I’ve actually been playing some games on it. It’s currently running the S3/Via ProSavage8 onboard gfx, which isn’t bad, but I have a ton of AGP cards so I may as well upgrade.

The hardware is an Athlon XP 1700+ (1.4GHz) with 512MB DDR1. It's fairly strictly a Win98 machine, since I have better ones on either side for DOS stuff & WinXP+. I might fire up Rise of the Triad or Descent 2 on it now and then, but I’m not worried about scrolling problems in EGA platformers or the like. On the high end, I could see running something like Q3A/UT2004 on it, but moreso slightly older stuff.

Note that heat (and noise) is a consideration. These little Shuttles aren’t the best ventilated things in the world, and the caps on the mobo aren’t high quality & are known to deteriorate with heat. (They all look pristine right now though.) Power should be fine, I fitted a NOS 250W PSU when I “built” it.

Here are the contenders, from left to right (BTW this board has a universal AGP slot that can support any voltage) :

[Not pictured] 3DFX Voodoo3 2000
Pro: it’s a Voodoo3, runs Glide stuff
Con: it’s in my K6-2 already, although it’s pretty CPU-limited in that machine
Con: would probably bottleneck this system a bit?
Con: No DVI.
Pro: I could put my Rendition V2200 in the K6-2 which is probably a better match

[Left field option] Matrox G550:
Pro: DMS-59 connector, should support DVI & dual-head
Con: this is a pretty late version of this card, not gaming oriented at all. No idea how good the drivers are.
Pro: I actually paid money for this, so at least I’d get to use it in something 😜

Quadro 2 (~GF2 Ultra)
Pro: everything good about a GeForce 2
Con: oldest Nvidia card in the lot, still maybe holding the system back a bit?
Con: pretty early DVI implementation - I see people mentioning problems with DVI on cards this old in other threads.

GeForce 3 Ti200
Pro: well matched to the system, seems like a cool card. I’ve never used a GF3 before so it’d be fun to try.
Con: no DVI. I’m not using it with DVI as it is, but it’d be nice to have.
Con: has some ugly hacked-up cooler arrangement that I’d have to fix.

GF4 Ti4200
Pro: should be powerful enough for anything I’d want to do
Con: heat?
Con: these things don't seem to hold up well, I had another Ti4200 and a 4400 go flakey on me
Con: I was intending this card for my PowerMac G4, if I ever put that thing back into service.

Radeon 7200 DDR
Pro: has video in/out features, which I could actually see using, although I have other machines that can capture composite video
Con: no DVI
Con: slowest Radeon of the bunch
Pro: this was the last of my O.G. cards from my competitive LAN party days, so it’d be cool to use it again

Radeon 9200 128MB:
Pro: it’s passively cooled
Pro: beautiful shade of red, which you won't see once it's in the case
Con: not as powerful as the next card

Radeon 9600 256MB:
Pro: probably the most powerful card of the lot
Don't know: not sure about heat with this one - do these things run hot?
Don’t know: any Win98 compatibility issues with these? How are the drivers?

I'm leaning towards the GF3 or Radeon 92/9600. Honestly the GF3 would be perfect if it had DVI, but I think any of those'd be good choices. What would you guys use?