First post, by Jackal1983
Anyone have any experience with this thing in Windows 98se? I've been looking for inexpensive PCI graphics cards to try in a MediaGX build I'm working on and this looks like it might be an interesting stand in for a PCI based NV17 card (all the ones I've found so far are pricy as all hell: NVS 100s at 50 bucks!) presuming it's compatible with at least 44.23 or 45.23 (ideally Detonator 29.x though). Compatibility seems to be good in dos per the big PCI GPU benchmark thread. Multimonitor support means I could hook up a VGA cable to my Voodoo 1 and a DVI cable to my monitor and just switch inputs on my Samsung. 32 Megs of memory means there will be much less texture swapping over the PCI bus which can only be a good thing in such a scenario.
And yes I'm aware it's an odd choice and that PLX bridge could add some hiccups (ideally I'd just disable one of the GPUs in the bios if that's even possible), I just wanna know if it has similar driver support to the rest of the NV17 family.
The cards I have so far earmarked for this project are:
STB Velocity 128 4 mb (aka nVidia Riva 128 4): Waiting for a new heatsink to replace the crappy glued on MOSFET heatsink, I'm interested to see just how junky the output is!
ATI 3D Rage Pro AIW 8 gb: Mostly for playing around with ATICIF versions of Tomb Raider and Mechwarrior 2, but I do plan to see how well it does with other period W98 games
nVidia FX 5500 PCI 256 mb: One of those newly made Chinese cards with the full 128 bit bus that use regular desktop DDR (266 in this case). However it has both a DVI connector and a VGA connector and I wonder how much of a difference slow ram will make in such a CPU limited context. Also, a large amount of VRAM like the NVS 400 means less PCI bus swapping of textures
Cards I'm thinking about using:
3DFX Voodoo 3 1000 AGP 16 mb: If I can justify the $90 cost of the AGP to PCI bridgeboard to myself (the combo should just barely clear the top of my case). Considering I got the card for 35 bucks about a year ago it's a tempting prospect, especially if the 2 32 GB SSDs I'm using don't work with the IDE -to-SATA bridgeboard I'm planning to use or if I can't get the busmaster drivers to work
Dell OEM Riva TNT M64 16 mb: I've been keeping an eye on one, might be interesting. Were there any 128 bit versions of the M64? The arrangement of the memory modules (at right angles, one on top and one on the right side of the card) imply a 128 bit bus.
Likely key specs for system:
Cyrix Geode GX1 300mhz
64 mb PC133 CL3 @ PC100 CL2
ECS P5GXM Mobo
Guillemot Maxi Gamer Voodoo 1: Interesting because it had a TI DAC, but I'll have to us it in another project if IDE drivers or the SATA bridgeboard I'm using decides to not play ball
Soundblaster AWE64: Likely to get a SIMCONN and a 32mb SIMM
ISA MPU card: Serdashop redirects to someone who builds the on demand and has an internal wavetable interface. I might go with one if it doesn't cost an arm and a leg
Startech IDE to SATA Bridge: Pluses include it having 2 outputs and not being based on that JMicron chip that has given me problems in other systems (seems to be SIL based). If it doesn't play ball I have a Promise TX2 SATA card I'll use and backburner playing with my Voodoo 1
HDDs include 2 SATA 1 Sandisk 32 GB drives that I formatted in my main system with a chunk unformatted.