you have to be very arefull about the voltage a new agp card will accept - not many like 3.0volts
maybe you should go for a pci card
nvidia 5200
radeon 7000
radeon 9000
radeon 9250
matrox g450

Well... I already GOT a PCI FX5200.
But those are not that great when it comes to VESA compatibility...
(60hz limited in particular games etc - check the threads on this site)

So I was thinking more like Geforce2 or something.
Not sure if Geforce3 is VESA 'ok' (?).

Much easier finding an AGP versions of those, hence my question.

Radeon/Matrox not of much interest, for many reasons.
(well, maybe some super Matrox, but still...)

Or maybe a Voodoo 5500 ?

Nothing is better than TNT for AGP1x.
TNT2 will barely work, freezes lots

I have an ASUS P3B-F motherboard (440BX chipset = 3.3V AGP 1.0) with 1.4 GHz Pentium III-S Tualatin CPU (10.5x multiplier) and GeForce4 Ti 4600 4x, with AGP bus overclocked at 89 MHz due to 440BX AGP divisor locked at 2/3 (FSB at 133 MHz for 10.5x133 = 1400), working like a charm, rock-solid stable. Just had to disable Side Band Addressing with Rivatuner 2.0 Final Release. GeForce4 Ti 4600 is the most powerful AGP 4x card ever made, VBE 3.0 compliant (DOS refresh rates higher than 60 Hz using UniRefresh or VBEHz) and support for 8-bit palette textures with drivers up to ForceWare 77.77 (no more problems in Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, etc). This system can play smoothly even some 2006-2007 games (Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Psychonauts, Tomb Raider Legend, Tomb Raider Anniversary, Obscure 2, Runaway 2 and more).

GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 😀

I use one of these in a Abit BF6 (440BX). It's the fastest you can get for that old AGP 2x slot. Cost me $40 on ebay.

I also have used a FX 5600, Radeon 9700 Pro, Radeon 9500, 8500, 7500, original Radeon. The problem with the ATI cards is that they do not like overclocked AGP slots. So, if you are trying to run your 440BX at 133 MHz it is almost a certainty in my experience that Radeons won't work.

swaaye:
no overclocking past 100mhz for me, don't think it's possible on a BH6(?)
At least I've never seen any option for 133, even with the latest bios...?
(your card/model is 1 year later/newer than mine)

Anyway, a 5950 might be interesting. Though I wonder about that VESA support... ?
$40 sure was expencive though*.
Just paid $54 for a used Gainward GF6800 GT (not on ebay, local hardware site). 😁
(but that would of course not work in this machine, so...)

*:But maybe there's something I'm completely missing here, as I'm scratching my head over this auction:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ASUS-V9980-Ultra-AGP-Vide … 1QQcmdZViewItem

Havent landed on what CPU to put in, Powerleap/Tualatin1400 would be cool - but costly(!)
So I might settle for a PIII 850/100 or 1000/100 on a regular slotket
(if they'll work that is).

batracio:
- what OS's do you have on that machine ? How are they set up, bootwise?

- disable Side Band Addressing with Rivatuner, was that in Win98 or in pure DOS ?

- for refresh rates in Win98 (starting dosgames inside Win98, 'DOS7'), is UniRefresh or VBEHz still doable(how) ?
Haven't heard of any of those 2, only UniVBE. Any _safe_ download links ? (lazy me, google etc... heh)

- so, there's no problem with the volt issue, then ?
I've got a Ti4800 that works in a newer setup(4x), as well as a Ti 4400 (but no 4600).
Not sure I'm willing to risk them though... see below.

Seems like there's some useful info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agp#Compatibility

This particular sentence there may indicate that the notches alone are not a good indicator of compatability:
"It is important to check voltage compatibility as some cards incorrectly have dual notches" !! 😒
And of course: "Inserting a card into a slot that does not support the correct signaling voltage may cause damage."

bestemor wrote:

- what OS's do you have on that machine ? How are they set up, bootwise?

I had Windows 98 SE on it some years ago. Now it's running Windows 2000 Pro SP4. No special boot setup that I can think of.

bestemor wrote:

- disable Side Band Addressing with Rivatuner, was that in Win98 or in pure DOS ?

Rivatuner is a Windows application, it works both in Win9x and Win2K/XP. It disables SBA thanks to NVStrap, a kernel-level driver that loads during OS boot up and overrides GeForce's BIOS settings. It's only needed to improve stability in 3D games, not useful (and unavailable) for pure DOS. You'd have to edit your VGA BIOS and flash it to completely disable SBA at pure DOS.

bestemor wrote:

- for refresh rates in Win98 (starting dosgames inside Win98, 'DOS7'), is UniRefresh or VBEHz still doable(how) ? Haven't heard of any of those 2, only UniVBE. Any _safe_ download links ? (lazy me, google etc... heh)

Both UniRefresh and VBEHz are DOS TSR utilities that you can load from AUTOEXEC.BAT, DOSSTART.BAT, or whatever procedure you prefer. Work fine under DOS 7.x and Windows 98 command prompt. Download links:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/UniRefresh_d404.html
http://home.arcor.de/g.s/vbehz.htm

bestemor wrote:

- so, there's no problem with the volt issue, then ?
I've got a Ti4800 that works in a newer setup(4x), as well as a Ti 4400 (but no 4600).
Not sure I'm willing to risk them though... see below.

There's absolutely no problem with voltage if you use AGP 4x cards (1.5V), which also support AGP 1x/2x signaling voltage (3.3V). The issue could arise if you use an AGP 8x card, which may or may not support 3.3V; So your Ti 4400 (AGP 4x) will definitely work (mine does, it's actually a 4600 but I have it underclocked at 4400 settings). Not sure about the Ti 4800, it's AGP 8x.

bestemor wrote:

Seems like there's some useful info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agp#Compatibility […]
Show full quote

Seems like there's some useful info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agp#Compatibility

This particular sentence there may indicate that the notches alone are not a good indicator of compatability:
"It is important to check voltage compatibility as some cards incorrectly have dual notches" !! 😒
And of course: "Inserting a card into a slot that does not support the correct signaling voltage may cause damage."

That's right, the notches indication is not safe enough, I have a Matrox G400 MAX with dual notches, but it's actually an AGP 2x card, so I could insert it into an AGP 8x Pentium 4 motherboard and fry the whole system.

I knew that GeForce FX cards have dual notches (last nVIDIA series with universal AGP port), but they are labelled as AGP 4x/8x cards, and I've neved had any of these, so I didn't mention them because I can't guarantee that they would work in old motherboards. However, swaaye has that FX 5950 Ultra in an Abit BF6 (a very similar model to your BH6), so why not?

PS: If you can't manage how to set your FSB at 133 MHz, there's something else you can try, to do it with SoftFSB, a program that allows you to change the FSB speed in real time. Only a limited set of motherboards are supported, but fortunately Abit BH6 is one of them. I use it in an Asus P2B with a 1000 MHz Pentium III Coppermine (7.5x133) that I usually have underclocked at 750 Mhz (7.5x100), because the Radeon 9000 Pro on it is unstable with some desktop applications, but not with 3D games (?). Before launching a CPU-hungry game, I just set the FSB speed to 133 MHz, and restore it to 100 MHz after returning to desktop. Safe and easy. You can download it from here:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=434

Hope this helps.

I believe BH6 has 103, 112, and 124 FSB settings at least. I used to own one. It was Abit's first great overclocking board.

FX 5950 Ultra might go for more money simply because it's the absolute top of the FX food chain. I'm not sure what it's going for these days.

I haven't actually tried out its VESA compatibility at all. I got it just as a neat card to use to max out the 3D gaming capabilities. You want to use the 56.xx drivers on it, btw. Newer ones don't work well with 440BX in my testing and are unstable. It works are well in 98SE as XP.