Are you sure the 9800s have solid polymer caps? I've been wondering about that myself because they look like polymer caps but I know sometimes these are really electrolytic. Radeon 8500 and 7500 sometimes have capacitors of this design too.
I know my 9800Pro has some polymers on it, 330uf 16V Chemicon A-series, and one 180uf 16v that I'm pretty sure is polymer but haven't been able to definitely identify. On the AIW 9800Pros I've seen, all of the larger caps were polymer, except for one next to the power connector.
But yeah, it can be quite hard to tell... you pretty much just have to look 'em up. This is a good resource... it's not an exhaustive list, but it covers most stuff. (It helps if you can read Japanese, but it's still usable if you can't.)
There are some general rough guidelines I've noticed, just for purposes of initial cursory inspection... there are exceptions to all of these, but: If they're over about 220uf and don't have vents stamped in the top, they're usually polymer. A black stripe is usually electrolytic, whereas colored stripes are more often polymer. And on graphics cards, polymers tend to only be a few specific values: 1500uf@6.3V, 330uf@16v, 560uf@4V, or 820uf@2.5V.
The polymer-lookalikes I've seen most often on graphics cards are Nichicon HC series (good), Panasonic FL or FK (good) or Sacon/GSC FZ (absolute worst caps ever made). The HC and FZ have vent stampings, but the Panasonics don't.
Edit: Ha, nice, the forum software apparently decided some of the capacitor values were email addresses. 🤣
I visited the recycling center again yesterday, and I found a PCI Geforce FX5500 and holy shit, it's way better than that 5200! 😮 I just ran 3Dmark 2001SE on it and I got a score of 6556! 😁 I still want to get that Radeon 9800 PRO AIW going eventually, but this card should do quite well for now! 😁
EDIT: Halo runs acceptably on it as well, though not quite as smooth as I'd like. Still, this is a major improvement.
Well, actually the FX5500 is just a refresh/update of the FX5200, using a die-shrunk version of the NV34 core. 🤣
But it sounds like you got a proper 128-bit, full clock-speed version this time... which as you've already discovered, is a completely different animal than the crappy 64-bit 5200, even despite the fact that it's PCI vs. AGP.
Be aware, though, for future reference: there are also 64-bit versions of the FX5500 out there, which are every bit as bad as you might expect.
Mr BigMouth, here are some handy references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nv … rocessing_units
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AM … rocessing_units
After playing around with the command line parameters and graphical settings for Halo CE, I've found that it's actually quite smooth using shader model 1.4 on high settings at 640x480 (and even a tad bit smoother at 320x240, though the gain isn't worth the dramatic decrease in graphical quality 🤣).
Now I just need to fix the problem with the audio for my shots being really quiet (which started when I tried lowering the sound quality to low, and hasn't changed even after setting it to high), and I also need to find out how to fix the speed on Unreal Tournament (it runs TOO fast, even at the highest resolution due to a timing glitch, which strangely isn't a problem on my main box). 🤣
The plasma weapons were murder to every video card for some reason that made no sense
it's like they used many, MANY layers of texture on those plasma smokes just to screw over the PC on purpose.
