First post, by NorsteinB
Hi!
I was a bit disappointed with my Geforce FX 5200 PCI (128 MB, 64 bit) that is still the second fastest PCI graphics cards I own, next to a CM3 ATI Radeon 9000 256 MB 128 bit that sadly lacks support for 8bit paletted textures, table fog and DX9, with the former two being legacy features often used in W9x games and the latter necessary for some Glide wrappers, so if the FX 5200 was 128 bit, it would tick all the boxes (together with EMBM that the Radeon also supports) and be as fast or even a bit faster than the Radeon.
Then I saw Bits und Bolts upgrading the memory of a Geforce 4 MX 440 SE from 64 bit to 128 bit. He even had to jump through some extra hoops because the only memory he had on hand had twice the capacity so he had to make them be recognized as only half that. No idea why someone would do that to an AGP stinker when the 128 bit version is readily available for around 15 bucks but still.
And so I checked: my Zotac Nvidia Geforce FX 5200 PCI 128 MB 64 bit uses the exact same PCB as the 256 MB 128 bit version, and all the resistors around the back of the GPU look the same. It auto detects the memory so I would "only" need to populate the vacant RAM solder masks and their surrounding resistor pads.
And what's more, I kinda pulled the jackpot with a very late chip from 2008, this is a die shrunk GPU and a later stepping, practically guaranteed to run 300-325 MHz instead of 250!
That got me thinking: why bother with 5ns memory, then? Shouldn't the card handle 4 or even 3ns memory instead, as long as the memory chips that are already on there got replaced, too? People do it for 3dfx cards all the time. And with this FX 5200 having the potential to become more or less the ultimate Windows 9x PCI graphics card, it would definitely be worth the hassle. I even have a donor card here, the Medion ATI Radeon 9600 TX (a 9500 Pro with TSOP memory and slightly higher base clock) with 3.6 ns memory!
I believe at one point I even had a Radeon 9600 XT 256 MB with TSOP 3.3ns memory but I gave that one to a friend in Italy.
So anyway, where is the error in my thought process?
And if there is none, should I keep searching for a 256 MB TSOP2 RAM donor card first?
