First post, by FaSMaN
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So several weeks ago I was forced to go trough all my old belongings , and downscale what I had, as I am moving to a smaller house, that does not have a garage.
Not wanting to get rid of all of my computer stuff, I decided that I will build 3 computers, for the 3 generations of gaming , I enjoy, this is the second one, the first one sadly I need to still wait for parts.
I started off with the following:
At Case
Gigabyte GA-586S2 (Bios rev2.2)(IDE Controller is a bit Iffy)
Intel 200mhz MMX
128Meg 100mhz SD Ram module
S3 Virge DX (2Meg I think)
Nec PCX-2 (4Meg)
Sound Blaster 16 PNP
Planet NIC , Network Controler
17.5Gig Fujitsu HDD
48x Aopen CD Burner
After messing with this system a bit, I found its performance to be .... ..... ..... Lackluster, while perfectly stable, Quake 2 barely did 16fps, and the little Intel MMX was screaming for mercy...
And I got the Following 3D Mark 99 , score from it:
Now I know what most of you are going to tell me, I am aware that the PCX-2 souldnt really be benchmarked on PC Mark 99, and I agree, but sadly its all that I had on hand.
I knew I could do better:
So after some scratching and digging , I found the needed parts I wanted to upgrade to:
1x AMD K6-2 500MHz
1x 3DFX Voodoo 1
1x Ati Rage Pro
Knowing that my motherboard was not a "Super 7" compatible board, and the highest Core Clock, it could hit was 75Mhz , I did some googling , stumbling across a website, that not only had instructions for my exact board but allso for my exact processor, claiming that the board had both a undocumented 6.0x multiplier, but also a 85Mhz Core clock, so off I went in glee, thinking I could hit 450mhz (75mhz x 6.0 ), sadly it was not the case, after two hours of fiddling the most I could hit was a mere 400Mhz (66mhz x 6.5), the board simply refuses to post if you run it one either of those two undocumented settings, none the less a 200% clock increase is more than welcome in my books!!
And gained the following result in 3DMark 99:
HUGE INCREASE!!!
Sadly this is where problem 2 came into play, the Voodoo 1 while being fully detected by Windows, would refuse to initialize with anything, I bought this card for dirt cheap from Ebay, and for good reason it seems, after removing the pair of glued on heatsinks , I noticed that there was glue/water/seamen residue on the board, cleaning all of it, proved that futale, as it had eaten away, at most of solder, and as a result several pins from the GPU was just flouting around, not connected to anything, luckily I managed to reflow , that side of the board, but regret the card still did the exact same thing.
As luck would have it I had Voodoo 2 8MB , that I wanted to use in the 3rd build, that I could fit, and THIS SYSTEM IS BLAZINGLY fast now, if I select 3D Mark to use the Voodoo 2:
I know that most of you aren't here for the story or the few benchmark screens, so her's the Eyecandy!!
Final Specs:
At Case
Gigabyte GA-586S2 (Bios rev2.2)(IDE Controller is a bit Iffy)
AMD K6-2 500 @400Mhz
128Meg 100mhz SD Ram module
Ati Rage Pro (4Meg I think)
Nec PCX-2 (4Meg)
Voodoo 2 8Meg
Sound Blaster 16 PNP
Planet NIC , Network Controler
17.5Gig Fujitsu HDD
48x AOpen CD Burner
So my question is with both card running, well together surprisingly so infact, what is the recommended ATI Rage PRo, Driver set to run with Windows 98se, I have tried the newest version from there website, but it seems that a lot of the features like OpenGL and DirectX settings are removed from the Display Settings, Page?