Cool. Got a bit of a "gap" with these older NV cards. Recently got a TNT2. But haven't got any of the other pre-GF4 card.

Quadro2 Pro would be kinda similar to the Quadro4 380 XGL? Not the same of course, but similar enough?

squareguy wrote:

On the old Quadros (the ones I use) all you have to do is use the GeForce drivers instead of the ones for say AutoCad. The newer ones are different from what little I understand. You don't even have to force the GeForce drivers on the old ones, they just load. The little bit of becnhmarking I have done suggests there is zero performance hit in games on the old ones using GeForce drivers. I usually use 45.23.

EDIT: actually a Quadro4 380 XGL (NV18GL) will beat a GeForce4 MX 440 (NV18) due to a whopping 0.2 GBps memory bandwidth increase 🤣. Miniscule I know but I'm not buying Quadros for the speed.

If you're going to use GeForce drivers then it defeats the purpose of buying a Quadro card. Just use a Geforce because the performance will be identical.

I am just not finding any games where a GeForce4 Ti 4200 (Quadro4 700 XGL) will outperform a GeForce4 MX440 (Quadro4 380 XGL) with only a PIII 850MHz CPU and 100MHz FSB, to any meaningful degree. Unless I wanted to go above DirectX 7.0a, then I see no reason to go any faster. If I did go beyond DirectX 7.0a with a faster video card I would certainly want a faster CPU and FSB. That is a machine I will build at a later date, perhaps a Windows XP machine with PCI-e graphics, Core2 Duo CPU and DDR3 RAM. I am guessing I can play anything in XP that requires DirectX 8, I mean are there any glaring examples that have issues during the 98 to XP transition? I remember games that had lots of issues when XP first came out but wasn't that all fixed with SP1 or SP2?

sliderider wrote:

If you're going to use GeForce drivers then it defeats the purpose of buying a Quadro card. Just use a Geforce because the performance will be identical.

If we could get a GeForce we would 😀

The idea of using Quadro cards is because

- They are often easier to find
- Usually cheaper (Who the heck wants an ancient workstation card)
- Well built
- Less model numbers / SE/LE/M64/"gimped" versions

Squareguy's point was that while there are a TON of GeForce MX cards available, you don't quite know what you're getting in terms of memory width, clocks, and other "gimped" features.

I tried finding a GeForce 4 4600 AGP 8x, it was very hard. And when you find one, they command a lot of money. So I got two Quadro cards instead for very low price, in perfect condition, working flawlessly.

sliderider wrote:

squareguy wrote:

On the old Quadros (the ones I use) all you have to do is use the GeForce drivers instead of the ones for say AutoCad. The newer ones are different from what little I understand. You don't even have to force the GeForce drivers on the old ones, they just load. The little bit of becnhmarking I have done suggests there is zero performance hit in games on the old ones using GeForce drivers. I usually use 45.23.

EDIT: actually a Quadro4 380 XGL (NV18GL) will beat a GeForce4 MX 440 (NV18) due to a whopping 0.2 GBps memory bandwidth increase 🤣. Miniscule I know but I'm not buying Quadros for the speed.

If you're going to use GeForce drivers then it defeats the purpose of buying a Quadro card. Just use a Geforce because the performance will be identical.

Well not to sound like a broken drum but the reason for me getting Quadros is really simple. The demand is lower, hence the prices are lower and they are usually built to a higher standard and with better parts. At least the old ones were, pretty much all the newer cards are built to a pretty high standard.

Unless Quadros are cheaper or easier to find. Or both. Those are the reasons I got a Quadro4 980 XGL, as I couldn't find a single GeForce4 Ti 4600 in Brazil.

🤣 Triple post armada

Phil,

there are a few Quadro2 models, which one?

philscomputerlab wrote:

🤣 Triple post armada

We are the Quadro squad 🤣

squareguy wrote:

Phil,

there are a few Quadro2 models, which one?

It's this one:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadro2pro.html

http://www.gpureview.com/Quadro2-Pro-card-332.html

Lol we are the Quadro squad! I'm getting cheated though because mine are slower hehe, well except for my Quadro FX 3000's I guess.

That is a good one Phil. NV15, 250-MHz core. The biggest difference will be NO lightspeed memory architecture and that's gonna be a performance hit.

How are you going with this card? Have you been using it for a while with some other games?

Might be doing a project using my Quadro Pro 2, or a GeForce 4 MX-4000 card.

What are the "last" Windows 98 games so to speak? Basically games that are quite demanding and have compatibility issues with XP / newer cards.

Well in my testing and all the benchmarks I have been able to dig up from back then all show that the NV18/NV18GL performs like a GeForce2 'Super' Ultra, a little bit faster than a GeForce2 Ultra (sometimes more than a little). Unfortunately the benchmarks make no mention if it is a NV17 or the newer, and faster, NV18 core. Here are a few links to some of the stuff I looked at. I guess I should have saved all the links 🙁

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vga-charts-i,453.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/899

http://www.anandtech.com/show/938/9

I am waiting for some heatsinks to arrive from China, among other parts, before I finish my P3 850 build so it may be a while. I am trying to decide on a final benchmark to test between the MX440 and Ti4200 to make my final choice but at this CPU speed I am seeing no reason yet for the Ti4200.

I am not sure on the best game to test. I have been trying to find the exact game you mean, one that issues in XP and is one of the last 98 games. If you find it let me know. Back then there were plenty of examples but I think XP SP1 or SP2 fixed all/most of that.

The problem is those late games were designed with both 9x and XP compatibility in mind.

Is there a dictionary between geforce and quadro cards? I often never look up quadros because I just don't know which models correspond to which geforces.

blank001 wrote:

Is there a dictionary between geforce and quadro cards? I often never look up quadros because I just don't know which models correspond to which geforces.

I've found GPU Review to be quite helpful in this regard. It allows you to compare two cards, side-by-side. Handy drop-down menu.

For example, here is a link to the comparison of a Quadro2 Pro and a GF2 Ultra.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=332&card2=124

As a starting point, this Wikipedia article is good enough, specially for older cards.

blank001 wrote:

Is there a dictionary between geforce and quadro cards? I often never look up quadros because I just don't know which models correspond to which geforces.

Yes, the Quadro page on Wikipedia.

swaaye wrote:

The problem is those late games were designed with both 9x and XP compatibility in mind.

Yes that's what I mean. Beyond running games at 1600 x 1200, is there a need for more graphics power? This NFS 2000 game, is this a game that's problematic under XP?

A lot of these later games run perfectly fine under Windows XP. I guess Aureal A3D is one reason to stick with Windows 98.

philscomputerlab wrote:

I guess Aureal A3D is one reason to stick with Windows 98.

That's the conclusion I came to as well 🤣

Maybe ZanQuance will eventually eliminate this too.

Well I am still waiting for heatsinks to arrive from china. I got a couple to try and they have the two-pin fan connector for the video cards. The 380 XGL does not have the fan control circuit populated on the PCB. It appears to be a FET, a diode, a few capacitors and one or two resistors and of course the two pins for the fan connector. I plan to reverse engineer what parts are used as soon as I get my hands on a similar card with the parts populated. Unfortunately I tossed out a FX5200 that was having problems without thinking about it. Hopefully I will be done within a month. I will have a parts list and pictures. I absolutely love this card for a DirectX 7 build. The main reason, besides its specs, is you know what you are getting with this card. You don't have to worry about it being gimped in some way or it being a low quality build. I also plan to just go ahead and replace the caps just because.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I am only concerned with resolutions up to 1280x1024, if you want to go higher than that then you may want a GeForce4 Ti 4x00 series card. Quake3 at 1280x1024, 32-bit, Antrioscopic and AA on produced over 40-FPS if i remember correctly. Good enough for me since I will likely never use Antrioscopic and AA in real gaming and of course without it the framerate goes up. I have yet to see anything that didn't play very smoothly at 1280x1024 with this card.

EDIT2: Good DOS support, cheap, available and I guess its only real downside is it won't increase your gaming skills 😉 I am also not nostalgic about this card, so modding it doesn't hurt my feelings.