VOGONS


First post, by RaYaNt3

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Hello everyone,

In the past year I've been reading lots of posts before registering, and at this time I'd like to contribute with some builds and their pictures, of simply sharing some hardware I usually buy (not every month). I like to try different configurations, but always in a cheap way.

This days I'm dealing with a Prescott system. The history it's about a computer that we're using in the family from long time ago, but it's obsolete for modern tasks as you can imagine. The mobo is a Asus P4S800D-X, nice in the past, and even I can overclock the Pentium 4 from 3.2 to 3.6 ghz more or less... The system also has:


-3x512mb Kingston DDR400
-Integrated Silicon Imagen SATA 150 controller, bootable (very nice for SSDs, I was trying it with a 60gb Kingdian and worked smooth as silk)
-Ati Radeon 9250 AGP 128mb
-Ati Radeon 9600 PRO AGP 128mb (I had to "cook" her, but still with artefacts so discarded)
-160 Seagate SATA hard drive + other IDE disks (for backups of working system)
-Very crappy ATX case... and same for the PSU (420w Athlon XP & P4 compatible 😵)

I installed a fresh 32bit Windows 7 but the point is when I realized the system was very "windows 98 friendly" I erased that installation for downgrading the OS 😎. I'm always trying to find fully compatible hardware, and this time I was lucky...

I was trying to upgrade the 9250 gpu (mostly for playing games like PainKiller, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Serius Sam FE, etc...), but the best option I found was a Nvidia Quadro FX 4000 256mb that I bought for just 12€ locally... BUT... I felt a bit disappointed because even installing Phil's drivers this card seems to work not very well under windows 98... (I mean black screens and video errors when I try to play dos-based games). I think a Quadro FX 2000 one could work better in 98 and Dos mode, I can buy it in https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/fEEAAOSwVm5Y9Oha/s-l1600.jpg for 20€... but... 20 bucks are 20 bucks, haha.

I'd like you recommend me a graphic card good balanced with my system, or even I'd like to read about your experience with Quadro FX gpus and windows 98...

For now, the system looks like this in XP. The Quadro works very well with lots of games:

LFkqKEz.jpg

Have a good time!

Reply 1 of 2, by chinny22

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Nice to see the old family PC getting a new lease on life and P4's do make nice Overkill Win98 PC's.
Not sure on the Graphics card. For this era I like GeForce 6800's but not sure how budget that is

Reply 2 of 2, by RaYaNt3

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chinny22 wrote:

Nice to see the old family PC getting a new lease on life and P4's do make nice Overkill Win98 PC's.
Not sure on the Graphics card. For this era I like GeForce 6800's but not sure how budget that is

6800 has a good performance but I never tried one. Many years ago I had the ATI 9800 pro and it rocked Doom 3 / Prey and many more, and it helped my Barton 3000+ to reach Core 2 Quad era alive and kickin'...

I hope someday can find some bargain high end GPU(s) for this system... Or maybe I'd have to search for a normal 6600 GT and hold Win98 "support"...

Decisions, decisions...