First post, by watson
Sorry for the clickbait title, here are the pictures: https://imgur.com/a/hf6Duoi
I'm wondering what this resistor is for and whether it was added by the previous owner or at the factory (it would be easiest to determine if someone has the same card).
The soldering is very good, there is no flux residue or burn marks on the PCB (the other side of the resistor is soldered to a via).
When measuring across the resistor, I get a resistance of 200 ohms (I realize that might not be the actual resistance).
The resistor sits right above the AGP slot when the card is inserted.
The only hi-res pictures online are of the VTP variant of the card (VGA museum) which isn't quite the same.
Could this be some sort of voltage mod? I don't think the BIOS has been modded and the card is running at 300/275 MHz. There seem to be no missing components in the area.
The card seems to be running perfectly with driver versions 45.23 (installed by Windows XP) and 71.89. The only problem I've encountered is that trying to install the latest driver (93.71) consistently leads to a black screen and reboot.
As a side note, I've been quite impressed by this supposed piece of trash. It runs San Andreas at 720p/lowest settings with an almost locked 25 FPS. I tried 1080p as well and I got 15-20 FPS which is seriously impressive (I would have easily considered it playable back in the day).
Sure, at the time it probably wasn't the best choice, but even with DX7 you were able to run (or at the very least start up) games such as Far Cry, HL2, Doom 3, Halo, Vice City, San Andreas, NFS Underground 1/2 and Most Wanted.
Performance wise, I think this card is way more than just a beefed up GeForce 2 MX.