VOGONS


First post, by dicky96

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I've given up with my HP dc7600 as an XP retro gaming machine and decided to put another one together from various hardware I mostly have lying around

I have an spare Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard socket 775 and got a P4 3.4GHz CPU from ebay for £5. The mobo has 1Gb ram and a suitable CPU cooler, basically I have all the various other parts (hdd, optical drive, case, PCI Soundblaster etc) to put the rig together but was wondering what would be an appropriate GPU for this build? I want to run XP or possible dual boot fast Win 98.

I already have another rig running XP (Core 2 Duo, Radeon X1850) that I want to upgrade to X1950, So I want to make this P4 an Nvidea build

What would be a good match for the Asus mobo and P4 3.4GHz? Doing a quick google the 9800GT came up as an option but is that the best choice? The mobo supports SLI if that is relevant and 2x cards are not too expensive

I would like something 'interesting/fun' to build, configure and run

best regards

Reply 1 of 13, by Baoran

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Last official win98 drivers are for the 6000 series on nvidia cards, but there are unofficial drivers that are for 7000 series of nvidia cards. If you want to run win98 those are the latest cards you can use. The optimal card would depend on what games you want to run. If you care about early win9x games you might want to go earlier than 6000 series.

Reply 2 of 13, by SPBHM

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8800 was released after Core 2, when dual core CPUs were the norm for a higher end gaming PC.

Pentium 4 LGA 775 would often be matched with Geforce 6 and 7 series...

but it depends on what you are trying to play... if you are playing older games at higher settings the 9800GT might be a good choice, for actual games from the 9800GT days the P4 is a little too slow IMO.

p5b deluxe does not support SLI, it supports (badly, using the southbridge x4 for the second card) crossfire I think.

Reply 4 of 13, by doaks80

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Personally I pair a FX5950 with a Northwood 3.4ghz processor. And an audigy2 for good measure.

k6-3+ 400 / s3 virge DX+voodoo1 / awe32(32mb)
via c3 866 / s3 savage4+voodoo2 sli / audigy1+awe64(8mb)
athlon xp 3200+ / voodoo5 5500 / diamond mx300
pentium4 3400 / geforce fx5950U / audigy2 ZS
core2duo E8500 / radeon HD5850 / x-fi titanium

Reply 5 of 13, by dicky96

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9646gt wrote:

I have a Geforce 4 ti 4200 in my P4 I am currently putting together, I figure anything with higher requirements than that I can just run on my modern rig.

Yes but isn't that an AGP card? The P5B is PCi-e

Re the FX5950 that is way more than I want to spend on this rig!

As mentioned I have a Core 2 Duo system that I could use as a fast XP rig and was looking to put the fastest available DirectX 9 GPU in that one (and maybe the fastest socket 775 CPU for good measure 🤣 )

The games I am playing on the HP dc7600 at the moment are the older Tomb Raider games which I am playing my way through - Finished TR1 and nearly completed TR2 at the moment and have all the others up to Angel of Darkness to play. Plus games such as Prince of Persia Sands Of Time and Half Life waiting to play.

To be honest the HP P4 3GHz dc7600 with it's inbuilt intel GPU ran TR1 like a dream at the highest settings using Glidos/DOSBox and is running TR2 just great as well with a patch for XP I downloaded from somewhere. But i'm sure I will hit the limit of the Intel GPU soon so that is the rig I want to replace with the P4 3.4GHz I was discussing in the Opening Post.

So a PCI-e GPU relevant to the Pentium 4 was what I am looking for, and as my Core 2 Duo XP rig and my i7-2660 Windows 10 both have AMD GPUs I want to put an NVidea in this one. Any DirectX 9 games that are too demanding for the P4 I can always play around with/upograde the Core 2 Duo.

The Windows 98 Dual boot was just an afterthought. I have a Super Socket 7 rig almost completed that's running Win 98/DOS but I read somewhere that very demanding Win 98 games can exceed the capabilities of Super Socket 7 and would run very well on a P4?

Hopefully that clarifies things?

Reply 6 of 13, by The Serpent Rider

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Radeon X1900/X1950 series. Preferably XT or XTX card with 512mb RAM. They're quite easy to get and relatively cheap.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 7 of 13, by appiah4

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For a P4, even a Northwood, anything more than a GeForce4 Ti 4600 is a waste.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 8 of 13, by dicky96

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appiah4 wrote:

For a P4, even a Northwood, anything more than a GeForce4 Ti 4600 is a waste.

Geforce 4ti 4600 seems expensive, hard to find, and AGP

The search continues

Reply 9 of 13, by dicky96

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The Serpent Rider wrote:

Radeon X1900/X1950 series. Preferably XT or XTX card with 512mb RAM. They're quite easy to get and relatively cheap.

As stated in the OP I specifically want an NVidea for this one as my other Core 2 Duo XP Rig currently has a Radeon X1850 I intend to upgrade to X1950XT or XTX, though I agree they are easy to find and relatively cheap

Reply 10 of 13, by Baoran

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6800gt or 6800xt with pci express seems to reasonably cheap on ebay. People often talk about the features 6000 series dropped that older games used, but there is very limited number of games that use those. You need pci express and want nvidia, so 6000 series is probably the way to go.

Reply 12 of 13, by SPBHM

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appiah4 wrote:

For a P4, even a Northwood, anything more than a GeForce4 Ti 4600 is a waste.

the newer P4s with faster chipsets and ram were a lot faster than northwood...

CedarMill + fast DDR2 would be a decent companion to a 6800GT, and even a 7900GT, remember that's what Intel had until mid 2006, and while they were behind AMD, they were not THAT bad.

Reply 13 of 13, by Katmai500

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SPBHM wrote:
appiah4 wrote:

For a P4, even a Northwood, anything more than a GeForce4 Ti 4600 is a waste.

the newer P4s with faster chipsets and ram were a lot faster than northwood...

CedarMill + fast DDR2 would be a decent companion to a 6800GT, and even a 7900GT, remember that's what Intel had until mid 2006, and while they were behind AMD, they were not THAT bad.

I'll second that. A Radeon 9800 Pro or high end GeForce FX were both contemporary for 2.4-3.2 GHz Pentium 4 systems. The x800/x850 and Geforce 6800 were around when the final versions of Pentium 4 with PCI-E and DDR2 were the top of the line for intel. The Athlon 64 was faster, but a 3.4-3.8 GHz P4 will be heavily bottlenecked by a Geforce 4 Ti 4600.