I have an equivalent GeForce 5950 AGP in PCI-e form. I haven't tested it yet, but it should work the same with appropriate drivers. So, I suppose it would perform even better than the above with all the benefits of its AGP cousin. You can also use 7 series GeForce with appropriate drivers in PCI-e form as well, but they are not as retro friendly.

I've got both an PCX 5300 and PCX 5750.

What is the model in your pic?

What PCIe Quadro card is the same as a 5950? There is the Quadro FX 1300, but the RAM is only 128MB and the clocks on the GPU and RAM are way lower.
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/nvidia-nv38.g708

The Quadro FX 3000 is like an FX 5900 but with 256MB RAM instead of 128MB RAM.
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/nvidia-nv35.g18

^^ I don't recall a Quadro equivalent of an FX5950 Ultra. My card is a PCX 5950 PCI-e with equivalent specs to an FX5950 Ultra AGP.

j^aws wrote:

^^ I don't recall a Quadro equivalent of a FX5950 Ultra. My card is a PCX 5950 PCI-e with equivalent specs to a FX5950 Ultra AGP.

Ok, I misunderstood then.

I thought the PCX 5950 was never actually released. When I was doing research I could never find anything that said it was. I found stuff that said that it was planned to be released but couldn't find anything other than that.

Here is a forum post from earlier this year asking for proof that the PCX 5950 actually exists.
http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?3 … Geforce-FX-PCIE

^^ I picked up the card a couple of years ago for an X79 build to cover a very large scope. An all-in-one PC to rule them all, but completely forgot about it until the recent interest in these types of builds. It will appear in one my future WIP rigs, so will bench it then. The card does exist though.

These cards are quite cheap on ebay. Another user on these forums didn't have much success with them in windows 98 (that could just be them), but it should work pretty well for XP with mature drivers.

The core clock is only 275mhz, but I am sure this is a very artificial restriction. It could easily clock to 400mhz if you just ask nicely, or flash to a geforce bios. Especially with an aftermarket cooler or something.

mothergoose729 wrote:

...it should work pretty well for XP with mature drivers.

That is a pretty good idea. Unfortunately using XP puts this card way below the threshold of "best retro pcie card".

I would like to point out that the modded 82.69 drivers (which I am using with 7950GT) lists FX1300 as supported:

http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php

Its something I might actually try later, but I dont think it will have any edge compared to just using much faster 7950GT or similar with those drivers.

j^aws wrote:

...to cover a very large scope...

Same here, looked good on paper, but in my testing the compatibility was very very poor, I blame the limited range of (seemingly bad) drivers available for it (not counting modded 82.69, have not tried those yet).

The FX cards are great for games released between 1998 and 2002, even in XP. The Geforce 6 series and later dropped support for table fog and 8 bit textures.

1. That's essentially 5900XT with HSI bridge, as pretty much all GeForce PCX 5900/5950 cards.
2. Yes, GeForce FX series is the best compatible cards for old games you can get on PCI-E.

Technically it should work just fine with driver version released for GeForce 6800 Ultra PCI-E, which also use HSI bridge.

duga3 wrote:

That is a pretty good idea. Unfortunately using XP puts this card way below the threshold of "best retro pcie card". […]
Show full quote

mothergoose729 wrote:

...it should work pretty well for XP with mature drivers.

That is a pretty good idea. Unfortunately using XP puts this card way below the threshold of "best retro pcie card".

I would like to point out that the modded 82.69 drivers (which I am using with 7950GT) lists FX1300 as supported:

http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php

Its something I might actually try later, but I dont think it will have any edge compared to just using much faster 7950GT or similar with those drivers.

I tested a 7950GT 256MB AGP with those drivers a few years back, and found out in Win98, there was colour banding in a game. A 6800 Ultra also produced banding but not as pronounced. Whilst a 5900 Ultra was fine. This made me drop the 7 series for Win98.

Interestingly, those drivers list:

NVIDIA GeForce PCX 5300
NVIDIA GeForce PCX 5750
NVIDIA GeForce PCX 5900

But no PCX 5950, which makes me wonder if mine is an engineering sample or prototype...?

duga3 wrote:

j^aws wrote:

...to cover a very large scope...

Same here, looked good on paper, but in my testing the compatibility was very very poor, I blame the limited range of (seemingly bad) drivers available for it (not counting modded 82.69, have not tried those yet).

Do you recall which drivers you used, so that I can reference them when I get around to benching one day?

It's a Quadro FX1300 seems about the same as a FX5900. It is a FX NV38 AGP GPU on a PCI-E bridge. Its a 256bit bus with SDRAM. The modded 82.69 for 98se should be the best drivers for it.
Based on the specs it should be close if not faster than a geforce4 TI 4600. But again 8 dollars for comparable compatibility and performance with more features like dx9 compatibility.

Warlord wrote:

It's a Quadro FX1300 seems about the same as a FX5900. It is a FX NV38 AGP GPU on a PCI-E bridge. Its a 256bit bus with SDRAM. The modded 82.69 for 98se should be the best drivers for it.
Based on the specs it should be close if not faster than a geforce4 TI 4600. But again 8 dollars for comparable compatibility and performance with more features like dx9 compatibility.

Yeah, it has the same specs as a 5900 except for the clocks which make it the same as a 5900XT. If you can up the clocks to match, you will be at 5900 speeds.

I kinda doubt they used high enough spec RAM to reach the clocks on the RAM though.

the chips on my card say

hynix hy5du283222a F-28

they appear to be the same ram as on a ATI 9800Pro

People said they flashed their card with those chips to a 9800XT

So there should be no problem overclocking them, 400 (800) MHz,

No such thing as retro PCI-E.

HanJammer wrote:

No such thing as retro PCI-E.

So you wouldn't consider Geforce FX cards as retro?

j^aws wrote:

Do you recall which drivers you used, so that I can reference them when I get around to benching one day?

Sure, I tried the official 61.76 and 66.94. Then I also tried to INF mod older drivers and only 56.64 kinda worked. It did not even occur to me at the time to look at the list of supported GPUs in the modded 82.69 drivers because they are obviously much newer. In short, 7950GT with modded 82.69 drivers was X times more compatible in my tests (with actual games) than FX1300 with either 56.64, 61.76 or 66.94. Not to mention X times faster. You can find a little more details in my build log. Here are some rough benchmarks you wont find in my build log:

FX1300
3dm99: 6057 (61.76 and 66.94 shows a few graphical glitches, is okay with INF modded 56.64)
3dm2000: 6435 (66.94 causes massive flickering in these tests)
3dm2001: black screen

7950GT (modded 82.69)
3dm99: 10083
3dm2000: 40973
3dm2001: 41311

All of the above mentioned 3dm issues are not present with 7950GT.

duga3 wrote:

All of the above mentioned 3dm issues are not present with 7950GT.

I did some runs with those 3D Marks in Win98 comparing 7950GT AGP and FX5900 Ultra AGP, and both ran them fine, except of course the 7950GT being faster. However, I ran games made before 1999, and the 5 series ran them better. A specific example would be Flanker 2 with 32bit rendering. The 7 series produced banding whilst the 5 series ran it fine. It even ran it better than a Voodoo 5.

I'm hoping the PCX 5 series have drivers that have better optimisation for games compared to their Quadro cousins. Hopefully I'll get around to benching them in the near future. Too many unfinished projects...

I tested my FX 1300 with X5650 at 3,2GHz (Core/UnCore) :
99 Max : 9971

2000 : 6103

2001 SE : 8075

2003 : 3203

duga3 wrote:

Sure, I tried the official 61.76 and 66.94. Then I also tried to INF mod older drivers and only 56.64 kinda worked. It did not e […]
Show full quote

j^aws wrote:

Do you recall which drivers you used, so that I can reference them when I get around to benching one day?

Sure, I tried the official 61.76 and 66.94. Then I also tried to INF mod older drivers and only 56.64 kinda worked. It did not even occur to me at the time to look at the list of supported GPUs in the modded 82.69 drivers because they are obviously much newer. In short, 7950GT with modded 82.69 drivers was X times more compatible in my tests (with actual games) than FX1300 with either 56.64, 61.76 or 66.94. Not to mention X times faster. You can find a little more details in my build log. Here are some rough benchmarks you wont find in my build log:

FX1300
3dm99: 6057 (61.76 and 66.94 shows a few graphical glitches, is okay with INF modded 56.64)
3dm2000: 6435 (66.94 causes massive flickering in these tests)
3dm2001: black screen

7950GT (modded 82.69)
3dm99: 10083
3dm2000: 40973
3dm2001: 41311

All of the above mentioned 3dm issues are not present with 7950GT.

Except you didn't use the same driver to test both cards. admittedly.