VOGONS


First post, by avxstudios

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Currently attempting to find the best GPU for my system, an Aiwa PC MT-601 - motherboard pic here : https://i.imgur.com/yIsyOr9.jpg
I've tried a range of cards to limited success, these are:
Riva 128 4mb - works but card is failing, crashes a lot.
Matrox Millennium II 4mb+4mb expansion - works
GeForce 2 MX200 32mb - Black screen but pc activity suggests it's at least somewhat booting
Radeon R7000 64mb - Black screen same as GF2MX
Radeon 9200 128mb - Black screen same as GF2MX

Now, this is a pre-AGP 586 system with a Pentium i200 processor, so I can completely understand the R7000 and 9200 not working, but the GeForce 2 MX200 I would have thought would work?, I don't actually know what PCI revision the board is using but it seems keyed for 5V 32bit, I've probed around and the pins on the PCI that are marked as "3.3v/5v" measure as if they should be 5v, but any pin marked as 5v or 3.3/5v, are reading as 4.83v but testing on another motherboard that the cards do work on, I'm measuring 5.07v on the same pins, I don't know if that 0.17v from 5v (or 0.25v difference to the other board) is a large enough drop to make it only work with some cards, I'd imagine if the voltage was too low none of the cards would work?

Is there something I'm missing here?, is there a PCI revision difference between the Matrox millennium II and the GeForce 2 MX200?

Reply 1 of 2, by pentiumspeed

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Depends on the motherboard's bios ability to initialize the video cards' firmware. I see this too happen. Later socket 7 boards works better. Try Trio64V+ or Virge DX. Even cirrus logic 5446.

Oh, you actually have good video chipset on your motherboard, why the need to go better? The trio64V+ is really good, quick for DOS. Anything more like doing 3D is too much for pentium level performance even with 3D video card like Riva 128 even TNT2 M64 PCI but I had same issue too.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 2 of 2, by avxstudios

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pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-02-24, 00:40:

Depends on the motherboard's bios ability to initialize the video cards' firmware. I see this too happen. Later socket 7 boards works better. Try Trio64V+ or Virge DX. Even cirrus logic 5446.

Oh, you actually have good video chipset on your motherboard, why the need to go better? The trio64V+ is really good, quick for DOS. Anything more like doing 3D is too much for pentium level performance even with 3D video card like Riva 128 even TNT2 M64 PCI but I had same issue too.

Cheers,

It's mainly for early 3D games like Quake.
I recently upgraded the CPU to a Melco HK6 interposer with a 333mhz AMD K6-2, from what I have read, the GF2MX should actually work but there are some versions that will and some that won't.
Just wondered if anyone knew exactly what difference between the two there was that makes one function when the other doesn't.