First post, by kalm_traveler
- Rank
- Member
Hi guys, just looking for some suggestions as far as which AGP Quadro card would make sense for this rig given the purpose is as a pre-Windows Xp box.
I'm finally getting around to recapping and frankensteining a nice high-end Enermax PSU I bought mid summer so that this Tyan S230T dual socket370 board can be used with the pair of 1.4ghz Tualatin chips I picked up for it earlier.
Anyway, I have a Quadro 4000 SDI AGP in there currently with an aftermarket Zalman cooler (mainly to keep it quiet) which unfortunately means that the immediate lower PCI slot is unusable, which is making me rethink things. I'm probably fine with leaving it as is since it is already overkill for Windows 98SE and Win2k which the machine will be running.
Other options I thought of would be the best Quadro from the same year as the 1.4ghz Tualatin which seems to be the Quadro4 FX 900 XGL (best AGP4x Quadro I believe - similar to a GeForce 4 Ti 4600?)
or best single-slot Quadro I can find seems to be an FX1100 although this is a 2004 card I believe (not that this is a problem in itself).
I also already have a Quadro 2 Pro which I had bought to pair with a PIII 1ghz chip earlier on in the retro parts acquisition phase but this seems undesirable since it's much much weaker than 2002-2004 cards and MUCH weaker than the Quadro 4000 SDI I already have as well.
Basically I'm just wondering if there's a 'better' Quadro to use with this rig that can be used in a way where it won't block the 1st PCI slot but still be quiet. With the stock cooling on this existing Quadro 4000 SDI it sounds like a hair dryer though the mounting bracket could be cut to 1 slot since I removed the SDI card from the top to install the larger Zalman VGA cooler.
The only reason I'm even thinking about this is that sacrificing that top PCI slot means that I will not be able to install the 1gb ethernet NIC, thus forced to use a USB 2.0 ethernet adapter whenever networking is desired (again not sure this will even really matter).
What do you guys think?
Retro: Win2k/98SE - P3 1.13ghz, 512mb PC133 SDRAM, Quadro4 980XGL, Aureal Vortex 2
modern:i9 10980XE, 64gb DDR4, 2x Titan RTX | i9 9900KS, 32gb DDR4, RTX 2080 Ti | '19 Razer Blade Pro