Re: What's your home/everyday PC?

Posted on 2018-10-16, 22:04

by

by watson

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CPU: i5 3570K @ 4.0 GHz MBO: ASRock Z77 Pro3 RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16 GB DDR3 1600 MHz CL9 GPU: GeForce GTX 760 2 GB PSU: Corsair TX650 HDD: Seagate 4 TB + WD Blue 500 GB SSD: Samsung 850 Evo 250 GB OS: Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 My minimum usability criteria for a PC is being able to watch Youtube …

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Re: Worst hacks or bodges you've perpetrated?

Posted on 2018-10-13, 11:21

by

by watson

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That would be four MOLEX connectors, adapted to two 6-pin PCIe, to one 8-pin PCIe, to run this monster card off a crummy 2003 Enermax PSU that's never even heard of PCIe. There was also a MOLEX to SATA adapter in the mix to run the DVD-ROM. :P This card actually works fine with just a 6-pin …

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Re: Dying graphic cards - how to prevent and are they worth repairing

Posted on 2018-09-29, 10:52

by

by watson

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Looking at your list and thinking: is it just me or do high-end graphics card really die more often than mid-range ones? In my experience, yes. My X1950 Pro AGP died three days ago. I also have a dead Radeon 9700 (although those are known to have problems) and 6600 GT. On the other hand, a TNT2 M64 …

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Re: Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA

Posted on 2018-09-28, 16:59

by

by watson

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not exactly, I'm simply using Zotac GT 610 PCI :) I was fooled by the bus interface listed in CPU-Z and GPU-Z. It makes sense, these newer PCI cards probably use the same PLX chip as PCI to PCI-E adapters. Anyway, I decided to install Windows 10 x64 v1511 on a spare HDD. Here it is, the infamous …

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Re: Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA

Posted on 2018-09-27, 20:20

by

by watson

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

agent_x007 wrote: Phenom II 965, Cinebench R15, I used Wraith cooler from FX-83x0 series. Are you using a PCI to PCI-E adapter for the GT 610? Can you confirm AGP doesn't work properly in Windows 7/10 so I don't have to waste time installing it?

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Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA

Posted on 2018-09-27, 17:16

by

by watson

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Since there wasn't much information available on this particular board and I recently managed to get my hands on it, I decided to make a dedicated thread and write a review. Grab some popcorn, because it's pretty long. The board originally cost around €50 (source: https://www.ocinside.de/review/ …

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Re: What's the deal with GeForce FX Shader Model 2.0 support?

Posted on 2018-09-23, 19:32

by

by watson

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

NVIDIA wasn't kidding when they said that they would bring DirectX 9 support to their entire line of GPUs, and they have delivered . ATI has no competition to the 5200 series , simply because their Radeon 9200/9100/9000 do not offer DirectX 9 support, they are based on a DirectX 8 class of GPUs. …

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Re: Troubleshooting dead MSI-branded GeForce 6800GT

Posted on 2018-09-23, 18:55

by

by watson

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I've become very careful with these screws. They are very thin and if the head snaps, you will probably be looking for a new heatsink. It happened to me once, thankfully it was on a dead card.

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Re: What's the deal with GeForce FX Shader Model 2.0 support?

Posted on 2018-09-23, 16:54

by

by watson

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

You know what's a little insultingly ironic about this? The GeforceFX's pixel shader 2 model is a higher version than the supported R300 cards. Yes, that's exactly what's bothering me. It would mean Nvidia lied about proper DX 9.0 support (terrible performance aside). I just wasted over two hours …

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Re: What's the deal with GeForce FX Shader Model 2.0 support?

Posted on 2018-09-22, 22:40

by

by watson

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Driver path for FX series, can't handle shaders from Crysis at any reasonable rate. GFFX's SM2.0 implementation is so slow and bad it's better off not happening at all. Crysis made the right call here. So you think it was deliberately disabled by Crytek? Why does it let you "continue" after the …

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Re: What's the deal with GeForce FX Shader Model 2.0 support?

Posted on 2018-09-22, 21:44

by

by watson

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I just tried it with an FX 5600: Unsupported video card! - NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 (vendor = 0x10de, device = 0x0312) - Video memory: 118 MB - Minimum SM 2.0 support: yes - Rating: -1 User chose to continue! Of course, it crashes to desktop. FX 5700LE: Unsupported video card! - NVIDIA GeForce FX …

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What's the deal with GeForce FX Shader Model 2.0 support?

Posted on 2018-09-22, 18:33

by

by watson

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I want to know why Crysis doesn't run on GeForce FX cards, but runs on R300. Wikipedia tells me R300 supports PS 2.0, and FX supports PS 2.0a, which supposedly has more features: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Level_Shading_Language#Pixel_shader_comparison However, somebody must be lying here …

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Re: Troubleshooting dead MSI-branded GeForce 6800GT

Posted on 2018-09-21, 15:16

by

by watson

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

1. That's not an MSI card. PCB is green and there's no signs of added MSI stickers. Umm, MSI themselves have a green PCB on the official site: https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/NX6800GTTD256/Gallery The 6800 Ultra theory might be true though, the PCB seems to line up with the one on VGA Museum ( …

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Re: Radeon 4650 AGP - Huge CPU interrupts

Posted on 2018-09-19, 11:11

by

by watson

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

What kind of motherboard is it? I'm presuming it's some kind of Shuttle OEM thingy. What is the chipset? Is there a BIOS update? I used an AGP HD4650 normally with a Pentium 4 3.0 Prescott (socket 478, 865PE chipset, Intel D865PERL motherboard) on Windows XP SP3. I'm pretty sure I installed the …

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Re: Absurd prices for vintage hardware?

Posted on 2018-09-17, 19:40

by

by watson

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So don't be surprised if you have to pay premium for Quadro cards within few years. From a collector's perspective, I don't really see the point in buying the Quadro cards. A collector isn't buying an FX 5800 Ultra because of its performance, he's buying it because it's an FX 5800 Ultra. The Quadro …

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Re: Absurd prices for vintage hardware?

Posted on 2018-09-16, 13:22

by

by watson

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That someone pays highly for it means it's valuable. I realize that it's way past the point of becoming valuable. As soon as one person pays that much, it gets much easier for others to rationalize paying the same amount. I know, I know, "this hobby is much cheaper than collecting cars or watches", …

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Re: Absurd prices for vintage hardware?

Posted on 2018-09-16, 12:26

by

by watson

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

FX 5800 Ultra. I just don't get it. It's a piece of crap. Always was, always will be. I could see someone paying $100-$200 for a working one. However, paying over $1000 is absurd, especially considering there's a 99% chance it will die soon anyway. The first rule from Pawn Stars, just because it's …

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Re: Lucky Star 5V-1A / 5V-1B review - scaling form XT levels to K6-II levels

Posted on 2018-09-14, 17:19

by

by watson

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi, what kind of hard drive did you use with this board? I bought an AT29C010A EEPROM and successfully flashed the J3-006 BIOS, but the board won't detect either a 40GB or 20GB HDD. Both autodetection and manually setting it to LBA or LARGE hangs on boot. I also tried messing with the cylinders/ …

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Re: Best AGP card for a Socket 754 system?

Posted on 2018-09-13, 20:15

by

by watson

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I'm not sure how big a deal the memory bandwidth difference is as the AGP bus would probably be the bottleneck for transferring textures anyway? Also, the memory size of 1Gb probably makes life a lot easier for games beyond 2004. I have that exact card. AGP bandwidth is only very loosely connected …

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Re: Best AGP card for a Socket 754 system?

Posted on 2018-09-13, 15:33

by

by watson

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

But if you're also building a socket-939, perhaps the 3850/4650 are better matched to that. Yes, I think all the cards except the 9800 would be bottlenecked by any Socket 754 CPU, but you probably already know that. In my experience, the HD4650 AGP sucks if you have a DDR2 version because it's …

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