Re: Radeon 9800XT - quick test.

Posted on 2011-02-01, 03:37

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I love these Accelero S1 / S2 coolers. They are rather cheap, fit just about anything, and their cooling capability is superb. The S2 there actually fits the GF3 as well but it is extreme overkill for it. :D I thermal epoxied that nice Pentium heatsink to it instead. Just be sure to avoid those …

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Re: Radeon 9800XT - quick test.

Posted on 2011-01-31, 23:42

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

RG100 you'd be a lot cooler if you had a GeForce FX 5950 Ultra like mine. :D :D :D :D I've got this monster of 3D power running a smooth 500 MHz core / 450 MHz RAM. ;) And no you aren't allowed to test any DirectX 9 games on it because that's not fair. http://thumbnails31.imagebam.com/11755/ …

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Re: 2001 High-end PC of mine! Dual Tualatin, but not yet completed :).

Posted on 2011-01-31, 21:28

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Well the thing is when I need more than 512MB, I start thinking about the nForce 2 AthlonXP that I could throw together, or the VIA K8T800 board + Athlon 64 + AGP that I now have too lol Or even that I could put a 440BX machine together with 768MB with 3x256 DIMMs.. (Hell a K6 for that matter too) I …

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Re: Autoexec.bat & Config.sys Advice

Posted on 2011-01-31, 19:57

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well if you think about that, what happens is that you have one extra drive letter if you don't specify extras with LASTDRIVE. Like the docs say, DOS only knows about drives assigned in config.sys. CDROMs are assigned drive letters in autoexec by mscdex. So if you have more than one CDROM, you may …

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Re: Voodoo Questions

Posted on 2011-01-31, 19:54

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It just goes to show how much CPUs needed to catch up to be able to push the more complex geometry of later games. UT99 and Quake 3 needed ~1 GHz CPUs to get really smooth.

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Re: Radeon 9800XT - quick test.

Posted on 2011-01-31, 19:53

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Radeon 9700 Pro is the last ATI card with 3.3v slot support.

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Re: 2001 High-end PC of mine! Dual Tualatin, but not yet completed :).

Posted on 2011-01-31, 19:35

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

The VIA boards of those times tend to have major problems with PCI performance and even AGP compliance to varying degrees. I've seen it first hand. Some boards are far worse than others though. The PCI performance problems show up with hardware-accelerated sound cards that require reliable bus …

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Re: Autoexec.bat & Config.sys Advice

Posted on 2011-01-30, 21:24

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The default is actually whatever DOS determines to be your last drive letter + 1, believe it or not. DOS determines this while loading config.sys so unless something needs a drive letter after that, lastdrive is unneeded. http://www.vfrazee.com/ms-dos/6.22/help/lastdrive.htm http://www.easydos.com/ …

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Re: 2001 High-end PC of mine! Dual Tualatin, but not yet completed :).

Posted on 2011-01-30, 21:12

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I think all of the P3 servers must be finally being retired and that's the cause of the cheap Tualatin influx.... Obviously those servers weren't using the motherboards we would want though so those aren't showing up en masse. Although I think an i840 mobo would be nice to have compared to the 512MB …

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Re: SSD in a retro PC

Posted on 2011-01-24, 18:51

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The practical PCI peak is more like ~95MB/s, depending on motherboard/chipset quality, and that's assuming only one PCI device is active. :) VIA chipsets can sometimes dip down to around 30-40MB/s due to various factors. :D The SSD wear thing is certainly a popular worry, with entire forums devoted …

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Re: SSD in a retro PC

Posted on 2011-01-21, 19:42

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

At this point you could just get a PCI SATA card and buy a real, modern SSD. I've been thinking about it myself actually. The smallest models are plenty big for old machines and they aren't crazy expensive anymore. This would solve all storage speed issues and be silent. I don't mind using my …

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Re: UMC chipset PCI 486 mobo. AMD P90 CPU options?

Posted on 2011-01-20, 00:32

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've never gotten a Am5x86 to power up at 180 MHz. I've tried 4 or so of them. Even running 4v didn't help.

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Re: Soundcards vs onboard audio for games

Posted on 2011-01-19, 21:29

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If it's a software emulation, I think one should later be able to "wrap" the drivers around any audio processors, with some tweaking. (Something like (but not exactly the same way as) the Yamaha's software midi sythesizers.) The Creative MB stuff is fully software. It's basically the same as their …

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Re: Soundcards vs onboard audio for games

Posted on 2011-01-19, 03:42

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Malik wrote: I'm also having the Asus G73Jh-A1. And like swaaye, I can vouch for it's excellent audio quality. The audio is clear and no electrical interference or hiss even when using an ordinary earphones. Yeah it has the cleanest Realtek implementation that I've heard. Even through headphones it …

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Re: Soundcards vs onboard audio for games

Posted on 2011-01-18, 21:28

by

by swaaye

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Creative has released the EAX functionality in emulation mode drivers. The integrated audio on the motherboards usually come as Sound Blaster Audigy Advanced MB (supporting upto EAX 3.0) and X-Fi MB (supports EAX 4.0). Some are named EAX 4.0 Advanced HD, like those that come with the Asus G73 …

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Re: How's this combination 2d/3d?

Posted on 2011-01-18, 19:18

by

by swaaye

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

DOS games tend to get CPU limited once you get into the NV TNT / ET6100 / Voodoo Banshee realm of DOS 2D speed. For example I found that I needed a Coppermine P3-600 to get SVGA Cybermage completely fluid. A Katmai P3-450 would chop out when I got close to walls. So I wouldn't get too caught up on …

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Re: Portable x86 Device (size of PSP) to play MS-DOS games natively

Posted on 2011-01-16, 20:10

by

by swaaye

in DOS

in DOS

Ah come on you guys need somethin with a passive matrix or dual scan LCD. Experience mobile DOS gaming as it truly was. :D Bllllluuuuurrrrrrrrrr...... letterboxed... (or jagged and nasty from pixel stretch) Watch the LCD on this mid/late '90s notebook. Oh man the good old days. lol http://www. …

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Re: X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM ... no 640x480 resolution?

Posted on 2011-01-16, 20:05

by

by swaaye

in DOS

in DOS

Davros wrote: 386sx-16 Yup it runs terrible on those. 😀 Probably because it was polygonal 3D. Wing Commander was the 386 game.

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Re: X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM ... no 640x480 resolution?

Posted on 2011-01-16, 19:55

by

by swaaye

in DOS

in DOS

X-Wing missions can be a real bitch because you don't get the same mission screen hints as in TIE Fighter and yet your timing and position can be critically important. There were a few missions that were very difficult and were complained about, probably because some people simply could not beat …

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Re: Geforce4 MX 440 Datasheet/reference/specifications

Posted on 2011-01-16, 19:46

by

by swaaye

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

And there's Swiftshader, the one that can run Crysis. 🤣 Also, Michael Abrash and co's Pixomatic is a sweet software renderer that somebody ought to figure out how to convert into a driver.

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