First post, by obobskivich
- Rank
- l33t
So, just finished up with installing Win2k and setting up disks on this build, and figured I'd share. It isn't cased yet, but otherwise it's complete. It began life as a Dell (there seems to be some disagreement between my various system-info applications as to exactly what model it was; some say Dimension 4100, some say XPS-Z), but that's before my time - I got the board, CPU, and power supply as loose freebies a few years ago, and have used them for testing expansion cards and RAM until recently. Since they're a little dated for that role now, I figured why not build it into a functional system. 😎
Here's everything on the "bench":
And a closer shot of the WildcatVP:
CPU and GPU coolers have been replaced because they were both annoying loud - I honestly didn't expect the WildcatVP to have such a noisy cooler, but it did! Luckily that VF-700 fit it perfectly, and it runs nearly silent now. The CPU is using a Thermalright that was designed for an AthlonXP; with the fan undervolted it also runs nearly silent, and provides good airflow over the motherboard and RAM.
Overall specs:
1GHz Pentium 3 CuMine
384MB PC100 SDRAM
3DLabs WildcatVP 880Pro 256MB
SB Live! (haven't bothered to look up which variant; Windows 2000 says "SB Live Basic" in device manager)
3Com EtherLink XL 10/100
Quantum Fireball 13.6AT
WD Caviar 6400 (6.4GB) [not pictured]
3DMark2001:
It didn't seem to have any problems running the tests - no weird anomalies or missing textures or anything like that. This was done with the "Advanced Performance" slider set to "Max Textures" within Acuity (the 3DLabs driver) - on the default "Max Geometry" it scores something like 2000, everything crawls, and the fill-rate values drop to around 200. 😵
Here's what it will end up in, once I get it cleaned out:
(yes it's really that reflective)
I don't know much about it as a case - I bought it from a PC shop probably 15 years ago, and it was a display model and came with no box or paperwork; it's nicely built and looks cool, so I've held onto it. The other side has a window:
(that's an Abit AN7 tucked in there - I pulled this out of storage a few weeks ago and discovered the board has a number of bulging caps and that RAM is bad too... 😒)
As far as what it will end up actually doing/running after being cased - I'm thinking it would make a great RTS/simcity box given that it shouldn't have any trouble running most of those games (even newer games like WarCraft 3 shouldn't be much trouble), and it'll be whisper quiet while doing it. 😀
PS
Curious what the VP880Pro is "supposed" to look like? VGA Museum has some great high resolution shots:
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/component … ldcat-vp880-pro
It was/is properly a single-slot card, but that cooler sounds like a hair dryer (and since I can make the comparison: yes, it's really worse than a GeForce FX 5800 Ultra 🤣).