The reason for all the vague complaints about "ATI drivers" last decade is that they usually required the latest XP service pack to install, which means that all the people running bootleg XP installations couldn't use them. Nvidia drivers had no such issues.

meljor wrote:

Athlon XP and Athlon64 (phenom II also) were great, but you missed something because when core2duo came ou it was simply awesome. I had the duo, the quad, thi first i7 and the last years i use i5 2500k. ALL of them i used heavily overclocked and are pretty damn fast. I DO hope that ZEN is the next big AMD thing, they deserve a big break.

Oh yeah, I'm sure I did miss out. It wasn't really a comment on perceived quality, it's just that I wasn't interested in PC gaming for the last few years. I was using a Eee901 in 2010, and I bought a nettop a couple years ago just to browse the Internet. I'm considering building a PC now because Optimus is driving me crazy even for older games. And I fell in love with the Dan A4-SFX case, which is tiny as I like them.

gdjacobs wrote:

Anonymous Coward wrote:

All I ask is that my hardware has a brand, and is not some weird generic Taiwanese/Chinese crap. There are a few brands that I avoid though, such as VIA/FIC, PCChips and Packard Bell, etc. , if they have a reputation for crappiness.

FIC? Maybe you're thinking of ECS?

dude... FIC makes some really nice boards (with some exceptions) and there's nothing wrong with VIA chipsets. In fact during the socket A era they were the go-to chipset for socket A. The only reason VIA got a bad rep is cheap shaky P4 motherboards. The VIA MVP3 and the Apollo 133, Apollo PRO and the KT880 are some of the best chipsets ever made.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

No, I do indeed mean FIC. I rather liked ECS, or at least ECS before they bought PCchips.

ECS made some great boards. So did FIC. I have some great slot 1 and socket A FIC boards in my collection. They are guilty of the occasional turd, just like most other brands.

SRQ wrote:

For retro stuff I exclusively use Intel/Nvidia in later PC systems and earlier ones.. whatever I have, honestly. Don't have enough parts to make that decision. Reason being AMD had worse thermal regulation on the athlons and all mine straight up died, and I wanted a PIII in the day so that's what I use. There's a difference between "It had value at the time" and "Might as well avoid it and get whatever has the best compatability." Which for my uses means intel, a creative card (AWE64 or Live) and an Nvidia video card, pref + voodoo.

These days I avoid AMD because of the heat concerns (ironic how we got here) and I had some bad experiences with Rage coming out and me having an AMD video card.

OK, so let's try and clarify this 1000 year old mith:

AMD CPUs and video cards don't get that hot. Let's start with socket A vs socket 370:

Yes, the early athlons got hot, but they were faster than similarly priced pentium III CPUs. I recently benched my 1.4 GHz tualatin rig vs a 1333Mhz athlon, and the athlon wins hands-down (we-re talking about game performance here). The athlon has a much stronger floating point unit. Yes, the PIII is cooler - much cooler - but socket A moved up to 2333Mhz, while socket 370 died at 1400MHz.

As for Athlon XP vs P4 - that's plain as day. The P4 is one of the hottest chips ever made. Comparing a 2.8GHz P4 with a athlon XP 3000+, not only is the 3000+ faster, but also up to 20C cooler under extreme load (AC Copper Lite for the Athlon vs full-copper cooler by Titan for the P4). Same story when speaking of power draw. The P4 is much thirstier. - so, @SRQ, if you plan to build a socket 478 or 775 P4 sistem but have "heat concerns", you better go AMD.

Things changed with the Core 2 Duo architecture, but Nehalem was a real power hog. AMD had nothing to compete really, but their AM2/AM3 chips are very cool. I ran a phenom II x6 1090T with a shitty cheap deepcool gammax 300 cooler and it never went over 50C under load. Power draw is a different story.

Modern AMD chips are power hungry, slow, but remarkably cool. My FX 8350e will top out at 53C while overclocked to 4.2GHz (Deepcool Lucifer cooler) while the 3770k in my main rig goes over 64 (Deepcool Maelstrom 120t) *yes, I use deepcool stuff a lot. They are dirt cheap, decently reliable and perform very very well for what they cost. The Gamer Storm Lucifer performs just like the Thermaright Macho HR02, and it costs half as much (I have both coolers). The Maelstrom 120 performs just like the Thermaltake Water 2.0, and costs 60% less. Plus no annoying pump noise, and the water hoses are longer and a bit more flexible.

As for video cards, I owned a GTX 480 - still do - I have 3 of them:

These things are HOT! The ones with the stock blower will go to 95C, while the Zotac with the Zalman cooler does 78-81C.

I also have a couple of GTX 280 cards - wanted to SLi them, then I felt the heat coming up from under my desk. "did I turn the heat up so high?" no! It was the fucking video cards! Top one was doing 98C!!!! and bottom one 86C.

The 8800 series wasn't too great either. They usually rung at 85-86C and the shitty ROHS BGA balls holding the GPU to the card crack due to thermal stress and the whole thing goes to shit. Don't get me started on the 9800 GTX.

Now for modern nvidia cards - the GTX 680 is fairly cool - so is the 780. The 780ti is pusing it at 80C, even with beefy aftermarket cooling (Galaxy Hall of Fame GTX 780ti). The 980 is very cool - the 980ti gets moderatly hot, but the new 1080ti founder's edition is a SCORCHER. It will clock down to 1480 MHz (from top boost clock of 2011Mhz) and when you game you will notice the slow-down. It's also very, very noisy (the FE), and fan profiles often go nuts so you get fans at full speed in desktop, despite the card running at 30C - and it only goes away when you restart the machine. Aftermarket cooled 1080 cards are OK - they usually never go over 75C and are very quiet.

Now for AMD cards:

The 9800XT was pretty hot - but most cards used pretty crappy coolers by modern standards. Nvidia's 5950 Ultra was a lot hotter and it was slower to boot.

The X800-X850 series was OK, especially models from HIS with the big dual-slot coolers - but even with the simple single slot blower most cards stay at 65-70C depending on model. Same for the 6800.

The x1800-x1900-x1950 vary from cool to rather hot. The X1950XT will go as high as 75C, and it is noisy to boot.

The 2900XT... pretty hot. Still not as hot as the 8800GTX but it's slower and uses more power then the latter.

ATi's 38xx and AMD's 48xx series were brilliant. Slightly slower the nvidia's 280 series, but a lot cooler and used less power. The 4890 was hot tough, but it was FAST.

AMD's 79xx series were fairly cool and quiet. The 7970 GHz eddition was the hottest, going as high as 78C, but they were very fast and better priced then nvidia's offerings. The also kept really well. I used my 7950's for a year and a half! First time since 2002 since I kept a video card for that long and didn't feel the need to upgrade it (them actually, I had two at one point - 3 if I count my sister's):

These baby's replaced my twin GTX 480's (one of witch died - blows mosfet while playing crysis 3 + magic smoke ).

The R9 series did have some heat issues - but in all reality it's only cards with the stock AMD cooler that had issues. The 290 and 290x got pretty hot, and used a lot of power. Cards with aftermarket cooling like the 290x lightning from MSI and the Windforce 3x from gigabyte came factory overclocked never went over 85C, unless your case was airtight. The 280x was a great mid-range card. Faster the the GTX 770, and it trails (and equals in some games) the 780 non-ti with the lates AMD Crimson drivers.

R9 280x from sapphire next to a R9 290x from Gigabyte.

Current AMD cards are silly cool - especially cards with aftermarket cooling. So far I tried the 4GB RX 480 and 470 from gigabyte - these barely reach 65-68, even overclocked. Asus's 480 strix is also very cool. The hottest one is the PowerColor RedDragon V2 (single fan, cheap aluminum heatsink with embedded copper heatpipes) but that never goes over 72 either, and it's really quiet.

As for my Gainward GTX 1070 - if I up the power limit to 110% in MSI Afterburner, it will clock itself to 1911Mhz and stay there, but it will do 75C and the fans are slightly audible (but not bothersome) with the fans at 60%. If I set the fans to 90% it gets loud but goes down to 63-64C really quick. If left at default settings it will do 18xx (something) MHz and do 67-68C. So in conclusion it's a cool and quiet card, but it's not magical. it will get hot in severe load (skyrim with 100k mods or doom at 4k).

What I'm trying to point out is that both intel and AMD have had hot CPUs - and AMD and nvidia seem to be cosntalty trading podium spots for the winner of "hottest video cards - literally" and crappiest driver. Quick note - software crimson + older motherboards (amd 760g and 860) don't mix well under windows 10 "AMD Wattman has recovered" + crash to desktop - but work fine under windows 8, or under win10 with a modern AMD 970 board.

I'm curious how ryzen will preform. So far leaks are promising.

meljor wrote:

When it comes to retro's: yes, you're better off with Nvidia imho. And 3Dfx ofcourse 😎

Please elaborate as to why. Initially I used nvidia only in my retro machines due to availability, but I switched to some ati cards and never looked back. A few examples:

I currently use a radeon 8500 (non-LE) a Radeon 9800 PRO and a X850XT in my machines and they all work flawlessly - both with older and newer games. The 9800 in particular. It is part of my athlon XP winXP rig. Initially the whole thing was based on a Abit AN7 (Nforce 2 Ultra) and a Sparkle FX 5900 (6xxx series cards have some issues with games like Black and White and some others), but it proved too slow to push 1600x1200 in some games so I swapped it for my sapphire 9800 pro. Big improvement, but random hardware issues like black screen after exiting some games, or no video signal on reset. Then I stuck the 9800 in my backup socket A machine (2333Mhz 3200+, Asus A7V880 VIA KT880 based) and it works like a charm. I left the nvidia machine in it's original configuration - as a sort of nvidia nforce / FX series omage since I was crazy about their stuff back in the day and I dreamed of having a PC just like this - and moved all my stuff to the VIA KT880 / Radeon 9800 PRO machine.

I found out that NF2 boards don't mix well with ATi cards for some reason, and while the KT880 has slightly slower memory performance, it has better AGP performance with either video card so it make up for it. And it works well with my Audigy ZS witch makes all my NF2 cards bsod if set to 24bit 96000khz.

The 8500 is very fast, and so far I've had no issues with it in any game (running catalyst 4.something under win98 on a socket 423 dell optiplex GX400. I need to do more testing tough.

The X800XT replaced the 6800LE in my 939 Voodoo 2 SLi rig (this thing: Win98 Socket 939 Voodoo 2 SLi Build! (a.k.a. Glide Overkill)). Not only is it faster then the 6800LE with 16p unlocked, but it doesn't have the issues the 6800 has under win98se, despite having a 256MB framebuffer. Another reason to pick the X800/X850 series over the 6800 is price and vailability. The X800 series in particular are very easy to find and usually cost quiet a bit less then AGP 6800 cards. For example I got my 6800LE AGP locally and payed 20e for it - but got a X800PRO AGP for 6 euro and the X800XT AGP for 10 euro.

I still use nvidia cards on some machines - My tualatin rig has a 128MB Geforce 4 4200ti, and my K6-III machine has a Geforce 2 PRO. The K6-III is my main dos gaming rig, and the tualatin my main win98 rig, but it's getting replaced by a 1400MHz athlon (non-XP) + FIC AD11 AMD 760 DDR board, sice those are more common and tualatin boards being rare (especially my ST6) I'd like to preserve the machine rather then use it daily and risk killing it.

For me, anything prior to 2000 is collectable. Doesn't matter the brand (or no brand in some cases!). I get a kick out of messing with any old hardware. The wonderful thing about old x86 equipment is the diversity of the brands! Trying to get everything working together from different companies and then the software on top.

That and where I am, trying to get old hardware (and cheaply) is difficult at best. When I was a kid, it was easy to find 386/486/Pentiums lying on the side of the street. Nowadays, you'd be hard pressed to see anything computer related (except for the occasional CRT with a missing VGA lead...).

kanecvr wrote:

What I'm trying to point out is that both intel and AMD have had hot CPUs - and AMD and nvidia seem to be cosntalty trading podium spots for the winner of "hottest video cards - literally" and crappiest driver. Quick note - software crimson + older motherboards (amd 760g and 860) don't mix well under windows 10 "AMD Wattman has recovered" + crash to desktop - but work fine under windows 8, or under win10 with a modern AMD 970 board.

I'm curious how ryzen will preform. So far leaks are promising.

Well, can I say newer vga coolers are not good looking (aesthetically)? The increase in the cooler size someway surpassed the good sense of the old video cards days when even a thin heatsink was a problem. Then they began being bigger and louder and now we are at this. I mean, ok that the tech and competition increased a lot so heat is always a problem but maybe energy efficiency should be again a new goal for the next solutions.

386SX wrote:

kanecvr wrote:

What I'm trying to point out is that both intel and AMD have had hot CPUs - and AMD and nvidia seem to be cosntalty trading podium spots for the winner of "hottest video cards - literally" and crappiest driver. Quick note - software crimson + older motherboards (amd 760g and 860) don't mix well under windows 10 "AMD Wattman has recovered" + crash to desktop - but work fine under windows 8, or under win10 with a modern AMD 970 board.

I'm curious how ryzen will preform. So far leaks are promising.

Well, can I say these newer vga coolers are not good to even look at? The increase in the cooler size someway surpassed the good sense of the old video cards days when even a thin heatsink was a problem. Then they began being bigger and louder and now we are at this. I mean, ok that the tech and competition increased a lot so heat is always a problem but maybe energy efficiency should be again a new goal for the next solutions.

It is ALWAYS a goal, but for the top you'll get a big powerdraw and more heat. The simple solution is to go for midrange/lowend as they will draw far less power and create a lot less heat. lowend usually are passively cooled.

It is ALWAYS a goal, but for the top you'll get a big powerdraw and more heat. The simple solution is to go for midrange/lowend as they will draw far less power and create a lot less heat. lowend usually are passively cooled.

It's my problem that I'm old and I miss good old times when heatsink was big as the gpu. 😁
But I imagine that functionally they are really good with the big fan to keep lower temperature. Just I prefer aesthetically how older heatsink looked... 😎

orinoko wrote:

For me, anything prior to 2000 is collectable. Doesn't matter the brand (or no brand in some cases!). I get a kick out of messing with any old hardware. The wonderful thing about old x86 equipment is the diversity of the brands! Trying to get everything working together from different companies and then the software on top.

That and where I am, trying to get old hardware (and cheaply) is difficult at best. When I was a kid, it was easy to find 386/486/Pentiums lying on the side of the street. Nowadays, you'd be hard pressed to see anything computer related (except for the occasional CRT with a missing VGA lead...).

This is where I stand as well....trying different options from different vendors in retro machines is why I enjoy this hobby so much. And like others have said, I take what I can get if someone is giving it away as I may be able to use it someday or someone else may want it and I can hook them up. Plus, I can take a system and put it together with items I have and then look around and see what may have been better for it and get a piece here and there for it to continually upgrade / improve it. Keeps the hobby going strong and allows me to see performance differences across the board.

RAM is something that I am really starting to look more into though in terms of being a brand fan as Kingston has treated me well through many different versions and sizes.

I am not a huge modern computer enthusiast. I have what will get the job done and then will spend extra for a video card. But the system and the card are going to last me for a while before i upgrade them each time. I still run my modern setup on an ASUS Motherboard / AMD Phenom II from 2009 and a GTX 660 Ti. I dont play many modern games so the 660 is still there and my kid can play minecraft with mods and shaders on with it, so that is good enough for me.

386SX wrote:

It is ALWAYS a goal, but for the top you'll get a big powerdraw and more heat. The simple solution is to go for midrange/lowend as they will draw far less power and create a lot less heat. lowend usually are passively cooled.

It's my problem that I'm old and I miss good old times when heatsink was big as the gpu. 😁
But I imagine that functionally they are really good with the big fan to keep lower temperature. Just I prefer aesthetically how older heatsink looked... 😎

Nah.... we're all just turning a bit more retro ourselves, which is fine. maybe one day we'll become collectible as well 🤣

But the old cards really weren't much different: tnt2 m64 could do without heatsink, full fledged tnt2 needed heatsink and tnt2 ultra got the heatsink and fan. Everything was just a bit smaller, the complete card was also smaller (if you do not count v5 cards 🤣 )

meljor wrote:

386SX wrote:

It is ALWAYS a goal, but for the top you'll get a big powerdraw and more heat. The simple solution is to go for midrange/lowend as they will draw far less power and create a lot less heat. lowend usually are passively cooled.

It's my problem that I'm old and I miss good old times when heatsink was big as the gpu. 😁
But I imagine that functionally they are really good with the big fan to keep lower temperature. Just I prefer aesthetically how older heatsink looked... 😎

Nah.... we're all just turning a bit more retro ourselves, which is fine. maybe one day we'll become collectible as well 🤣

But the old cards really weren't much different: tnt2 m64 could do without heatsink, full fledged tnt2 needed heatsink and tnt2 ultra got the heatsink and fan. Everything was just a bit smaller, the complete card was also smaller (if you do not count v5 cards 🤣 )

and basically all VLB graphics cards 😁

For retro, it's not too difficult :

CPU : Most things except Cyrix. I have one, and it's ok for games, but crap at floating point.
Sound card: Creative. You might run another card as well, but CL was the standard.
Graphics : varied - S3, Cirrus, some early Nvidia are all compatible.

For modern :

CPU : Intel. Only exceptions are for a cheap integrated APU, or for some embedded firewalls, both of which AMD are ok at.
Motherboard : *NOT* Asus. If you're only running games in Windows then you'll be fine, if you're using more esoteric virtualisation features or non Windows operating systems they don't care. Supermicro. Intel. Asrock (workstation/server boards).
Graphics : NVidia. Usually more features, better compatibility, longer driver support.

Oh yeah, I agree on the NVidia 8800s. I've an 8800GTX that I've baked at least four times to reflow the solder, it lasted another month each time before failing again, so I gave up. Fast when it worked though..

Smack2k wrote:

This is where I stand as well....trying different options from different vendors in retro machines is why I enjoy this hobby so […]
Show full quote

orinoko wrote:

For me, anything prior to 2000 is collectable. Doesn't matter the brand (or no brand in some cases!). I get a kick out of messing with any old hardware. The wonderful thing about old x86 equipment is the diversity of the brands! Trying to get everything working together from different companies and then the software on top.

That and where I am, trying to get old hardware (and cheaply) is difficult at best. When I was a kid, it was easy to find 386/486/Pentiums lying on the side of the street. Nowadays, you'd be hard pressed to see anything computer related (except for the occasional CRT with a missing VGA lead...).

This is where I stand as well....trying different options from different vendors in retro machines is why I enjoy this hobby so much. And like others have said, I take what I can get if someone is giving it away as I may be able to use it someday or someone else may want it and I can hook them up. Plus, I can take a system and put it together with items I have and then look around and see what may have been better for it and get a piece here and there for it to continually upgrade / improve it. Keeps the hobby going strong and allows me to see performance differences across the board.

RAM is something that I am really starting to look more into though in terms of being a brand fan as Kingston has treated me well through many different versions and sizes.

I am not a huge modern computer enthusiast. I have what will get the job done and then will spend extra for a video card. But the system and the card are going to last me for a while before i upgrade them each time. I still run my modern setup on an ASUS Motherboard / AMD Phenom II from 2009 and a GTX 660 Ti. I dont play many modern games so the 660 is still there and my kid can play minecraft with mods and shaders on with it, so that is good enough for me.

Yes! Exactly, every single point I agree with haha. Heck my most powerful machine is an ASUS gaming laptop from 2013, similar configuration to your own I suppose. I'm just so much more interested in computing when there was... Real competition, and everything was changing so quickly!

ynari wrote:

CPU : Most things except Cyrix. I have one, and it's ok for games, but crap at floating point.

I think the 2.2v MIIs are actually quite interesting though. I stocked up on these and many of the later 2.2v chips should be able to run at 300MHz (yes, real megahertz's 😜). They are still not the best but o god just look at those shiny gold heatspreaders! 😲
And lets not forget about 5x86

Are you guys serious with the 8800 comments? Because I may have just bought a 8800GT a couple days ago... It comes with a Zalman VF1000 mounted by the previous owner, who said the card was a good fit for an HTPC. I suppose the subtext here is that it's quiet. I'll pair it with an amd64 3700+, it will be a bit overkill for that sort of CPU, but it was cheap, and supposedly silent.

@Tetrium

I think VLB was the only time in history they made them big just because otherwise they wouldn't fit the slot 😁 😁 😁

jarreboum wrote:

Are you guys serious with the 8800 comments? Because I may have just bought a 8800GT a couple days ago... It comes with a Zalman VF1000 mounted by the previous owner, who said the card was a good fit for an HTPC. I suppose the subtext here is that it's quiet. I'll pair it with an amd64 3700+, it will be a bit overkill for that sort of CPU, but it was cheap, and supposedly silent.

Downclock it, keep it cool, and hope for the best.

meljor wrote:

jarreboum wrote:

Are you guys serious with the 8800 comments? Because I may have just bought a 8800GT a couple days ago... It comes with a Zalman VF1000 mounted by the previous owner, who said the card was a good fit for an HTPC. I suppose the subtext here is that it's quiet. I'll pair it with an amd64 3700+, it will be a bit overkill for that sort of CPU, but it was cheap, and supposedly silent.

Downclock it, keep it cool, and hope for the best.

damn

meljor wrote:

@Tetrium

I think VLB was the only time in history they made them big just because otherwise they wouldn't fit the slot 😁 😁 😁

Not really true.

and apparently these 2 together form a single display adapter 🤣

jarreboum wrote:

Are you guys serious with the 8800 comments? Because I may have just bought a 8800GT a couple days ago... It comes with a Zalman VF1000 mounted by the previous owner, who said the card was a good fit for an HTPC. I suppose the subtext here is that it's quiet. I'll pair it with an amd64 3700+, it will be a bit overkill for that sort of CPU, but it was cheap, and supposedly silent.

I had a vf1000 paired with an hd4850 in an htpc. It was very effective and quiet. Generally, though, you want the decode features of a modern GPU available to take the load off of a CPU; especially an older one. The 8800 is not capable of hardware decode of some modern codecs, but is pretty good. I am using a GTX750ti in one HTPC, and a GTX1050ti in another. The 1050 because integrated Intel graphics couldn't run 4k60p.

I'm not necessarily 'brand crazy', but for my experiments with programming oldskool hardware, I do find it important to have 'the real thing', as a reference.
So if I'm designing a routine to play audio on an LPT DAC, it helps to use a real Covox, so you have a reference of what it should sound like.
Or if I'm programming a Sound Blaster/AdLib routine, it helps to use a real OPL2, so you know the timings will be correct.
Or when I'm doing NTSC artifacting graphics on CGA, it helps to use a real IBM CGA card, so you know you're getting the right colours.
When I'm experimenting with auto-EOI on the programmable interrupt controller, it helps to have a system with real Intel 8259A chips, so that you get the proper behaviour in each mode.
Etc.

The more I experiment with early PC hardware, the more I find just how flawed a lot of clones are.