I stopped by the local computer shop today to see if they had any interesting old parts. Last time I was there I spotted a beige IDE DVDROM, but sadly it was gone. I did buy a black IDE DVDRW drive, then I spotted this. They have stuff loose in boxes on shelves, including one with video cards. When I had looked before there was nothing of any real interest - the few AGP cards I saw before were Nvidia 6200s and similar. But this one caught my eye. A closer look and rather than the 9800 Pro I hoped for, it was a 9800 SE. I decided to roll the dice, and I got the card and the drive for $10.00. I tested the card out today, and it worked with no problems. It's a 128 bit card ( just as the 9800 SE I already have is), but it unlocked to eight pipelines with Omega drivers with no issues, and completed 3D 2001. I then removed it, cleaned it and oiled the fan bearing and replaced the thermal paste. I had been planning on removing the 9800 SE that's in my low dollar PCChips P4 system to compare its performance in my Soyo K7V Dragon Plus, but now I have two of them so I don't have to! I tested it in that system, but it only had a 700 MHz Duron, so it only scored a little over 5,000 points, where the Quadro4 700 XGL was scoring just under 5,000. But the Palomino XP2000+ I purchased arrived today, and now the Quadro scores just over 10,000 points so I'm looking forward to seeing how it does with the 9800 SE.
I asked the worker who helped me if they ever get old motherboards that have bad capacitors, and he took my phone number and told me that he would give me a call if they get any old stuff like that. If that works out, it would be great.
"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey
