That CPU is way to slow or that GPU way to powerful. Reviews show that most reviewers used a Northwood Pentium 4 with that card.

Yeah, I know this already. Massive bottleneck but I'd rather use the FX5950 then have it sitting in a box.

Don't want to use it with my Pentium 4 3.4Ghz rig as that's got a 6800GT currently in it which is obviously a lot better than the FX5950. Figure I'd bleed that AGP 2X slot for all it's worth haha

On that note Mau1wurf1977, do you see any disadvantage with running this combination besides not being able to take full advantage of what the FX5950 has to offer?

borgie83 wrote:

On that note Mau1wurf1977, do you see any disadvantage with running this combination besides not being able to take full advantage of what the FX5950 has to offer?

I've never understood why so many here on Vogons have problems with running much quicker GPU's in slower systems than they were designed for. Only thing that is going to happen is that you'll be CPU limited. That is better than being both CPU and GPU limited.

I'd say keep it and go crazy! Probably Doom 3 that would take the most advantage out of this system, then again, I don't think Half-Life 2 would run very well.

@vetz, yeah I don't normally have issues with running a more powerful gpu with a slower cpu. Rather max out both the slot 1 and agp slots than have one of them lacking. I also have a geforce 2 TI that I could use instead but I believe I'd get better performance out of the above combination. Out of curiosity, you wouldn't know what the most well suited gpu would be for a Pentium III 1ghz?

Btw, I remember back in the day when doom 3 got released, everyone was freaking out about how their systems wernt powerful enough to play it. It really pushed pc's to the limit at the time. I was still using a pentium II 333mhz system so I didn't even bother. I jumped from that to a core2duo which ran doom 3 fine. Getting to the point though, I didn't think 1ghz would be enough for max settings? I could be wrong though.

Doom III will be playable. I completed the game on much worse.

Awesome! I'm hoping when you say playable though, you mean on max settings?

How do you guys think Unreal Tournament 2003 would go?

Half-Life 2 was somewhat playable on a Tualatin 1.4 and 6600GT on Medium Details and 1024x768. It was mostly 25-30fps.

UT2003 should be quite playable actually 😀

Doom 3?

🤣

That game can dip fps on a Core 2 Duo with a 7900GTX.

I do accept the point about a more powerful GPU. E.g. when looking at Splinter Cell benchmarks even the FX5950 Ultra struggles at 1600 x 1200.

So it all depends on the game I guess.

@Mau1wurf1977, that's what I was worried about. I guess I won't know until I try I guess.

What about Dawn of War and Warcraft 3? Oh and Postal 2?! How good was that game!...still got memories of running around urinating on people until they threw up. No wonder it got banned.

Sorry I'm not familiar with these games. You're right, you got to try it out and see how it all plays together.

that system should be able to handle ut2003, nfs underground, wc3 well. dunno bout dow. gta3 is a cpu hog. all this based on my old piii 1ghz + 4200ti rig

Force 4x MSAA, anisotropic filtering and run 1920x1200 and you will appreciate as much GPU as you can get if you also want 60fps.

sgt76 wrote:

gta3 is a cpu hog.

I thought GTA3 was more of an overdraw hog which GTAVC avoided being.

So far I've played these newish games on my 1.59GHz PIII-S/9800Pro/1.5GB system. So the CPU is faster, but the 9800 Pro is fairly similar in performance to the FX5950. And I doubt that having 1.5GB of RAM actually improves the performance of these old games, but I run XP SP3 on this thing. I ran most of these games at medium high to high @ 1280x960. I wasn't aiming for 60fps, though; 30fps is just fine for me.

-NFS Underground (2003)
-NFS Most Wanted (2005) (I used an x1950 AGP to get the most out of this one)
-GTA Vice City (2003)
-Doom III (2004)
-Dungeon Siege (2002)
-Midnight Club II (2003)
-Thief Deadly Shadows (2004)
-Painkiller (2004)
-TES: Morrowind (2002)
-Armed and Dangerous (2003)
-Splinter Cell (2002)
-Tron 2.0 (2002)
-Far Cry (2003)
-Plus a handful of games from before 2002 that would probably run fine on a 500MHz system.

I know we're not talking about OSes here but I think the sweet spot OS wise for a 59xx is with win98. It really is the fastest card that you can get and still be compatible all the way back with the first release of detonator drivers. If I was running an XP machine I would use something faster than a 59xx because at that point you've already lost compatibility with ancient drivers.

For Example with the 5900 you'll get texture problems with No One Lives Forever on anything past the original detonator drivers. I haven't tried playing that game with newer hardware and drivers on XP I would suppose it wouldn't work though...If you have that game to try I'd be interested in the results.

Yep, of the NV3x cards, the FX 5700 is rather undesirable because it can't run the oldest FX drivers. The 6000 series cards are of course trouble too in this way.

Shagittarius wrote:

For Example with the 5900 you'll get texture problems with No One Lives Forever on anything past the original detonator drivers. I haven't tried playing that game with newer hardware and drivers on XP I would suppose it wouldn't work though...If you have that game to try I'd be interested in the results.

NOLF works fine for me on 162.50 forceware with a 7800gs on XP.

So judging from what I've read so far, it looks like this combination could run most games up until around 2003ish. Comfortably that is. Just wish my slot 1 440BX chipset board supported 133mhz FSB as this would add a bit of speed overall. Basically trying to get the most out of this chipset as I prefer it when it comes to retro builds. I would've went with a socket 370 board if I could've managed to find one with an intel chipset and AGP/ISA slots.

Regarding the OS, definitely sticking with windows 98 se (normally always do). Besides windows 7, it's my favourite OS due to real mode dos whilst having great compatibility and decent usb support.

Btw, I think what I'm concerned about is that I also have a P4 3.4/6800GT combination on an asus p4p800se board and on max settings C&C2 and RA2 lagged. These games were made around 2002-2003. If my pentium 4 can't handle those games, how could the above combination handle for instance UT2003 or Doom 3? Unless Westwood just badly coded their games...