Voodoo III PCI.

Or the onboard video + Voodoo II SLI.

True. Voodoo3 or 2 are good choices.
And well... Obvious choices. On the other hand, what are there else to choose from?

GF2 MX400, FX5200 PCI

brostenen wrote:

True. Voodoo3 or 2 are good choices.
And well... Obvious choices. On the other hand, what are there else to choose from?

Geforce 2 MX, Geforce FX 5200, Radeon 7000/7500 and Radeon 9200.

bjt wrote:

GF2 MX400, FX5200 PCI

Im too slow 😀

Thanks.
I will go for radeon on this one then.
Have found a really cheap 7000.
Is it btw faster or slower than a TNT1?

Its faster but not very much 😀

This is with an OEM Radeon 7000 PCI, probably with gimped memory bus.

GL Quake 1024*768 32bit

Stock with a Coppermine Celeron 1100, should be about the same speed as your P3 933,

With the Radeon overclocked

for high-end pentium3 i'll go with geforce3 or ti4200, they should let you play games up to 2003.

I have a similar computer. I've been thinking about installing a Radeon 9250 or an 8400GS. I do wonder how well these cards would be cooled, since they are passive cards and that area of the Deskpro case seems like it could turn into an oven.

I've read some internet posts from at least a couple people who got working h264 acceleration with the 8400GS on a Pentium 3, but they were not running Windows. I don't know if Windows drivers allow that or not.
It's a nice compact machine and I like the design. I've gotten interested in the idea of turning it into a HTPC for a standard-def CRT television, mainly for running CRT-appropriate emulators but if it can play video then that's a bonus.

BTW - some of these machines can run Tualatins. Since yours is a 933MHz it might be a late enough board to support that. You can check that out based on the S-spec code on the chipset.

I've had a similar Compaq back then and I remember having trouble getting a PCI video card to work reliably. BIOS would always switch back to onboard video. Therefore, I would try a cheap PCI card first (preferably one you have laying around) before investing money.

Or, you know, Voodoo 2 SLI would always work, but is maybe a bit underpowered for this system. Not to mention expensive.

I'd vote FX 5200 PCI. I benchmarked one of them (I forget what I titled the thread so I'll have to dig for it 🤣 ) - it performed better than many older AGP cards, at least in a P4 system. And it will do DX8 which GeForce 2/Voodoo3/etc will not do. Just make sure you get a 128-bit card (from what I've read all 256MB are 128-bit; that's what I picked up). There is a Quadro FX that's based on 5200 Ultra (FX 600 PCI or something like that), which is probably somewhat faster, but they also seem to be somewhat rare.

Thanks all.
I will look for a fx5200 PCI then. As the system is PCI only.
For a starter I will use my Diamond TNT PCI 16mb first.

In the absence of a FX5600 PCI (very hard to find) Radeon 9100 PCI, preferably by Visiontek because their version has higher clocks on the core and memory. A FX5500 PCI would also be a better choice than a FX5200.

sliderider wrote:

In the absence of a FX5600 PCI (very hard to find) Radeon 9100 PCI, preferably by Visiontek because their version has higher clocks on the core and memory. A FX5500 PCI would also be a better choice than a FX5200.

Forgot about the elusive 5600s - that would be faster indeed. FX 5500 is the same as FX 5200 (same GPU, can also be 64-bit or 128-bit memory), but is supposed to have slightly higher core clock (270/400 vs 250/400). From experience with 5200s over the years, that extra 20MHz doesn't do a whole lot, so I'd consider the 5200 and 5500 interchangeable as long as you're comparing "apples to apples" on the memory (e.g. avoid the 64-bit cards).

Quadro FX 600 PCI, which tend to be easier found than PCI FX 5600 IME, would be roughly equivalent to the 5600 as well. 😊

Isn't the FX5600 also the same GPU as FX5200 and FX5500, but with different clocks? PCI GeForceFX cards aren't cheap, so I'd suggest finding the cheapest 128bit model and then see how high it clocks.

I had an FX 5600 XT that was actually slower than a vanilla FX 5200 (not the 64bit one). It was severely underclocked, so you could raise its core clock quite a bit.

I tried and found it virtually impossible to buy a Geforce FX PCI and 128bit memory.

I think a safer bet in order to not waste your time is look for a Geforce 4 MX...seems to be more in abundance in PCI.

The 5600 is a slightly faster chip than the 5200/5500. I could see a 5200 Ultra being faster than some 5600s perhaps.

Voodoo5 pci...

F2bnp wrote:

Isn't the FX5600 also the same GPU as FX5200 and FX5500, but with different clocks? PCI GeForceFX cards aren't cheap, so I'd suggest finding the cheapest 128bit model and then see how high it clocks.

I had an FX 5600 XT that was actually slower than a vanilla FX 5200 (not the 64bit one). It was severely underclocked, so you could raise its core clock quite a bit.

Not quite the same chip. FX 5600 is NV31, FX 5200/5500 is NV34. TechReport has an article here that explores the differences: https://techreport.com/review/4838/a-peek-at- … 5200-and-5600/2

The summary is:
- FX 5600 (NV31) is 130nm, like the FX 5800 (NV30), while FX 5200/5500 (NV34) are 150nm
- NV31 supports lossless color and z-compression, NV34 does not
- There may be more shader power in NV31

The 5600s will generally also have faster RAM (500MHz+) than 5200/5500, so while a 5200 may be able to hit 300MHz+ on the core to try and "match up" with the 5600, it likely will not be able to match memory performance, especially with the lack of color and z-compression. The exception to this is the 5200 Ultra (and Quadro FX 600 PCI) which has clockspeeds more in-line with the 5600 series, however the lack of color and z-compression (and potential differences in shader power) may still give the 5600 an edge in certain settings. I looked for a 5200 vs 5600 review and found both Ultra cards compared by Anandtech:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/1080/6

The 5600 appears to command a healthy lead in many tests, despite the cards having roughly similar clocks (5600U is 350/700, 5200U is 325/650, both are "four pipes").

5600XT is one of those odd cards, like 5700VE, that has a fancy sounding name but performance (and hopefully price) is very much entry level due to the low clockspeed (afaik 5600XT is the slowest clocked GeForce FX) and slow memory. 😵

Triton wrote:

I tried and found it virtually impossible to buy a Geforce FX PCI and 128bit memory.

I think a safer bet in order to not waste your time is look for a Geforce 4 MX...seems to be more in abundance in PCI.

256MB cards, as far as I know and have ever seen, are 128-bit. I know the XFX and PNY 256MB variants are 128-bit (I've owned both). Here's a few listings on ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/121704388997
http://www.ebay.com/itm/281748810109

GeForce 4 MX isn't bad either (back around '03 I had an FX 5200 and MX 440, both AGP, and they were pretty comparable), but there's lots of very cheap 64-bit variants there too; especially if going MX 4000.

I found my thread too:
Some nVidia cards and 3DMark2001

I misspoke earlier when I said this was done with a P4 - it was done with an Athlon64. 😊

My bad then. Very thorough explanation, thanks!