Yes, I do want 3D capabilities. That is why I'm too sad about this Diamond. About eight years ago I could find every pci vga that I wanted in our country. Today there are NO pci 3D accelerators or cards. Just 2D PCI or 3D AGP.
This is a S7 machine, so I doubt the Trident Blade3D isn't fast enough for it... It IS faster than the Virge. I, too, might hunt a Trident Blade3D out of curiosity (and to replace a PCI Virge in a Pentium).
Anyway, if shopping in Argentina is anything like Brazil, know that many sellers have no idea of what they are selling. I've seen VLB cards advertised as PCI, for example. Try to search for generic terms and avoid narrowing stuff down with filters and have patience. I found some neat stuff in Brazil doing that, from ads that suffered greatly from lack of information.
If one of those shows up at reasonable price I'll buy it. But nothing. I do searching as you said but all I find are 2D cards. There are two S3 Virge 4mb PCI but I want something faster. Meanwhile I still waiting for refund.
You are from Argentina, right? I found these ads
1) http://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-59067 … c-pci-y-agp-_JM - the seller is using stock photos, but they do show both an ATi Rage and a SiS 6326 PCI card. Worth asking him if he actually has those. Also VERY cheap.
2) http://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-59596 … a-p4020-gfn-_JM - Permedia 2 chip. Not very fast, but better than a Virge... I think. A bit too pricey for what it is, though.
3) http://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-60029 … e-video-pci-_JM - OP DX9-era hardware.
4) http://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-59644 … dfx-voodoo2-_JM - Nifty Voodoo2. Price is not stellar, but according to a conversion tool I found it is roughly R$150, which is something around US$40. Not a great price, but not the worst I've seen.
Yes alexanrs, I'm from Argentina!
I saw all of those ads. The first vendor doesn't have PCI cards anymore. The others are too pricey for what they are, specially the Voodoo, which doesn't include the cable. The price conversion is right, it's around u$s 40 - 45. If I couldn't find anything better than a S3 Virge in the next weeks I will buy one to give it a shot. Those are at correct price. I don't know the Permedia 2 chip. I will search for benchmarks to compare it to a S3 Virge. The Geforce 5500 is just too overkill.
Thank you very much for doing a search alexanrs! It was very kind of you 😎
wrote:3) http://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-60029 … e-video-pci-_JM - OP DX9-era hardware.
Only 64 bit memory path. Still way faster than other choices, and unlike Permedia 2 it will render everything properly.
Trident Blade 3D.... that brings back memories... if I had one of those I'd replace the Banshee in my K6 rig with it and add a voodoo 2 for glide. The Blade 3D (9880) is fast enough for most 1996-1999 games at playable framerates and it always renders correctly. Used to have one back in the day.
I've used a Blade 3D PCI (8MB?) in one of my rigs a long time ago, it was part of my 98SE build, Socket 7 ATX SiS chipset. Drivers seemed a bit weird, but after I figured that out, the card worked but as I was still kinda a noob back then and that s7 rig was a testbed for several things (iirc I also tested a custom-made HDD suspension system....if one could call that thing I created a 'system' 🤣), I don't remember how good or how bad it performed compared to contemporary graphics cards, but I do remember I wasn't plagued by annoying problems like crashes and other graphical mishaps, it did seem to work at least for displaying things and it did run the couple games I threw at it (though it wasn't superfast).
Tseng ET6000 + Voodoo 1 works pretty well. Great 2D card with a great 3D card.
Hey Tetrium could you tell me more about that thing for hard disk drives? I'm curious about it 😎
Guys, I found a TNT2 M64 32mb pci. The guy let me try it before buying it. The only problem is that the fan is broken (no big deal, I can change it in less than a minute). The price is excellent (about ten dollars). I will go for it today and give it a shot. If everything is allright I will buy it. I know it's a little overkill for my P55C rig, but it's the best I found at decent price.
Meanwhile I still waiting for refund. I think the seller will not give my money back... If that happens, I'll try to repair it. I downloaded Riva 128 datasheet and MK2715 datasheet to start reading a little.
Get a plain TNT2, they are dirt cheap and much better than the M64.
wrote:Hey Tetrium could you tell me more about that thing for hard disk drives? I'm curious about it 😎
I think this would be a good read, it's not a very long article and it's also fairly recent.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article8-page2.html
I did it 100% DIY-style about 8 years ago and I don't think I saved any pics.
But back then I only had drives which were old even back then and quite often I found them to be very noisy. I did already know (remember that I was only into retro computing for a few years back then and my collection was a lot smaller, so I had much fewer options to choose from) that harddrives needed cooling, otherwise I'd just wrap em in some old worn-out t-shirt or something. But I also noticed that in several builds of mine, it wasn't only the (whining) noise of the drives which I was perceiving as noise, but that the other major source of this noice was vibration (more common in cheaper less sturdy cases) as the noice could be both increased as well as decreased by changing other components in the area. For instance, putting the CDROM reader in the lowest 5.25in slot instead of the top one (which I'd usually do), made the front part of the case near the area where the harddrive was mounted, more stiff, so it would significantly decrease vibration (resonating) in the front of the case and thereby decrease noise.
But I got interested and started thinking of ways to further decrease the amount of vibration of the case due to the harddrive and the best onbious way was to completely decouple it from the case.
Then I got creative (somewhat), I ended up thinking up a quick fix by removing the drive from it's 3.5in bay, then screwing back the 4 screws to almost completely into the screwholes of the drive and then using 4 of those wires (I dunno what kind of wires I exactly used, possibly it was those iron threads with green plastic around it so it would not short), then tighten the 4 screws so the 4 wires would be firmly attached to the drive and then mount the 4 wires individually inside one of the 5.25in bays, basically pulling and loosening all 4 wires till the drive hung horizontally and then secures the 4 wires to the case by a simple knot.
It worked perfectly well and was supercheap! ...till the case got moved, each time I did that (for instance if I were to put the case on it's side to add or remove expansion cards) I would have to 'recalibrate' the 4 wires again and after a while that got a bit too tedious and as I had already 'proven' that it kinda worked and as I was moving to a new place, I retired that system and never put it back together after my move.
These days things are a bit different though, silent drives are all over the place now so if you have a little money, you can just get a drive that doesn't need to be silenced in the first place (I got a lot of 20GB laptop drives, these are small, very fast and excellently unheard of 😁), but if you use an old drive and the sound annoys you, I'd advice you to use the DIY methods you can find on the web, like the one I linked to in the start of this reply 😀
wrote:Get a plain TNT2, they are dirt cheap and much better than the M64.
I don't think his board has an AGP slot
Jajaja that's nice Tetrium! I'll take a look at it. My old rig is noooooooisy. It doesn't bother me because it's not my main rig (my main rig is an AMD 5800k made with silent quality components). But if I can decrease the noise of it for free or very little money it would be nice.
Regarding the VGA, the M64 is the only card I found at good price. I'm assuming it would be faster than Riva 128zx. Remember that my rig is a P55C 200 (I will replace it sooner for a P55C 233) so I don't need an ultra hyper mega fast card. I think the M64 will be bottlenecked by the P55C anyway, so it will be good enough for what my processor can do.
I'd say just get the M64 card, it's PCI, it's not bad at all and you can even boast about it's 32MB RAM 😜
My own previous experiences with M64 cards have been pretty good, but it's about as fast as a TNT card (like a Viper V550) so it's not gonna make every computer faster, but it's still nice to have I think.
Guys I went to see this seller. I got surprised. He has a lot of retro stuff.
I was looking and looking when I found this puppies:
My eyes almost fell of my face. A Diamond Monster 3D 4mb and a Voodoo II. Both with cables. Don't hate me, but I must confess how much I paid for them: less than four dollars each 😵 😵 😵
It was a great day today for retro-ing. Now I will clean this beauties and test them. Also I bought a bunch of other stuff at ridiculous (low) prices. I will post them on the correct topic.
Woah! Congratulations!
Great finds ramiro77. Either one will be perfect for your P200MMX 😀
Ooohh, the pain......
P55C 200? Not anymore. Now I have to choose between P55C 233 and Cyrix PR 233 because I bought a lot of stuff in there 😎
I'm astonished for this findings. He also gave me for free some old stuff, so if I take in account that, these cards costed me less than four dollars each.
I told him to call me if he finds more of this 3DFX cards. I really like them and they are very rare here. More rare to find one at this prices.
Less that four dollars each! What a steal. Nice.
As choice what about a Matrox Millennium + Voodoo2 8MB? Seems quiet time correct and more compatible to me. But the Riva 128 PCI is still a great card too, I even ran Thief2 with its great D3D speed.
