The later AMD AGP cards, such as HD3850 AGP, possibly also HD4670 and HD4650 didn't have any heatsink on the Pcie to Agp bridge chip.
This caused intermittent black screens especially in hot climates.

The solution was to fit a Heatsink on it. Not easy as it has a non flat top to it. I simply used some sikkaflex to secure it in position with some
heatsink compound between the heatsink and bridge chip. never had a black screen or bsod or reboot again, and with some mods got 890mhz
out of it. Mine was/is a HD3850. I'm tempted to rebuild my old system with the Pentium M just to do some benchmarks, maybe later this Year.

chrisNova777 wrote:

the fx series is known for having crap performance .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_series

I use an FX5200 in my Pentium 3 933Mhz Win98SE build and it is about as fast as a GF3 Ti200 with no AA/AF, and *faster* than the GF3 when using AA/AF. It is quite fast for games like Jedi Knight 2, Half-Life and Unreal. I usually play in 1280x1024 (with some AA/AF) or 1024x768 (with higher AA/AF). The FX5200 also is quieter (no fan, only HS) and uses a little less power.

I have not tried these cards in a faster build, so I'm not sure how much the P3 933 is holding either card back.

Tetrium wrote:

Didn't the 9800s have problems with overheating and slow death due to the poor cooling solutions that were implemented for them?

We really have no idea why the R3x0 cards seem to fail. Or even what exactly is failing.

Imperious wrote:

The later AMD AGP cards, such as HD3850 AGP, possibly also HD4670 and HD4650 didn't have any heatsink on the Pcie to Agp bridge chip.

I don't think I ever saw the bridge have a heatsink. Even the X800XL did not have one.

Nintendawg wrote:

RacoonRider wrote:

Btw, I would pick 9500Pro over 9600XT any time.

Why? Not saying anyone is wrong, just wanting to learn more about this.

Radeon 9500Pro: 275MHz/540MHz Core/memory, 128-bit, 8 Pixel shaders, 4 Vertex shaders, 8 Texture mapping units, 8 Render output units
Radeon 9600XT : 500MHz/600MHz Core/memory, 128-bit, 4 Pixel shaders, 2 Vertex shaders, 4 Texture mapping units, 4 Render output units

Where top-end videocards were like this:
Radeon 9800Pro: 380MHz/700MHz Core/memory, 256-bit, 8 Pixel shaders, 4 Vertex shaders, 8 Texture mapping units, 8 Render output units

9500Pro has R300 (Radeon 9700) core with bus width reduced to 128-bit and lower core/mem clock, but that was not enough performance hit and the 9500Pro stayed close to high-end. That's why ATI's next middle-class videocard, 9600Pro, received only half of then-new R350 core, and that half was called RV350. 9600XT (RV360) is a highly improved version of 9600Pro, but it still has only half of R350 core.

Back in the day, when 9500Pro was out of production and 9600Pro came at the same pricetag, people were hunting all over for 9500Pro, so good was the videocard.

clueless1 wrote:

chrisNova777 wrote:

the fx series is known for having crap performance .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_series

I use an FX5200 in my Pentium 3 933Mhz Win98SE build and it is about as fast as a GF3 Ti200 with no AA/AF, and *faster* than the GF3 when using AA/AF. It is quite fast for games like Jedi Knight 2, Half-Life and Unreal. I usually play in 1280x1024 (with some AA/AF) or 1024x768 (with higher AA/AF). The FX5200 also is quieter (no fan, only HS) and uses a little less power.

I have not tried these cards in a faster build, so I'm not sure how much the P3 933 is holding either card back.

The FX cards aren't that bad if you think of them as DX8 cards and remember that nVidia changed the naming/numbering scheme with that family. E.g. the FX5200 was not meant to match the 4200 with no AA/AF.

According to the reviews back then the fully fledged FX 5200 (not the horrible 64-bit variant) should perform better than an MX460 with no AA/AF, and match the 4200 Ti with everything on - the FX family doesn't suffer as much of a penalty hit with AA/AF as the previous cards.

RacoonRider wrote:

Radeon 9500Pro: 275MHz/540MHz Core/memory, 128-bit, 8 Pixel shaders, 4 Vertex shaders, 8 Texture mapping units, 8 Render output […]
Show full quote

Nintendawg wrote:

RacoonRider wrote:

Btw, I would pick 9500Pro over 9600XT any time.

Why? Not saying anyone is wrong, just wanting to learn more about this.

Radeon 9500Pro: 275MHz/540MHz Core/memory, 128-bit, 8 Pixel shaders, 4 Vertex shaders, 8 Texture mapping units, 8 Render output units
Radeon 9600XT : 500MHz/600MHz Core/memory, 128-bit, 4 Pixel shaders, 2 Vertex shaders, 4 Texture mapping units, 4 Render output units

Where top-end videocards were like this:
Radeon 9800Pro: 380MHz/700MHz Core/memory, 256-bit, 8 Pixel shaders, 4 Vertex shaders, 8 Texture mapping units, 8 Render output units

9500Pro has R300 (Radeon 9700) core with bus width reduced to 128-bit and lower core/mem clock, but that was not enough performance hit and the 9500Pro stayed close to high-end. That's why ATI's next middle-class videocard, 9600Pro, received only half of then-new R350 core, and that half was called RV350. 9600XT (RV360) is a highly improved version of 9600Pro, but it still has only half of R350 core.

Back in the day, when 9500Pro was out of production and 9600Pro came at the same pricetag, people were hunting all over for 9500Pro, so good was the videocard.

The smart ones looked for the 9500 Non-Pro because there was a high success rate for unlocking extra pipes to make the core into a vanilla 9700. The memory was still slower than a 9700, but those extra pipes unlocking made a huge difference.

swaaye wrote:

Imperious wrote:

The later AMD AGP cards, such as HD3850 AGP, possibly also HD4670 and HD4650 didn't have any heatsink on the Pcie to Agp bridge chip.

I don't think I ever saw the bridge have a heatsink. Even the X800XL did not have one.

You quite likely are correct there, but as far as putting a heatsink on it is concerned, it also fixed a friends card as well as my own. Both are Powercolor models, and
if my memory serves me well, they ran a slightly higher GPU voltage than the Sapphire and some other Brands, so that could be why they weren't as stable.

On another note, I just spied this at Aliexpress, a brand new 7800gs AGP, If You are in the USA the price is bearable, but no way am I paying 1.5x because they keep selling everything in US dollars.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping- … _id=11621003573

Imperious wrote:

You quite likely are correct there, but as far as putting a heatsink on it is concerned, it also fixed a friends card as well as […]
Show full quote

swaaye wrote:

Imperious wrote:

The later AMD AGP cards, such as HD3850 AGP, possibly also HD4670 and HD4650 didn't have any heatsink on the Pcie to Agp bridge chip.

I don't think I ever saw the bridge have a heatsink. Even the X800XL did not have one.

You quite likely are correct there, but as far as putting a heatsink on it is concerned, it also fixed a friends card as well as my own. Both are Powercolor models, and
if my memory serves me well, they ran a slightly higher GPU voltage than the Sapphire and some other Brands, so that could be why they weren't as stable.

On another note, I just spied this at Aliexpress, a brand new 7800gs AGP, If You are in the USA the price is bearable, but no way am I paying 1.5x because they keep selling everything in US dollars.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping- … _id=11621003573

Those guys at AliExpress seem to be reading this forum 🤣!
Didn't someone from Vogons buy their s370 board and reported back about it?

And didn't the GF6600s have a heatsink on their bridge chip?

I'd bet those AliExpress people will be starting to sell AT cases very soon! 😁

Imperious wrote:

You quite likely are correct there, but as far as putting a heatsink on it is concerned, it also fixed a friends card as well as […]
Show full quote

swaaye wrote:

Imperious wrote:

The later AMD AGP cards, such as HD3850 AGP, possibly also HD4670 and HD4650 didn't have any heatsink on the Pcie to Agp bridge chip.

I don't think I ever saw the bridge have a heatsink. Even the X800XL did not have one.

You quite likely are correct there, but as far as putting a heatsink on it is concerned, it also fixed a friends card as well as my own. Both are Powercolor models, and
if my memory serves me well, they ran a slightly higher GPU voltage than the Sapphire and some other Brands, so that could be why they weren't as stable.

On another note, I just spied this at Aliexpress, a brand new 7800gs AGP, If You are in the USA the price is bearable, but no way am I paying 1.5x because they keep selling everything in US dollars.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping- … _id=11621003573

For that price you're better off waiting for a 7950GT AGP to surface on ebay. There used to be a bunch of them for sale there a couple of years back for around $50-$60 each. I wish I had grabbed one then.

alexanrs wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

chrisNova777 wrote:

the fx series is known for having crap performance .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_series

I use an FX5200 in my Pentium 3 933Mhz Win98SE build and it is about as fast as a GF3 Ti200 with no AA/AF, and *faster* than the GF3 when using AA/AF. It is quite fast for games like Jedi Knight 2, Half-Life and Unreal. I usually play in 1280x1024 (with some AA/AF) or 1024x768 (with higher AA/AF). The FX5200 also is quieter (no fan, only HS) and uses a little less power.

I have not tried these cards in a faster build, so I'm not sure how much the P3 933 is holding either card back.

The FX cards aren't that bad if you think of them as DX8 cards and remember that nVidia changed the naming/numbering scheme with that family. E.g. the FX5200 was not meant to match the 4200 with no AA/AF.

According to the reviews back then the fully fledged FX 5200 (not the horrible 64-bit variant) should perform better than an MX460 with no AA/AF, and match the 4200 Ti with everything on - the FX family doesn't suffer as much of a penalty hit with AA/AF as the previous cards.

Right. People often list the 4200 Ti as the best Win98SE card, which makes the FX5200 a great Win98SE card. The only DX9-capable game I have on my Win98 box is Unreal (with the oldunreal.com unofficial 227 patch). And guess what--on the FX5200, Unreal is faster with D3D9 than with any other D3D or opengl.

Did Win9x/me 2D GUI speed benefits from these newer cards or they were already optimized for win nt subsystems?

And what about VGA analog output? Was it improved in any way or previous cards already arrived at the top of the quality?

Imperious wrote:

You quite likely are correct there, but as far as putting a heatsink on it is concerned, it also fixed a friends card as well as my own. Both are Powercolor models, and
if my memory serves me well, they ran a slightly higher GPU voltage than the Sapphire and some other Brands, so that could be why they weren't as stable.

Interesting. I've never used a Radeon HD AGP. Though the cards with that bridge have always been trouble. Even the X800XL that I had was troublesome. I remember a year when ATI was releasing Catalyst package after package that broke D3D with that card.

Imperious wrote:

The later AMD AGP cards, such as HD3850 AGP, possibly also HD4670 and HD4650 didn't have any heatsink on the Pcie to Agp bridge chip.
This caused intermittent black screens especially in hot climates.

The solution was to fit a Heatsink on it.

I bought a Visiontek branded HD2600XT AGP on eBay about 6 months ago. I was impressed with the copper heatsinks on both sides of the card. However, I noticed the heatsink fails to actually touch the bridge chip. It goes over it, but there's a small bit of clearance in there.
It's not the first time I've seen clearance problems on video card heatsinks. I don't understand why video card companies spend the money on extravagant cooling systems and then are too sloppy to get the clearances right.

I have an original Sapphire Radeon HD3850, will try to photo it if you want. It's been in my XP rig for years, CRYSIS loved it.

Just had a look at my Club 3D AGP HD 4670 and its bridge chip seems to be on the other side of the PCB and only has some kind of pink stuff surrounding the bridge chip. It never game me any black screens (obviously I cannot guarantee it never did, but if I did have problems with it, I would have remembered that), the major letdown was its poor performance which wasn't the card's fault anyway (Barton 3200+ rig).

But I do remember that system having very few expansion cards otherwise, so perhaps it was simply given enough cooling. I will take bridgechip-cooling into consideration when using these bridged cards.

Bullmecha: I have 2 of the same Sapphire cards laying around, feel free to share your experiences with yours 😀

Every time I've seen that pink "pad" on the bridge chip I thought it was missing an heatsink but I didn't know it actually was released that way!
But did drivers support Win9x?

386SX wrote:

Every time I've seen that pink "pad" on the bridge chip I thought it was missing an heatsink but I didn't know it actually was released that way!
But did drivers support Win9x?

I am pretty much 100% positive it never had a heatsink on the bridge chip, I bought it brand new in/from a regular computer shop and a friend of mine bought the same model, also back when it was brand new. They had never been opened before and I doubt the seller (which was either a real computer shop or a big national seller selling many hundreds of products at any given time) would even have any reason to remove some tiny heatsink from it's own products for...to steal a tiny heatsink? Wouldn't make any sense, the card wasn't very cheap to begin with (something like €140???).

I don't know, I used my HD 4670 in XP. From top of my head the most recent graphics card I ever used in 9x was a GF3 Ti200 but I'm pretty much sure that other members have used much more recent cards with 9x

Tetrium wrote:

386SX wrote:

Every time I've seen that pink "pad" on the bridge chip I thought it was missing an heatsink but I didn't know it actually was released that way!
But did drivers support Win9x?

I am pretty much 100% positive it never had a heatsink on the bridge chip, I bought it brand new in/from a regular computer shop and a friend of mine bought the same model, also back when it was brand new. They had never been opened before and I doubt the seller (which was either a real computer shop or a big national seller selling many hundreds of products at any given time) would even have any reason to remove some tiny heatsink from it's own products for...to steal a tiny heatsink? Wouldn't make any sense, the card wasn't very cheap to begin with (something like €140???).

I don't know, I used my HD 4670 in XP. From top of my head the most recent graphics card I ever used in 9x was a GF3 Ti200 but I'm pretty much sure that other members have used much more recent cards with 9x

I hope to accelerate the GUI and the whole system as much as I can. The 3200+ feels quiet a beast even today! (vintage comment) 😁

The fastest/most recent AGP card I have that works in Win98 is the Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. It is quite fast even with 6x AA and 16x AF (as high as the card goes). In Unreal, it is nearly as fast with 6X/16X as with no AA/AF. I also have a 6800GS AGP but sadly no official driver support for Win98. There is a hack but I've heard it is not worth it. Strangely, I believe the 6800 Ultra is supported in Win98. Not sure why the 6800GS is not.