bloodem wrote on 2023-05-12, 14:24:

Sorry, but my K6-2 500 to Thunderbird 1.33 GHz upgrade still wins in terms of performance and stability jump (especially if your […]
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Tetrium wrote on 2023-05-12, 10:55:

As far as main rigs are concerned, I went from a Katmai 550MHz to an Athlon64 2.2GHz and the performance differences are almost incomparable 😋
Things went so fast back then..

Sorry, but my K6-2 500 to Thunderbird 1.33 GHz upgrade still wins in terms of performance and stability jump (especially if your Katmai was running on a 440BX motherboard). 😜
In your case, the performance jump is greater than mine, but in terms of stability... you were probably in a much better position. 😁
At that time, I had a FastFame Ali Aladdin V board and it's by far the worst board I've ever owned in my life. I really wish I could get my hands on it again... trying to make that platform run stable (with the knowledge I have now) would be my greatest achievement! 😀

It was a BX 😀
It wasn't very stable at first though, not till I got rid of 98FE and installed ME and even then it had some issues iirc, mostly because in all the years I never reinstalled ME and I was new to ME. It was my 1st PC, we all did stupid stuff with our first PC, right? 😋
It started as a Deschutes 350 with 128MB RAM and ended up with the Katmai and 512MB RAM.

I still have that system, I never got rid of it. It just got slowly phased out as I started building other rigs.

FastFame? Never heard of them 😜

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-05-12, 12:44:

Speaking of TNT2 M64/Vanta, 3dfx had answer in form of ~$55 Velocity 100. Much better proposition for ss7 users than tnt/tnt2, especially after unlocking second TMU. The problem at that point was STB acquisition - Everyone and their dog were manufacturing cheap noname M64 cards in Taiwan, while 3dfx couldnt ramp up Velocity output without sacrificing 2000/3000 numbers with their sole Mexico facility. I havent seen Velocity being offered at all in Europe/Poland.

That's kinda what I meant when I said that 3dfx themselves stepped into their own coffin with one foot, NV only needed to do the final push and they did this excellently (unfortunately, to some degree, for us end users at the time).

Velocity always seemed rather uncommon here in The Netherlands as well. Usually the 3dfx cards that people tended to have, were the regular Voodoo cards (for V3 it was mostly the lower end ones like 2000/3000 AGP with the 3500 and any PCI V3 being more uncommon).

I would have liked to see a bit more of Rampage though.

All my ISA cards still work and they would be easy to fix if they some how stopped working.
It’s NOT a secret that PCI video cards were plagued with poor design, bad SMB soldering and manufacturing process.
Cheap components like capacitors. That why so many PCI video cards stopped working or developed artifacting problems.

I would NOT spend allot of money on poorly designed video cards that work.
And definitely NOT buy non working PCI video cards.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-05-12, 13:33:

As product out-of-the-box, Velocity was worse than M64/Vanta.

Probably true, but did anyone ever use it without unlocking the second TMU?
3dfx didn't exactly make it hard to do.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2023-05-12, 17:24:

All my ISA cards still work and they would be easy to fix if they some how stopped working. It’s NOT a secret that PCI video car […]
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All my ISA cards still work and they would be easy to fix if they some how stopped working.
It’s NOT a secret that PCI video cards were plagued with poor design, bad SMB soldering and manufacturing process.
Cheap components like capacitors. That why so many PCI video cards stopped working or developed artifacting problems.

I would NOT spend allot of money on poorly designed video cards that work.
And definitely NOT buy non working PCI video cards.

good thing they're agp cards then

leileilol wrote on 2023-05-13, 04:41:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2023-05-12, 17:24:

All my ISA cards still work and they would be easy to fix if they some how stopped working. It’s NOT a secret that PCI video car […]
Show full quote

All my ISA cards still work and they would be easy to fix if they some how stopped working.
It’s NOT a secret that PCI video cards were plagued with poor design, bad SMB soldering and manufacturing process.
Cheap components like capacitors. That why so many PCI video cards stopped working or developed artifacting problems.

I would NOT spend allot of money on poorly designed video cards that work.
And definitely NOT buy non working PCI video cards.

good thing they're agp cards then

Im trying to figure out Dx33s reasoning here, seems they might be a bit confused and need a better language library perhaps, certainly someone should upgrade the chat bot with better technical information.

Of all the GPUs I have PCI cards tend to fair better than either PCIe or AGP cards for longevity and reliability, but AGP was during the capacitor and ROHS plague so its understandable that there is a section of cards from that era that are unreliable or dead. (Radeon 9700 and 9800 cards along with Geforce 7000, 8000 and 9000 cards seem to be the worst, I guess you can throw the GTX 400 cards in here too simply because FERMI killed a lot of cards from crazy heat output)

As for components ...most of the dead GPUs I see are from memory ICs going bad or SMD components getting knocked off, I dont normally see dead capacitors unless its a Plague era GPU and almost never see a dead GPU die unless its been killed by heat or shit ROHS solder.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2023-05-12, 19:38:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-05-12, 13:33:

As product out-of-the-box, Velocity was worse than M64/Vanta.

Probably true, but did anyone ever use it without unlocking the second TMU?
3dfx didn't exactly make it hard to do.

I dont think there were too many in use outside of OEM systems, I have one in the collection for curiosity and its one of the rarer 16Mb Velocity models. (Quite literally a V3 2000 with one TMU disabled in software and lower memory/core clocks, the memory ICs are also slower)

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-05-13, 09:03:

Im trying to figure out Dx33s reasoning here, seems they might be a bit confused and need a better language library perhaps, cer […]
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leileilol wrote on 2023-05-13, 04:41:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2023-05-12, 17:24:

All my ISA cards still work and they would be easy to fix if they some how stopped working. It’s NOT a secret that PCI video car […]
Show full quote

All my ISA cards still work and they would be easy to fix if they some how stopped working.
It’s NOT a secret that PCI video cards were plagued with poor design, bad SMB soldering and manufacturing process.
Cheap components like capacitors. That why so many PCI video cards stopped working or developed artifacting problems.

I would NOT spend allot of money on poorly designed video cards that work.
And definitely NOT buy non working PCI video cards.

good thing they're agp cards then

Im trying to figure out Dx33s reasoning here, seems they might be a bit confused and need a better language library perhaps, certainly someone should upgrade the chat bot with better technical information.

Of all the GPUs I have PCI cards tend to fair better than either PCIe or AGP cards for longevity and reliability, but AGP was during the capacitor and ROHS plague so its understandable that there is a section of cards from that era that are unreliable or dead. (Radeon 9700 and 9800 cards along with Geforce 7000, 8000 and 9000 cards seem to be the worst, I guess you can throw the GTX 400 cards in here too simply because FERMI killed a lot of cards from crazy heat output)

As for components ...most of the dead GPUs I see are from memory ICs going bad or SMD components getting knocked off, I dont normally see dead capacitors unless its a Plague era GPU and almost never see a dead GPU die unless its been killed by heat or shit ROHS solder.

I blocked that user a while ago. At some point he asked if anyone had a manual for some ASUS board he had, and when I googled, ASUS had the manual for that exact board on their own website, so why even ask here anyway? He didn't even bother to check the-very-first place to look...
Silver platter something something?
Also he never seemed to actually read and/or take in the advice he got, so at some point I just didn't want to be confronted with this anymore.

The early PCI and AGP cards fair relatively well with one of the reasons (as I could gather) that before that, we had VLB and ISA (and to a lesser extend EISA and MCA) and all these cards had longer PCBs and more complex 'chip systems' (for lack of better wording).
When PCI (and a bit later AGP) made its entry, chip systems got more and more simplified, more stuff got stuffed inside fewer chips, miniaturisation, more SOC-like instead of tons of very simple chips, and also the much smaller PCBs and lower total card weight meant that there was simply less that could get damaged (including less likely to bend and more force needed to bend/flex the PCB, causing solder joints to be less likely to break). The cards were really quite small and even kinda sturdy.
Once the graphics cards started getting more elaborate cooling solutions and started becoming physically larger again, I see it as some sort of growing pain, the failed cooler design of the early high-end Radeon 9000 series, too small or too heavy coolers for cards that became increasingly more hot, it was in a way an exciting era filled with tons of design and manufacturing mistakes (the ROHS solder kinda being one of them).

Fast forward to 2023. If one compares graphics cards from 2023 to 2013 ones visually, the design hasn't changed all that much. It's (superficially) the same large heatsinks (add in a heatpipe or 2) with 2 or 3 fans with a shroud covering the entirety of the PCB.

If I were to take a guess as to why cards break these days (apart from having been used for crypto farming) is because manufacturers cheapened out on the parts used, maybe some form of planned obsolescence (like for instance a cooling solution or poor memory cooling that is really made to last to juuuust after the warranty period expires).

I have seen my fair share of older (PCI and AGP era) PCBs damaged by mistreatment.

I think the same, from my experience, at the time it was rare for a PCI or AGP graphics card to fail, the usual failures started in the case of ATI with the high-end models of the 9000 series and in the case of Nvidia, with the high-end models of the FX series.
Nowadays, just take a look at this forum to know that the Voodoo 1 and Voodoo 2 graphics cards are prone to certain problems, but they are more than 20 years old and there is no way to know how many hours of use, so it's not that rare either.
In the case of ATI and Matrox, before the models that I already mentioned, I think the manufacturing quality and care in design was superior. In the case of ATI, even low-end models did not use electrolytic capacitors.
I think that ATI was it love with the tantalum and MLCC capacitors. Just take a look at this RAGE LT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Rage_series … _LT_Pro_AGP.png).
But in the case of S3, SIS and others, also Nvidia even before the FX series, it was easy to find models of very poor quality that it is normal for them to fail today, but even with poor quality it was not usual for them to fail back then.
For this reason, even today it is rare to see a graphics card from ATI or Matrox, which was manufactured before 2003, fail.
and few Nvidia graphics cards made before 2003 I have seen fail, even though the quality of many TNT/TNT2 and GF MX, etc... is very doubtful.
I have always been surprised by the amount of time that a Geforce 4 or a Radeon 8500 can last with the fan stopped and at very high temperatures, I have seen so many that it seems to me a curious detail and very few fail definitively, which is the most curious thing.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-05-08, 17:23:

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2023-05-08, 15:43:

Yes, and that's why I would like to see a Vogons trade forum, amongst people who actually care about using the stuff. But I perfectly understand why it doesn't happen, as human nature will still find its way there.

If Amibay if anything to go by, we'd still see fairly high prices for hardware in a VOGONS marketplace.

And therein lies the rub. Even if someone feels that a piece of hardware is overhyped and overpriced, they aren't going to list something for $50 if they think they can get $300 for it.

The problem with Amibay is that the mods are very rarely on there. When starting out, I waited for weeks and weeks for posts to be approved.

I gave up after a couple months because I could ever post anything at all because I could never get any posts approved because, when you first join, every single post has to be approved by a mod until you have a certain post count.

I would have been waiting years to actually get my psut count up to whatever it needed to be.

Completely worthless forum when no new members can actually do anything at all.

"The problem with Amibay is that the mods are very rarely on there. When starting out, I waited for weeks and weeks for posts to be approved.

I gave up after a couple months because I could ever post anything at all because I could never get any posts approved because, when you first join, every single post has to be approved by a mod until you have a certain post count.

I would have been waiting years to actually get my psut count up to whatever it needed to be.

Completely worthless forum when no new members can actually do anything at all. "

I don't agree with this, all what you've said doesn't represent my Amibay experience... Yeah at the beginning is a bit rough for a new user but patience is key. Since there is money involved you'll have to understand that the staff has strict rules and enforce them.

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-05-13, 15:33:

The problem with Amibay is that the mods are very rarely on there. When starting out, I waited for weeks and weeks for posts to be approved.
I gave up after a couple months because I could ever post anything at all because I could never get any posts approved because, when you first join, every single post has to be approved by a mod until you have a certain post count.

🤣 yes had some issues with Amibay too. Also is in line with my complaint about VCF forum, is exact same with any new members. Edit: Sorry for the rant but all true 😁

VCF used to have a stand alone for sale website.

Posting rules are to keep bots out, it also keeps out the people who would join just to flip something on multiple forums and ebay and never come back or reply to emails.

Unknown_K wrote on 2023-05-15, 05:17:

VCF used to have a stand alone for sale website.

Posting rules are to keep bots out, it also keeps out the people who would join just to flip something on multiple forums and ebay and never come back or reply to emails.

New ?? 🤣 joined early 2020, and still requires approval for any post because it take so many and I got tired of waiting a week or better for it to show up so I quit. And I never posted anything for sale.
Dare you to try and create a new member login and see how long it takes for a post to show up 😁

I never had an issue there, but I joined a long long time ago.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-05-12, 13:33:

As product out-of-the-box, Velocity was worse than M64/Vanta.

Why do you think so?

It is definitely faster than M64 even with single TMU. Also don't forget in D3D both TMUs are enabled by default. Image quality in 2D is much better on Velocity and in 3D it is perfectly fine too. Btw - good luck running any TNT in 16bit colors, the dithering is ugly.

On paper M64 looks great - 2 pipelines and 32 MB, yay! 😁 But for actual usage, I would pick Velocity any day.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2023-05-12, 19:38:

Probably true, but did anyone ever use it without unlocking the second TMU?
3dfx didn't exactly make it hard to do.

Of course, the velocity was in many OEM computers owned by people who don't tinker or kids too young or people without internet and no access to that kind of knowledge... I'd bet that most owners didn't unlock their cards.

Maybe this doesn't fit into the V6000 sale topic but there's second video from LTT now with hardware from same owner as V6000 card. Video shows 4x Quantum3D Obsidian 100SB-4440V in sli. It's really cool video so if anyone hasn't seen it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D24ueW8G0-w

havli wrote:

On paper M64 looks great - 2 pipelines and 32 MB, yay! beaming face with smiling eyes But for actual usage, I would pick Velocity any day.

The thing is, you totally can exploit that 16 or 32 Mb VRAM, because texture resolution is relatively cheap on card performance. That's why M64 can totally do playable Q3 engine game with high quality 32-bit textures in 16-bit color, while Velocity can only show blurry mess.

Well, I am not sure what is the point of 32 bit textures with 16 bit framebuffer. Still, you will see blurry mess either way because m64 will not run these games at resolution better than 640x480 at decent fps. Not to mention generally poor quality of the VGA output unless you are very lucky.... and then there is the dithering which is just pain to watch.