First post, by athlon-power
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When I finally decided to upgrade from a dreadful, unbranded i740 based AGP GPU, I looked around for some good mid-1999 GPUs, and even asked on here about it. The general consensus was that I should get a TNT2 M64 based card, as it was around in mid-'99 and performs alright in most games. Later on in one thread, somebody recommended the ASUS AGP-V3800M. I purchased it for two reasons: one, it was cheap, and two, it was a straight-up ASUS card, which hopefully eliminated most ways that it could've been an OEM card, as I wanted a machine that could have had its parts purchased and built together at the time. I figured the ASUS card fit that bill.
What's come to my attention, however, is that the particular ASUS V3800M I have has a BIOS date of 2001, as seen by SiSoft Sandra. There seems to be three possibilities here:
1) The card itself was indeed manufactured and released in 1999 alongside its TNT2-based brethren, and the previous owner(s) decided to update the video BIOS for whatever reason.
2) SiSoft Sandra is buggy, and is showing inaccurate BIOS dates. It, however shows correct the motherboard BIOS date of 2000, because it has BIOS P17 flashed on it (which, on bootup, reports a BIOS year of 2000- wish I could downgrade the BIOS to show a 1999 copyright date rather than the year 2000 one).
3) The card itself was manufactured and released in 2001, being made off of the same design as the old 1999 versions, just purpose-sold as a budget video card. This would likely be the worst of scenarios, but I also find it very unlikely.
I have become more and more aggressive on time-accuracy as the build nears completion, and I'm taking closer looks at the components inside to make sure they fit the bill.
Also- How would I get possession of a BIOS version for the Intel SE440BX-2 that had a 1999 BIOS date? I'd want whatever would've been on there in mid-1999, with the specific cutoff month being August. On Intel's website, only BIOS P17 is listed, and I don't know what BIOS versions state the 1999 date, and which don't. And the same question is turned to the AGP-V3800M; however, this is of much less priority, as you can only see the date of the video BIOS in detailed programs like SiSoft Sandra- there doesn't seem to be a visible video BIOS that shows up when the computer is first turned on, but that might also be because the CRT doesn't warm up quickly enough for me to see it.
Where am I?