Aslong the card has no external power connector you should be fine with a 250-350W psu. To be on the safe side ofcourse. I reckon 150 us enough but barely tbh.
Power draw can be looked up on nvidias website for most gpu same goes cpu.

If you have over 200 watts your generally be fine for 95% of retro builds. Processors were pretty dang low wattage and so were video cards until like, 2003 or so.
Aim as high as you can but don't worry too much.

I also suggest a GF2. Really rounds out a build well to have that combined with Voodoo 2/2SLi

This is why people are paying out the rear end for Voodoo 2s as they offer this convenience, you can use a V3/V4/V5 alongside with another card but I haven't done that with any of my builds.

Richo wrote:

Aslong the card has no external power connector you should be fine with a 250-350W psu. To be on the safe side ofcourse. I reckon 150 us enough but barely tbh.
Power draw can be looked up on nvidias website for most gpu same goes cpu.

I managed to find the NVidia GeForce 2 legacy page, but no power specs (even in the side-bar PDF pamphlet).

Managed to find the Intel specs at least; 28 W for a Katmai (which is likely what I'm receiving), or 13.2 W for a Coppermine.

Don't even have a clue where to go find Voodoo 3 specs.

Looks like I'll just have to wing it and see 😀

Also, any problems running a 4X or 8X AGP card in a mere 2X AGP slot? So long as it's keyed to allow compatible voltages, I'd image I'll just be getting less performance than I could be.

Always be careful with cards from this era and older agp slots, some boards were not prepared for these cards. Info from falconfly:

AGP voltage regulator notes: There is a problem with the combination of older motherboards and newer AGP graphic cards. This is due to the fact that some of the early AGP motherboards used a linear regulator to control the power supply to the AGP slot. Linear regulators can supply at most 2.5A of current, while the switching regulator used on newer motherboards can supply up to 6A at 3.3V. When these motherboards with linear regulators were produced, the average consumption of a graphics card was 1 to 2A, making a supply of 2.5A more than sufficient. Since then, graphic cards have developed and currently the average consumption is between 4 and 5A. This is no problem for motherboards using a switching regulator, but older boards with a linear regulator may run into issues such as overheating, burnouts, and lockups.

If you want to be on the safe side: check your voltage regulator or use a voodoo pci card on these boards.

From this info you can draw this conclusion: 3,3v x 6a is about 20W and these boards did not have problems with voodoo3 3000 and geforce2 GTS for example so these cards draw less than that.
The linear regulators maxed out at 2,5A and did have problems so voodoo3 3000 and higher end geforce2 cards draw probably more than 3,3v x 2,5A = 8.25w

Early motherboards were limited in their power delivery as mentioned above.

AGP (2.0-3.0) is allowed 6A in 3.3V, 2A in 5V and 1A in 12V, which is about 42W combined. Cards wouldn't in practice approach any of those absolute maximums without auxiliary power connectors, though.

X-bit Labs had measurements for a Radeon 9600 Pro (18.38W: 2.92A in 3.3V, 0.46A in 5V and 0.57A in 12V), Radeon 9600 XT (22.72W: 3.20A in 3.3V, 0.99A in 5V and 0.63A in 12V), and a GeForce FX 5700 (24.61W: 3.96A in 3.3V, 1.09A in 5V and 0.57A in 12V), running FarCry. https://web.archive.org/web/20160926161143/ht … v-power_10.html

PCI (2.1-3.0) allowed 25W from all rails combined or all of it optionally from either 5V or 3.3V.

Thanks for the info. I'm leaning towards the slow end of the 9xxx ATI era if I get one that new, so it sounds like a 9600 PRO is more or less my "stay below this" threshold.

Then again, it would be nice to know for sure the exact capabilities of my board, but I don't see any specs or exact limits in the manual. I found a great info page on playtool.com which implies that my 440BX is indeed a MB I should be wary about power draw. Good to know, I guess, but it may be difficult to find comparable numbers when I'm shopping for cards.

Someone at work potentially has a spare 9200 LE, which while a bit crap for its release date, would probably be a reasonable fit for my machine.

zerker wrote:

Also, any problems running a 4X or 8X AGP card in a mere 2X AGP slot? So long as it's keyed to allow compatible voltages, I'd image I'll just be getting less performance than I could be.

I'm kinda stating the obvious here, but AGP 8X cards will not fit or work in AGP 2X slots (just so you know). And if you somehow make it fit, you will probably fry something.
The problem is that, even if it will fit physically, this doesn't guarantee that it will work (alas).

Radeon 9xx0 was around the time Ati switched from making universal (AGP 4X) cards to AGP 8X cards.

Looking at the playtool.com info page, it sounds a bit more subtle than that. It doesn't sound like there's anything official preventing them from still using the universal connector for an AGP 3.0/8X card and allowing 3.3 V/2X compatibility operation.

Now, there might be practical engineering constraints that make this unfeasible for the board manufacturers to continue to support. And If they did indeed switch to 1.5 V-keyed connectors only, then yeah, they won't work.

I'm assuming we aren't talking about AGP Pro cards here either.

zerker wrote:

Looking at the playtool.com info page, it sounds a bit more subtle than that. It doesn't sound like there's anything official preventing them from still using the universal connector for an AGP 3.0/8X card and allowing 3.3 V/2X compatibility operation.

Now, there might be practical engineering constraints that make this unfeasible for the board manufacturers to continue to support. And If they did indeed switch to 1.5 V-keyed connectors only, then yeah, they won't work.

I'm assuming we aren't talking about AGP Pro cards here either.

I was keeping your BX board in the back of my head and none have universal AGP. All BX boards use AGP 2x and are thus not compatible with AGP 8x cards (or at least in theory, but I don't know of any exceptions) but BX should work with AGP 4x cards.

You can have both universal motherboards OR universal cards, even if the card also supports 8X AGP. If the card itself is universal (and it looks like the 9200 LE I'm grabbing is), it should still work in my board, no? The image DOES have a 3.3 V notch in it.

zerker wrote:

You can have both universal motherboards OR universal cards, even if the card also supports 8X AGP. If the card itself is universal (and it looks like the 9200 LE I'm grabbing is), it should still work in my board, no? The image DOES have a 3.3 V notch in it.

Is your board a BX?

If the card has the two notches for 3.3V and 1.5V/0.8V, it should be fine anywhere, except for those early 1X/2X boards that lack in AGP current supply. IIRC, the Radeon 9000 and GeForce FX series were the last that were Universal 3.0 (0.8V/1.5V/3.3V) and not all of them were.

Yes, my board is a BX (well, BX-2), and yes I'm aware it has supply current issues (it was mentioned a few posts above after all). I'm hoping the 9200 is low enough demand that I'll be okay, but it's hard to tell without clear test data (which I can't find)... or by trying it.

You can generally go by the TDP, but there's no indication under what conditions that TDP is measured. It also doesn't account for the breakdown like the X-Bit labs analysis earlier in the thread. Not to mention the difference when switching from 0.8 V signaling to 3.3 V signaling and running at a slower bus speed, so I don't see a good way of telling ahead of time.

I'm not even sure about that number on the Tech PowerUp GPU Database, as it also says the card has a Molex connector and it clearly doesn't. Nor is there any reason for such a low end card to have one.

BX never had an universal AGP slot, so that's why I'm wondering why you brought that up. It's not relevant for your question.
But most cards that are not compatible with your AGP 2x slot on your BX, should not fit physically anyway 😜

I think you probably misunderstood me. I had intended to be talking about universal video cards the entire time.

In any case, I should have the card tonight and can test then.

Tetrium wrote:

I'm kinda stating the obvious here, but AGP 8X cards will not fit or work in AGP 2X slots (just so you know). And if you somehow make it fit, you will probably fry something.
The problem is that, even if it will fit physically, this doesn't guarantee that it will work (alas).

Nope.
My GF6800Ultra (AGP 8x with two cuts) works just fine in my ASUS P2B i440BX mobo.
AGP 4x/8x ONLY cards will not work in those boards, but there definitely exist many 2x/4x/8x compatible graphics cards out there...

GeorgeMan wrote:

Nope. My GF6800Ultra (AGP 8x with two cuts) works just fine in my ASUS P2B i440BX mobo. AGP 4x/8x ONLY cards will not work in th […]
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Tetrium wrote:

I'm kinda stating the obvious here, but AGP 8X cards will not fit or work in AGP 2X slots (just so you know). And if you somehow make it fit, you will probably fry something.
The problem is that, even if it will fit physically, this doesn't guarantee that it will work (alas).

Nope.
My GF6800Ultra (AGP 8x with two cuts) works just fine in my ASUS P2B i440BX mobo.
AGP 4x/8x ONLY cards will not work in those boards, but there definitely exist many 2x/4x/8x compatible graphics cards out there...

But doesn't that make your 6800U an universal (or 4x) AGP card and not an AGP 8x card?

zerker wrote:

I think you probably misunderstood me. I had intended to be talking about universal video cards the entire time.

In any case, I should have the card tonight and can test then.

Ahh, well in that case I did misunderstand you here! My apologies 😊
Yes, you're correct. Any AGP card that's notched so it will fit your AGP slot, should work (except for the already mentioned problems concerning power draw).
This will of course also never fully prevent incompatibility problems of the sort where one particular card does not like a particular board. That just happens 😀

You are correct, your graphics card should work in your BX board 😀 (provided the slot can provide enough power).