I have a Compaq with no AGP and a 815 chipset. The spec of the GPU are here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_g … rocessing_units
What could I put in that would be an improvement? I have a cirrus logic GD54M30 to hand, and I think I have an S3 something or other somewhere.
IS there much point in trying to source a better PCI GPU?
A Voodoo2 or RivaTNT will probably be a bit faster, they were certainly faster (and more compatible) than the i740 which is what the i815 IGP is based on.
I can't find much info on the Cirrus Logic card you mentioned, but it probably can't even do 3D, so already there's not much point in using that one. If you have an S3 Savage 4 or Savage 2000, they will be faster as well, if you only have a Virge... no 😜.
Give us some specs for the rest of your system and what sort of games you'd like to play on it, that way we'll be able to tell you if there is a point in finding a faster GPU.
TBH I've probably been having more fun playing around with the systems than actually playing games on them. It's a Compaq Deskpro SFF. PIII 1GHz, 512MB 133mHz RAM. I'm running Win98SE, but for fun I'm going to dual boot Win3.1.
As the mobo has no AGP slot, I'd not really looked at bothering adding a GFX card, would it add much performance over the onboard i740? But I thought I'd see if there's anything more I could squeeze out of it. I'm going to try the i740 drivers for Win3.1 to see if it will work, but I know you can get Riva TNT/TNT2 drivers as well, so that might also be an option.
Like I said, it depends on what you want to play. If all you want to play is 2D games or software rendered 3D games or even early D3D games at 640x480, then the onboard IGP is probably all you'll ever need.
That Pentium 3 is pretty fast, but PCI cards are rarer and more expensive than AGP counterparts. Your best bet is one of the following:
Voodoo3 PCI
Riva TNT2 PCI (not M64, these are much slower), I think they made a PCI version of that
GeForce2 MX PCI (MX 200 was quite popular)
GeForce 4 MX PCI
GeForce 5200 PCI
I think the GeForce MX cards are the most common and they will allow your system to really flex its muscles. I'm not 100% sure that the TNT2 ever saw a PCI release, avoid the TNT2 M64 at all costs, as it is essentially as fast as a Riva TNT (not much faster than your current card). The Voodoo3 is expensive, expect to pay 60-70E for one, but I thought I should mention it in case you wanted a 3Dfx card. There's also the Voodoo5 5500 PCI, but that's on a completely different price level 🤣 .
I don't know if ATi also had PCI versions of their cards at that time, I guess some of the Radeon cards could be nice additions as well.
