vkcpolice wrote on 2022-02-20, 15:26:

Hi all. ive been building a new pc turns out the cpu was a celron @ 333Mhz i started building this pc as a dos win 98 gaming ri […]
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Hi all.
ive been building a new pc turns out the cpu was a celron @ 333Mhz
i started building this pc as a dos win 98 gaming rig and after playing some jazz jackrabbit one thing led to another and found my self playing unreal tournament in software render mode.
i thought this pc should run this game better than this so i pulled out the AGP Trident 3D image 975 and found a winfast AGP card well i thought it was a AGP card until it didnt fit into the agp slot on the motherboard (see pics)

what are the buses on these cards are they both AGP?

At the moment im using a pci nvidia FX 5500 and just wondering if there is a better card i can use in that AGP slot on the motherboard.

Also what is the best modern HDD solution for these computers? i have had no luck with ide to cf card adapters as they seem too slow and they become corrupted easy.
has anyone had much luck with an ide to sata then using a ssd?
please let me know your thoughts as i want this to be the best all rounder build for dos and windows gaming.
thanks all 😀

If you're up for a slight adventure, I'm a big fan of SCSI HDDs for this time frame - so much of the IDE weirdness around capacity limits and PIO/DMA modes goes away in a SCSI environment. Adaptec 2940U2W PCI SCSI adapters are plentiful for <$20, and SCSI HDDs aren't expensive either. There are plenty of other SCSI adapters, but for first-time ease of use, you can't go wrong with that one. You'll want a 68-pin HDD and cable to go with that card (25, 50, and 80-pin will work with adapters, but that's a bit more involved). It's a bit of a departure if you've never worked with SCSI before, but for a hobby system, that can be part of the fun.

That 6600 is a 1,5V card, it won't fit in a 3,3V slot. But both are AGP.

Could you explain the whole 1.5v vs 3.3v thing a little more please. Are they different generations of agp?

It al started with AGP 2x, all 3.3V cards.
The universal AGP (4x) came out and accepted older and newer cards. This slot has no keying.
And last AGP 8x with the key on a different spot than AGP 2x.

There is also a card that has universal keying but doesn't work in a AGP 2x slot, can't remember which though... Instead one would blow up the card due to excessive voltage.

I would recommend you riva tnt/tnt2 ,voodoo 1/2 . With celeron you wont get any benefit from more powerfull cards.

You will very much get a benefit from something with hardware T&L e.g Geforce 2 or higher, it will still be bottlenecked but faster than a TNT2.

A Geforce 2 MX would work nicely.

+1 for a GF2 MX
The MX200 is cheap and easy to find.

as someone who had a celeron 333 and geforce2 mx back in the day, it worked quite well. a geforce 2 mx400 would be better and possibly the geforce 4 mx series even moreso. i remember playing a lot of half life/opposing force, along with tony hawk 2 and twisted metal 2. i was getting decent framerates compared to a console, but it was definitely not a powerhouse of a machine 😜

i even had that same trident card before getting my geforce 2 mx. i feel like i want to get one again, just to re-live that 2d-only AGP nostalgia 😀

thanks all for the info.
what about hard drive solutions?
im not keen on going down the scsi route and this is still a mechanical drive thats prone to failure
just wondering if anyone out there had any luck with the ssd soulution i mentioned?
also is the pci NVIDIA fx 5500 a good card or would the nvidia on agp be a better solution?

Throw in a cheap AGP geforce 440 MX and load the 45.23 drivers. PCI card will be slower than a AGP card.

Delock 62495 MSATA and Renkforce RF-4174629 were both highly recommended ide to sata adapters in another thread, although I think those are for laptops. But theyre Marvell based chipsets so look for an adapter with that chipset.

That being said ive used jmicron based adapters in Intel BX based motherboards and never had a issue.

Different AGP versions in detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Gra … t#Compatibility

What's the make and model of your motherboard and RAM? Based on the reflection on the AGP slot I'd say your MB is "650B-ATX rev 1.1" which had been badged with different labels:
http://www.motherboard.cz/mb/amptron/PII-3100B.htm
http://www.motherboards.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14226
http://www.motherboards.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=34486
https://teamequip.com/650b-atx-circuit-board-t41636/
Manual: https://web.archive.org/web/20030416133657/ht … 650BX/650BX.pdf

I've never owned a Mendocino Celeron myself but it is well-known and highly regarded by overclockers; the 333 MHz (66.7 x 5) should be able to OC at 500 MHz (100 x 5).

Your Leadtek WinFast A6600 TD (GeForce 6600) was one of the last video cards that officially support Windows 9x and too new for your CPU / MB; FX 5500 PCI was a bit older (and can be used on your MB, at least) but still gets bottlenecked by the CPU; the frequencies of their contemporary CPU were in the range of 2GHz. Like many have said: any GF2, GF3, or GF4MX can give you very pleasant experience without breaking your bank.

thx all 😀 i found the winfast in the cupboard 🤣 i think it was from my uncles old p3 that he gave me.
i think i will just keep the nvidia 5500 in there for now not in any real rush to play anything demanding as it was supposed to be a dos gaming rig.
the cpu is a slot based cpu and i have a few in other machines i might try and swap out for. 450 733 ect

will the geforce 200mmx out perform the nvidia 5500fx it has 256mb of ram compared to 64mb on the geforce
what about a mmx400?

Good question. That 5500 is limited to the PCI bus.

Try both and post some benchmarks here, for the greater good.

Considering processors like this are similar in speed to the ones fron the pentium 233mmx and k6 3+ 600 aiming for the stars threads. And those guys have been getting best results with geforce 2 and 3 that may be the best for you also.

Personally, I’ve been having good luck with a radeon 9800 pro but my scores are nowhere near theirs but I can play halo on the k6🤷‍♂️ …. At like max settings 🤣… has little lag which isn’t effected by raising or lowering settings but is totally playable

I’ve had really good luck with promise tx4 sata II cards and ssds

More ram is nice but it doesn’t always indicate the faster card. In fact often there is no correlation there

If I had the choice, I wouldn't go anything newer than a TNT2 Ultra or something similar since the processor is a bottleneck. If you want to play games with T&L, you should at least take a P3 or K7 800mhz.
I you play games where the CPU is made for, these cards would be the sane choice. If you go for newer cards, driver overhead is going to screw with your CPU performance. Yes it is cool to put the fastest possible AGP in a slow system, but then the reason should be: Because you can and not, what is the Best card for a Celeron 333mhz.

If you want to play games with T&L

OpenGL games like Quake 2 benefit from T&L, because they support transformation part.

I wouldn't go anything newer than a TNT2 Ultra or something similar since the processor is a bottleneck.

That depends. You can easily CPU bottleneck TNT2 Ultra even on P3 1 Ghz by playing 640x480x16bit in some early 3D games. GeForce 2 still has access to very early Detonators, which have minimal impact to CPU performance.

Hi all i got a free NVIDIA mx 200 from a friend i am surprised that this card runs incredibly slower than the NVIDIA FX 5500 on the pci bus
im trying to run unreal tournament and its slow the 5500 was playable.
i have no software to benchmark.
what would be the best agp card i can get for this system that is easy to find and not expensive.

ps i will eventually upgrade the cpu to a Pentium 2 450

what would be the best agp card i can get for this system that is easy to find and not expensive.

GeForce 2 MX / GeForce 4 MX.