I've bought a little collection of the most maligned, ignored and downright unwanted AGP graphics cards known to humankind!
As a follow up to a project that I fooled around with in 2020, Games to play on a socket 7 machine with SiS 6326 graphics. Games to play on a socket 7 machine with SiS 6326 graphics.

I found doing that stuff an awful lot of fun with the lowly Cyrix MII 333 box, so I decided to hunt around for some of SIS 's AGP cards to have a play on a PC with AGP slot, I'll still be using a fairly low end and cheap machine of it's time, Based on an AMD Duron 650 MHz "Spitfire" CPU, a DFi VIA KT133 motherboard, nothing special but a good workhorse PC of it's time. And I suppose the kind of system the cards may have gotten installed in during the commercial lifespan.

I know most retro PC fans don't care a jot for these kinds of cards, and for the most part they are right, why bother when even a TNT2 M64 or a Geforce 2MX will be easier to find, probably cheap or as cheap, faster, less hassle etc, etc...

Well I have always been fascinated by the unusual and less common part of the hobby, I've also always had a mindset of "make do and mend" and "make the best of what you have".

So I am going to do a little project with 4 SiS AGP 3D accellerator cards and see what games will play, how well they'll play and also perhaps I suspect, a few that won't!
I'm not really a fan of FPS games, so this won't be a Quake ,Quake 2 or Half life fest. Those aren't games I enjoy so won't be tested.
I will start by testing all the same stuff I did on the Cyrix MII, Daytona USA, Need for Speed 2 & 3, Star wars Episode 1 Racer, Moto Racer Demo, Ziff davis 3D winbench '98 , Final Reality and Unreal Gold(yeah, I don't mind this FPS).
I plan to add some "new" games to test also, Need for speed Porsche unleased(demo), Speed Busters, nightmare creatures, and monster truck madness 2. I doubt any of these are pushing the boat out too far, but they are all games I'd actually like to play, so they are what will be used.

OK onto the cards:

First in order of "crapitude" (probably) is a Pine PT 5968-28 SiS 6326 8 MB AGP card. It's a Ho revision and looks decent enough. Never know, might be a surpise. It only just arrived, so not tested yet, no idea of clocks etc.

Next is a Diamond Speedstar A50- SiS 6326 8 MB AGP, now this is the card that Putas used for testing on Vintage3D.org, it's 100 MHz RAM so should be a good one, and Diamond so quality should be great, I am pretty sure these are the H0 Rev too.

OK now we are into the next generation for SiS, the 305, this is a 16 MB example and frankly I think it will be a bit of a dog, looking at the empty traces for RAM, it's probably 32 bit memory access, buy hey it was cheap, like me! So we will give it a whirl, also it's a brand new card and came with a driver CD, so we will see what that contains. So certainly not best of breed, but as always I spend as little as possible. I'll make a guess that this one will be somewhere in TNT speed territiory?

Finally we have a SiS 315 32 MB AGP from Pine,( PV-S04A-LR) gotta love the blue PCB and green cooler! I probably shouldn't have bought this as looking again at the picture both caps look blown, but the seller says it's working and sent me an offer of £8 inc post, so I bought it,l then looked at the pics and saw the caps, so I guess we will see on this one...not arrived yet, but I guess it's no big deal to change a couple of caps anyway. Now this fellow should be about as good as a Geforce 2MX 200(what crazy strata's we may reach!).

OK, so that is what I have on the way or arrived(2 out of 4 so far in the door), I can do some comparisions with RIVA 128 and TNT 1, I think those are the only two other AGP cards I have left now(but I'll have to check, memory is not what it once was!, I've had a huge clear out with moving house and the cost of storage).

Well, if anyone has some games they would like testing(and are free and easy to get). let me know.

I'll be getting everything together over the next days and get started.