appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-15, 10:09:

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-15, 06:43:

I bought a bunch of PCI-E cards.. A Radeon HD4870X2, a GTX480 and a GTX780. Untested, and belonged to seller's son, and were placed in a cupboard after upgrading. They are supposed to work. I paid only $35 for the lot, so even if only one of them work, I'll be good I guess..

Right.. So the man just messaged me and let me know, for the sake of being honest, that his son informed him that the 4870X2 'overheats'.. Whatever that means. I'd guess that one is defective, which isn't surprising. I think a lot of those cards failed over the years.

Overheating wouldn't be much of an issue, unless it does it after it's been repasted.

Then again, you'd repaste them anyways, wouldn't you?

PcBytes wrote on 2021-12-15, 12:00:

Overheating wouldn't be much of an issue, unless it does it after it's been repasted.

Then again, you'd repaste them anyways, wouldn't you?

Yeah, I'll do some proper cleaning and repasting for all of them before giving them a try on my LGA775 system..

I just hope I don't get cards that need GPU or BGA RA reballing. That's beyond my ability to repair..

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-12-15, 08:30:

All real computers have mechanical hard drives.

EWWWWW.... Only mechanical drives I use in laptops and desktops anymore are for storage. OS is always on solid state and most programs are installed on solid state.

I never was a fan of the whining bearings sound or the grinding of HDDs. The grinding just reminds me that the drives are slow.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-15, 12:48:

PcBytes wrote on 2021-12-15, 12:00:

Overheating wouldn't be much of an issue, unless it does it after it's been repasted.

Then again, you'd repaste them anyways, wouldn't you?

Yeah, I'll do some proper cleaning and repasting for all of them before giving them a try on my LGA775 system..

I just hope I don't get cards that need GPU or BGA RA reballing. That's beyond my ability to repair..

The 4870x2 "overheating" was a normal thing. Those suckers ran HOT HOT HOT. An easy temp drop besides repasting and repadding is to take the slot cover off and cut out the "grill" (air flow restrictor). Fro that matter, you don't even need to take it off to remove the grill unless you want to make it pretty. A wire snips is all you need to cut the grill out.
That should drop the load temps by a good 5-10c easy. I did that on both my HD7970 cards and it not only dropped the temps but also made them quieter.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-15, 14:44:

The 4870x2 "overheating" was a normal thing. Those suckers ran HOT HOT HOT. An easy temp drop besides repasting and repadding is to take the slot cover off and cut out the "grill" (air flow restrictor). Fro that matter, you don't even need to take it off to remove the grill unless you want to make it pretty. A wire snips is all you need to cut the grill out.
That should drop the load temps by a good 5-10c easy. I did that on both my HD7970 cards and it not only dropped the temps but also made them quieter.

I passed down on the offers because all cards apparently require 2x 6-pin or 6+8 pin PCI-E Power Connectors and 600W+ PSUs. I have no such parts to test them with aside from the 600W PSU in my main gaming PC, which I won't risk by testing these things..

Well the regular 4870 seem to draw 125W full load per card on my testing, so I'd suspect you want 250W for the x2, then whatever the board uses. I had two regulars in a board/CPU known to run @ 150W max and a 500W PSU known to actually deliver 500W and all that ran fine.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-15, 16:07:

Well the regular 4870 seem to draw 125W full load per card on my testing, so I'd suspect you want 250W for the x2, then whatever the board uses. I had two regulars in a board/CPU known to run @ 150W max and a 500W PSU known to actually deliver 500W and all that ran fine.

Where you have one x2 you have two x2's .. one does not simply run one of these...I have two of them (now on my shelf of fame) and yeah 500watts wouldn't even power the system on, it just beeps at you and turns back off, had to put a 1000watt PSU in it to get it to power up 🤣.

1 4870 X2 = 270 watts power draw on the 12v rail so you need a decent PSU that can deliver that much via one rail at 60A-70A, there are 5 diag leds on the card and it'll light them up to tell you if its got sufficient power, the recommended PSU for dual X2s was 750watts so these dual GPUs are more power heavy than the normal 4870 was.

And the 4870x2 is slower than a 6870.

I bought a couple refurb 4870x2 cards from Tigerdirect. One ended up being DOA and Visiontek allowed me to RMA both and they replaced them with a pair of 6870s. Still have those cards.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-16, 06:49:

And the 4870x2 is slower than a 6870.

I bought a couple refurb 4870x2 cards from Tigerdirect. One ended up being DOA and Visiontek allowed me to RMA both and they replaced them with a pair of 6870s. Still have those cards.

Well .. im not at all surprised that the Xfire 4870X2 would be slower than Xfire 6870 ..I mean ...its Terrascale 1 vs Terrascale 2.1 and over two years between them at a point in GPU history where advancement was faster than it is now, Xfire also doesnt scale that well either.

For cool factor tho .. Id take the 4870X2 Xfire setup.

Tho .. the 6990 in Xfire would be just as cool but good luck ever finding a pair of working 6990s

I want a pair of 6990s and a pair of 7990s, but the prices being asked for them is just too much.

I do have a pair of 5970s and I also have a single 4870x2.

And the later drivers fixed the frame time issue with x-fire. It got way better when that happened.

Music Quest MPU-401 (V010) with the dongle.

This is what I got yesterday:
-AVerMedia TV GO 007 TV tuner (Philips SAA713X chipset)
-ASUS DRW-1608P2S white DVD-RW drive (sealed in a fragile bag)
-Leadtek WinFast TV2000XP TV tuner (Conexant Fusion 878A chipset) (sealed in a white anti-static bag)
-ASUS CRW-5232AS CD-RW drive
-ASUS K8U-X Motherboard (ULi M1689 chipset) with 768MB RAM and AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6GHz CPU with a SPIRE HEATSINK and FAN + I/O Shield (sealed in a white anti-static bag)
-Three Floppy Drives (one Mitsumi and 2 Sony) with a data cable (sealed in a fragile bag)
-some 128MB AGP video card (sealed in a white anti-static bag)
-some data cable
-ASUS K8N (NVIDIA nForce 3 250 MCP) with 512MB RAM and AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6GHz CPU + I/O Shield
(in anti-static)
-2 Samsung SpinPoint P80 160GB HDDs (model type HD160JJ)

Any opinions about what I got?

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-16, 07:04:

I want a pair of 6990s and a pair of 7990s, but the prices being asked for them is just too much.

I do have a pair of 5970s and I also have a single 4870x2.

And the later drivers fixed the frame time issue with x-fire. It got way better when that happened.

I have a 5970 as well, still looking for another 5970 at a reasonable price to complete the set, I think my favourite setup is my SLI GTX285 2gb cards, I got lucky and a guy was selling 3 of them at very reasonable prices for eBay so I pounced on them. Also grabbed a pair of GTX295's from him as well, wish there were more sellers like him on eBay.

RetroPC_King wrote on 2021-12-16, 07:15:

This is what I got yesterday: -AVerMedia TV GO 007 TV tuner (Philips SAA713X chipset) -ASUS DRW-1608P2 white DVD-RW drive (seale […]
Show full quote

This is what I got yesterday:
-AVerMedia TV GO 007 TV tuner (Philips SAA713X chipset)
-ASUS DRW-1608P2 white DVD-RW drive (sealed in a fragile bag)
-Leadtek WinFast TV2000XP TV tuner (Conexant Fusion 878A chipset) (sealed in a white anti-static bag)
-ASUS CRW-5232AS CD-RW drive
-ASUS K8U-X Motherboard (ULi M1689 chipset) with 768MB RAM and AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6GHz CPU with a SPIRE HEATSINK and FAN + I/O Shield (sealed in a white anti-static bag)
-Three Floppy Drives (one Mitsumi and 2 Sony) with a data cable (sealed in a fragile bag)
-some 128MB AGP video card (sealed in a white anti-static bag)
-some data cable
-ASUS K8N (NVIDIA nForce 3 250 MCP) with 512MB RAM and AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6GHz CPU + I/O Shield
(in anti-static)
-2 Samsung SpinPoint P80 160GB HDDs (model type HD160JJ)

Any opinions about what I got?

Sempron's can be fun little rigs, especially quad sempron systems!

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-16, 07:20:

RetroPC_King wrote on 2021-12-16, 07:15:

This is what I got yesterday: -AVerMedia TV GO 007 TV tuner (Philips SAA713X chipset) -ASUS DRW-1608P2 white DVD-RW drive (seale […]
Show full quote

This is what I got yesterday:
-AVerMedia TV GO 007 TV tuner (Philips SAA713X chipset)
-ASUS DRW-1608P2 white DVD-RW drive (sealed in a fragile bag)
-Leadtek WinFast TV2000XP TV tuner (Conexant Fusion 878A chipset) (sealed in a white anti-static bag)
-ASUS CRW-5232AS CD-RW drive
-ASUS K8U-X Motherboard (ULi M1689 chipset) with 768MB RAM and AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6GHz CPU with a SPIRE HEATSINK and FAN + I/O Shield (sealed in a white anti-static bag)
-Three Floppy Drives (one Mitsumi and 2 Sony) with a data cable (sealed in a fragile bag)
-some 128MB AGP video card (sealed in a white anti-static bag)
-some data cable
-ASUS K8N (NVIDIA nForce 3 250 MCP) with 512MB RAM and AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6GHz CPU + I/O Shield
(in anti-static)
-2 Samsung SpinPoint P80 160GB HDDs (model type HD160JJ)

Any opinions about what I got?

Sempron's can be fun little rigs, especially quad sempron systems!

It can be. I have a AMD Sempron 3000+ 1.8GHz (E6 stepping), performance is closer to AMD Athlon 64 2800+ Venice, altough it have 128KB L2 cache (Athlon 64 have 512KB L2 or either 1MB L2), it still performs good, only minor differences due to small L2 cache, but still good. That Sempron I use it with a WinFast DV2000 TV Tuner and it encodes MPEG-2 good in real time. Also I played games on that AMD Sempron 3000+ and I didn't noticed performance loss when I compared to a ATHLON 64 2800+ in the past. So Conclusion = AMD Sempron 3000+ is a budget AMD Athlon 64 2800+.

But what about that ASUS K8U-X and ASUS K8N? What should I do with them?

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-16, 06:49:

And the 4870x2 is slower than a 6870.

I bought a couple refurb 4870x2 cards from Tigerdirect. One ended up being DOA and Visiontek allowed me to RMA both and they replaced them with a pair of 6870s. Still have those cards.

I also have an HD6950, right next to me right now actually. I have it marked as defective, though I can't remember what is wrong.

Any ideas on what to check on it first?

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-16, 07:52:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-16, 06:49:

And the 4870x2 is slower than a 6870.

I bought a couple refurb 4870x2 cards from Tigerdirect. One ended up being DOA and Visiontek allowed me to RMA both and they replaced them with a pair of 6870s. Still have those cards.

I also have an HD8650, right next to me right now actually. I have it marked as defective, though I can't remember what is wrong.

Any ideas on what to check on it first?

Is that one of the rebadged OEM models ? IIRC they didn't release any 8000 series to retail.

Interesting GPU to have.

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-16, 08:13:

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-16, 07:52:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-16, 06:49:

And the 4870x2 is slower than a 6870.

I bought a couple refurb 4870x2 cards from Tigerdirect. One ended up being DOA and Visiontek allowed me to RMA both and they replaced them with a pair of 6870s. Still have those cards.

I also have an HD8650, right next to me right now actually. I have it marked as defective, though I can't remember what is wrong.

Any ideas on what to check on it first?

Is that one of the rebadged OEM models ? IIRC they didn't release any 8000 series to retail.

Interesting GPU to have.

That is one of the typo models 😁 It's actually an HD6950.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-16, 08:39:

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-16, 08:13:

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-16, 07:52:

I also have an HD8650, right next to me right now actually. I have it marked as defective, though I can't remember what is wrong.

Any ideas on what to check on it first?

Is that one of the rebadged OEM models ? IIRC they didn't release any 8000 series to retail.

Interesting GPU to have.

That is one of the typo models 😁 It's actually an HD6850.

🤣 the 8000 series does exist but its just rebadged 7000 models and OEM only, would be interesting to have one if only to compare it to its 7k brother and see if any improvements were made.

Bought this Compaq N600C Pentium III lappy today

Sellers Image

Looks to be in amazing condition and I already have new main and CMOS batteries lined up for it with a processor downgrade to a PIII 600 (Has 1ghz model) it should be a super nice little DOS/Win98se machine, has a 20gb HDD, FDD, DvD Rw and 384mb of Ram, has an ESS sound card in it so should be perfect for DOS SB emulation. Not sure how the Radeon Mobility it has will do for DOS but it should fingers crossed but fairly compatible and the screen is XGA max 1024x768.

I see Mobile P3 CPUs that are 450mhz but I dont know if they will fit into the socket on this machine, 450 - 550 Mhz would be more in line with late DOS era machines. IT has PCMCIA ports so I might see if a CF to PCMCIA card will work with it.