Wes1262 wrote on 2024-07-13, 11:10:

Are these cards significantly rare or just "ok enough to keep"? (just so that I have an idea of how much I should pay for them)

only two cards out of everything are worth paying anything, maybe ~5 others are worth not throwing away if you get them for free.

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-07-13, 14:12:

Wes1262 wrote on 2024-07-13, 11:10:

Are these cards significantly rare or just "ok enough to keep"? (just so that I have an idea of how much I should pay for them)

only two cards out of everything are worth paying anything, maybe ~5 others are worth not throwing away if you get them for free.

Just to reiterate what I said before... this is just one opinion.

If someone is new to this hobby and shows a desire to collect and learn about this stuff, telling them everything is trash is kind of ridiculous in my opinion. If he can get a pile of these for dirt cheap, that is a great opportunity to use them and learn about them. 99% of what we do here has absolutely zero historical or practical significance to anyone outside of forums like these. Really. No one cares! If someone here is interested in tinkering with low end video cards from 1997, it is no more of a waste of time than someone who puts hundreds of hours into designing modern retro-throwback video cards or sound cards and sells like 10 of them in total. We do this because we enjoy collecting and tinkering with hardware and software from a different era... right?

Wes: Do not buy any of these (other than the Geforce 2 Ti and the Banshee) thinking you are saving desirable cards or that you're going to make money reselling them, but not everyone here considers these worthless garbage, as shown by all of the posts here suggesting that several may be worth picking up for the right price. You haven't stated the price or how common stuff like this is where you live, so we can't tell you directly what you should buy.

What I would like to keep, is any cards that can do games. Which of these cards can play 3D games, but also stuff like age of empires, simcity? I am going to keep the Geforces. There are a lot of MXs. I know from experience they can do early 2000s 3D quite well and they would be nice on a similarly cheap PC. Not sure about the TNTs, the Ati 7000s or the 128whatsthename. I used to love Ati, but I started with the 8500. I don't know much about the earlier cards. I am keeping the PCI ones because they are rare and useful for bios flashing.

Wes1262 wrote on 2024-07-13, 17:41:

What I would like to keep, is any cards that can do games. Which of these cards can play 3D games, but also stuff like age of empires, simcity? I am going to keep the Geforces. There are a lot of MXs. I know from experience they can do early 2000s 3D quite well and they would be nice on a similarly cheap PC. Not sure about the TNTs, the Ati 7000s or the 128whatsthename. I used to love Ati, but I started with the 8500. I don't know much about the earlier cards. I am keeping the PCI ones because they are rare and useful for bios flashing.

I'd recommend reading some of the reviews and articles at vintage3D: https://vintage3d.org/

None of the assorted S3, ATi, Intel or SIS AGP cards are going to be great for 3D accelerated gaming, but some are certainly usable and perform better than you might expect (SiS cards surprised me when I tested them and ATi Rage and Radeon are generally okay if you can deal with the drivers). If you just need cards for some specific computers to get them running games as smoothly as possible for the price, and you aren't interested in tinkering with obscure stuff that was never "the best", you'd probably be best just sticking to the Geforce cards. They will run 99% of the 3D accelerated games from the late 90s much better than the other cards here, they work fine in non-accelerated games and tend to be solid for DOS as well.

If you are interested in tinkering and having some variety to your hardware collection, most of the others can do 3D accelerated gaming as well, albeit with varying results depending on the game and API beings used.

Hi all, New to the forum but have been lurking for quite some time. Have not come across an "intoduction" type thread so might aswell start this way.

This may not be quite as old as most of the hardware here but in my search for rebuilding the PC's i built as a teenager i came across this card.

Quite dusty but still works.

An AGP Asus X850XT.

When these cards just came out i bought a Sapphire X850XT-PE (pci-e) for my first gaming pc. For a brief second i was the man at a lan party... then 5 seconds later better cards came out. But that's the nature of the game.

I have not yet been able to find an affordable Sapphire PE to rebuild my old pc but perhaps one day i'll find one.

Ham Flea pickings...

Got me some mostly midrange cards, I like running them more than top end all heat and flake and sudden death top enders. Not super sure whether the green thing is 7900 GS or GT at the minute, very little ID on it. Zotac orange fan is a 650GT 2GB 128bit ddr5, blue board Gigabyte is HD7770 OC. Then I got some kind of SB again... though this is meant to be peak SB according to some. Got that lot for $30CDN with one of the programmer cards. The Chester Cheeto on Cyber Acid box I got for a buck... it actually has a 440 in... it might be NIB... everything very minty inside, no sign of seal on the antistatic bag so IDK if they came just folded over, no sticker.

The programmers, every year for the last dozen maybe, I hunt for (E)EPROMS and programmers at these things and seldom seen one, maybe 3 years ago I passed one up because it looked like an early version of an eBay cheapie and they wanted too many $$$pondulicks. Anyway, today I see TWO, got the first one in deal above then second one in box with manual, and potentially a bag of $50 worth of whateverPROMs for $5... Needhams PB-10, ardent tool has a page on them on a quick google, anyway, think I'll find some clue/support to make it/them useful, got one Rev E (left) one Rev F (right)

Motherboard, a not all that retro 775 mATX by ASUS P5L-MX... thinking maybe it's gonna get some NAS-ish duty, or maybe moonclock a 1st gen C2D for giggles and XP gaming. Came with the "ITX" or SFF or whatever you call it PSU for $10 It's only a CoolMax tho... might find it's way into "Dustin the DOStin" or use for other low pro project.

No pics, other stuff, boxed media bay doohickey with CF and SD the useful ones. Hoping it's less crap than my other modern to CF readers. a buncha 16GB CF cards. Two tools which may feature in some moddery, hackery or tomfoolery in future, a "hole embiggener" reamer type thing, does about 1/4" to 1" and a sawzall.

I bet at least one dude was wondering what a mystery pack of EPROMs looks like...

Yeah the two at the top are gonna be OTP or mask ROM I guess... maybe a couple others too, can't see the window dimple in the stickers. See those middle row ones with Adaptec written on them, there's the faintest of faint chances that one of them might be a mythical boot ROM for some early cards, but keep breathing, it will be a While with a capital W before I find out even it it's Interesting with a capital I.

I joked last year about making a C64 on a card out of an autonomous FAXmodem card that had a 6502 on it... hum.. with a C64 BASIC ROM sitting RIGHT THERE, it seems like some trickster god or other is twisting my arm.

edit: sneak peeked under edge of labels, the middle row left two are AM27256, and the KAM at the top is a M27C1001 EPROM so phew, I'm not gonna have to stack four of the 16kbit/2kbyte ones to get some use out of them 🤣 KAM one appears to be from a packet radio modem by the way that also did RTTY and other stuff.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-07-14, 00:24:

I joked last year about making a C64 on a card out of an autonomous FAXmodem card that had a 6502 on it... hum.. with a C64 BASIC ROM sitting RIGHT THERE, it seems like some trickster god or other is twisting my arm.

Oh boy, imagine everyone here frantically digging through their junk pile of dial-up modems (we all have at least some for whatever reason), trying to find one of these mythical beasts that could be converted to a Commodore 64 equivalent of the 3DO Blaster. 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-07-14, 00:24:

I bet at least one dude was wondering what a mystery pack of EPROMs looks like... […]
Show full quote

I bet at least one dude was wondering what a mystery pack of EPROMs looks like...

Yeah the two at the top are gonna be OTP or mask ROM I guess... maybe a couple others too, can't see the window dimple in the stickers. See those middle row ones with Adaptec written on them, there's the faintest of faint chances that one of them might be a mythical boot ROM for some early cards, but keep breathing, it will be a While with a capital W before I find out even it it's Interesting with a capital I.

I joked last year about making a C64 on a card out of an autonomous FAXmodem card that had a 6502 on it... hum.. with a C64 BASIC ROM sitting RIGHT THERE, it seems like some trickster god or other is twisting my arm.

edit: sneak peeked under edge of labels, the middle row left two are AM27256, and the KAM at the top is a M27C1001 EPROM so phew, I'm not gonna have to stack four of the 16kbit/2kbyte ones to get some use out of them 🤣 KAM one appears to be from a packet radio modem by the way that also did RTTY and other stuff.

Should be illegal to post images like this.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-07-14, 01:00:

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-07-14, 00:24:

I joked last year about making a C64 on a card out of an autonomous FAXmodem card that had a 6502 on it... hum.. with a C64 BASIC ROM sitting RIGHT THERE, it seems like some trickster god or other is twisting my arm.

Oh boy, imagine everyone here frantically digging through their junk pile of dial-up modems (we all have at least some for whatever reason), trying to find one of these mythical beasts that could be converted to a Commodore 64 equivalent of the 3DO Blaster. 🤣

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today that post for the card I was referring to in this one.. Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Very slim chance it's even a workable idea though. Another card that comes to mind like that is the megadrive card in the Amstrad MegaPC.

Edit: by the way, I think early PowerVR hype had me thinking it was Playstation on a card or some crap... not for long tho

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-07-14, 01:21:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-07-14, 01:00:

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-07-14, 00:24:

I joked last year about making a C64 on a card out of an autonomous FAXmodem card that had a 6502 on it... hum.. with a C64 BASIC ROM sitting RIGHT THERE, it seems like some trickster god or other is twisting my arm.

Oh boy, imagine everyone here frantically digging through their junk pile of dial-up modems (we all have at least some for whatever reason), trying to find one of these mythical beasts that could be converted to a Commodore 64 equivalent of the 3DO Blaster. 🤣

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today that post for the card I was referring to in this one.. Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Very slim chance it's even a workable idea though. Another card that comes to mind like that is the megadrive card in the Amstrad MegaPC.

Yeah, I imagine there is more to making a C64 on a card than having a 6502 and a BASIC ROM, haha.

... I did look at the picture just now to make sure I don't have one of those laying around though, and I'm pretty confident that I have never seen one like that. 😅

G-X wrote on 2024-07-13, 18:55:

Hi all, New to the forum but have been lurking for quite some time. Have not come across an "intoduction" type thread so might a […]
Show full quote

Hi all, New to the forum but have been lurking for quite some time. Have not come across an "intoduction" type thread so might aswell start this way.

This may not be quite as old as most of the hardware here but in my search for rebuilding the PC's i built as a teenager i came across this card.

Quite dusty but still works.

An AGP Asus X850XT.

When these cards just came out i bought a Sapphire X850XT-PE (pci-e) for my first gaming pc. For a brief second i was the man at a lan party... then 5 seconds later better cards came out. But that's the nature of the game.

I have not yet been able to find an affordable Sapphire PE to rebuild my old pc but perhaps one day i'll find one.

There was a x850xtpe not long ago on ebay. Fantastic card from when ATI was really kicking arses. Super rare. I was ready to pay (A LOT) but I didn't increase my max bid since I had a significant advantage, but then someone managed to outbid me in the last 10 seconds. And it was the AGP one too. I will forever regret it. I waited years for that card to show up on ebay.

Wes1262 wrote on 2024-07-14, 04:02:

G-X wrote on 2024-07-13, 18:55:

Hi all, New to the forum but have been lurking for quite some time. Have not come across an "intoduction" type thread so might a […]
Show full quote

Hi all, New to the forum but have been lurking for quite some time. Have not come across an "intoduction" type thread so might aswell start this way.

This may not be quite as old as most of the hardware here but in my search for rebuilding the PC's i built as a teenager i came across this card.

Quite dusty but still works.

An AGP Asus X850XT.

When these cards just came out i bought a Sapphire X850XT-PE (pci-e) for my first gaming pc. For a brief second i was the man at a lan party... then 5 seconds later better cards came out. But that's the nature of the game.

I have not yet been able to find an affordable Sapphire PE to rebuild my old pc but perhaps one day i'll find one.

There was a x850xtpe not long ago on ebay. Fantastic card from when ATI was really kicking arses. Super rare. I was ready to pay (A LOT) but I didn't increase my max bid since I had a significant advantage, but then someone managed to outbid me in the last 10 seconds. And it was the AGP one too. I will forever regret it. I waited years for that card to show up on ebay.

PCIe models of that card tend to be fairly cheap and you can get PCIe Win98 motherboards .. this is the path I took since the AGP models go for insane amounts of money and the AGP models also tend to be DOA due to the heat issues the Rialto Bridge chip suffers from due to ATI not bothering to put adequate cooling on the poor thing. If you can ever get a working AGP X850XT PE then your first mission is to put a heat sink on the Rialto Bridge chip and then throw a better cooler on the card. I wouldnt ever use the AGP model without doing these two things first or at the bare minimum repating it and putting a heat sink on the bridge chip.

There are native AGP versions IIRC, but they should be even more rare than the bridged versions.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-07-13, 17:26:

If someone is new to this hobby and shows a desire to collect and learn about this stuff, telling them everything is trash is kind of ridiculous in my opinion.

Wes1262 indicated he will have to pay for this. Is telling him to pay for as you yourself noted "I'd recommend reading some of the reviews and articles at vintage3D: https://vintage3d.org/ None of the assorted S3, ATi, Intel or SIS AGP cards are going to be great for 3D accelerated gaming" meme cards not ridiculous? 😀 You are replying to my reply to Munx suggesting Wes1262 pay for "3x trident, 2x i740, 2x matrox" aka 7 meme cards.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-07-13, 17:26:

Wes: Do not buy any of these (other than the Geforce 2 Ti and the Banshee) thinking you are saving desirable cards or that you're going to make money reselling them

or will ever use any of them for non comedic purposes 😀

G-X wrote on 2024-07-13, 18:55:

An AGP Asus X850XT.

When these cards just came out i bought a Sapphire X850XT-PE (pci-e) for my first gaming pc. For a brief second i was the man at a lan party... then 5 seconds later better cards came out. But that's the nature of the game.

The problem with Radeon R400 chipset family was Pixel Shader model 3.0 games started coming out a year before. Great GPUs with plenty of speed, but limited to 2.0 shaders meaning Nvidia had easy time marketing against them.

I bought this today ...

and a 2GB Corsair DDR PC3500 kit to go with it. The Pro ones with the twinkling LEDs.

The RAM was a bargain... the CPU... well, I've got one now....

Lostdotfish wrote on 2024-07-14, 08:27:

I bought this today ...

and a 2GB Corsair DDR PC3500 kit to go with it. The Pro ones with the twinkling LEDs.

The RAM was a bargain... the CPU... well, I've got one now....

Do you regrow kidneys? I'm interested... 🤣
Nice cpu. Pc3500 allows for some OC. I've been looking for 500MHz and IIRC even 550 were produced.
Have fun!!

Nexxen wrote on 2024-07-14, 12:55:

Do you regrow kidneys? I'm interested... LOL Nice cpu. Pc3500 allows for some OC. I've been looking for 500MHz and IIRC even 550 […]
Show full quote

Lostdotfish wrote on 2024-07-14, 08:27:

I bought this today ...

and a 2GB Corsair DDR PC3500 kit to go with it. The Pro ones with the twinkling LEDs.

The RAM was a bargain... the CPU... well, I've got one now....

Do you regrow kidneys? I'm interested... 🤣
Nice cpu. Pc3500 allows for some OC. I've been looking for 500MHz and IIRC even 550 were produced.
Have fun!!

hehe .. yup I too know how much that CPU can cost, as for the ram I have a lot of the PC4000 DDR500 stuff but have never seen DDR 550, must be exceptionally rare. (Added it to my saved searches, might show up eventually)

Lostdotfish wrote on 2024-07-14, 08:27:

I bought this today ...

and a 2GB Corsair DDR PC3500 kit to go with it. The Pro ones with the twinkling LEDs.

The RAM was a bargain... the CPU... well, I've got one now....

Holy Toledo Batman, it's an FX-60.

Hope it appreciates the RAM, my 939 board is in dustsink mode since.... crap probably nearly 10 years now I last had it on. Anyway, that with an X2 4400 was picky picky picky with RAM, finally managed to piece together a set of 4x512 it liked. However, since then I have gained a lot more DDR400+, 512 and 1GB sticks, and will have to see if I can improve on 2GB and barely passes Memtest at stock speed as long as you don't look at it funny. Those nForce chipsets though, feels like older PCChips boards were a decade long trainer mode for getting ready to deal with them. Seems like there is no financial sense for me in going past the 4400 I've got though, so unless a wild luck fairy appears and I get one in a box of CPUs or something, it's keeping that. Blanking on complete model name, it's got K8N Neo and SLI in somewhere, don't think it's a platinum..

Come the refresh and restore, not sure what I am going to engraphicise it with. Options might include, pair of 7900s, pair of 9600s, and with a lot of screwing around, finding the right Catalyst that works with nForce well and maybe having to run Vista, HD4850s in crossfire... or HD2600s for the lulz.

Nexxen wrote on 2024-07-14, 12:55:

Do you regrow kidneys? I'm interested... LOL Nice cpu. Pc3500 allows for some OC. I've been looking for 500MHz and IIRC even 550 […]
Show full quote

Lostdotfish wrote on 2024-07-14, 08:27:

I bought this today ...

and a 2GB Corsair DDR PC3500 kit to go with it. The Pro ones with the twinkling LEDs.

The RAM was a bargain... the CPU... well, I've got one now....

Do you regrow kidneys? I'm interested... 🤣
Nice cpu. Pc3500 allows for some OC. I've been looking for 500MHz and IIRC even 550 were produced.
Have fun!!

Yeah got my eyes open for some PC4000 DDR. I have a pair of 512 sticks of BH5 for if I want to try for 500-600Mhz but I'd like a 2GB kit that held it's own too.

The FX60 was actually a good price... relatively. I imagine I could sell it for more than I paid if I was patient. But happy enough to have it to play with.