Bought this Radeon 7500 off someone on eBay, it also came with an extra VGA port on a cable that I don't have installed at the moment because I want to test it on a different card that's in a Mac that has a slightly different but mechanically compatible connector (and want to keep that PCI slot open, if only the useless AMR was there instead of at the bottom). It actually works perfectly with no corruption, which I unfortunately can't say about my GF4 Ti, it's a shame that's potentially a die issue because I'd definitely have liked to get that one fixed up, even if this is ultimately a better fit for this particular PC for better XFree86 4.2 compatibility.

Just one problem with it:

Didn't come with a cooler, and since I have no idea who made it (and a search turned up nothing, nor any indication there were any SDR 7500s besides this exact card listing), I can't actually find the cooler for it, but I saw a Club3D 9550 cooler and it looks similar enough to try it. For now it's just plugged in to have on long enough (about a minute) to test that it's in fact working at all and then immediately turn the PC off, which it does. Probably I'll drop the speeds down to Radeon SDR speeds if it isn't already there, but we'll see.

Joytech Apollo, that's the model of the 7500.

https://www.ixbt.com/video/128mb-cards.shtml

Ah, good to know, thanks. Hopefully, it's compatible with those 55mm-spaced coolers (seems to be just going off how it looks), since those seem pretty easy to find for cheap. And since I brought it up here, I noticed a few missing resistors, a few leaky capacitors, and one that's slightly off from where it should be on the Ti 4200, so maybe the card can be fixed and work properly and it's just those components causing problems?

My Wingman Force arrived today.
Can't test it besides being recognized by W10 (no driver available).

I don't have many motherboards on my hit list of boards I want but I got one today a nice Soyo SY-6BA+IV, its got a metric ton of bells and whistles for overclocking along with ATA 66 4 dimm slots and 2 ISA.

Pretty much a board built for the PII/PIII tinkerer.

This one comes with a PIII 667 and 640 Mb of ram ...kinda odd amount of memory .. looking at the photos its got 4 256Mb sticks in it which means some of the sticks are not being detected correctly ..likely got a couple of single rank high density sticks in there.

Still thats not hard to sort out when it gets here.

I count one dual rank 128Mb chip DIMM and three single rank 256Mb chip DIMMs. That would mean 1x 256MB and 3x 128MB, which comes to 640MB. Better not to use relative "high" / "low" density - what passes as low density for a BX is excessively high density for an i430VX.

dionb wrote on 2025-04-29, 12:50:

I count one dual rank 128Mb chip DIMM and three single rank 256Mb chip DIMMs. That would mean 1x 256MB and 3x 128MB, which comes to 640MB. Better not to use relative "high" / "low" density - what passes as low density for a BX is excessively high density for an i430VX.

It’s 2 pc 100 256MB dimms and 2 pc 133 256MB dimms, unless the labels on the dimms are wrong. Should be 1GB total, but if there are three single rank sticks and only one dual rank then that's where its getting 640 from as it would only be seeing 128 from each of the single rank sticks. I assume the single sided sticks are the likely culprits here, so they will be getting evicted.

Its an odd assortment of sticks, in any case there is some 256MB sticks in there which the BX chipset doesn't like.

I have some dual sided 256MB ram sticks that I know work fine with 440BX and this board really only needs 512MB more than that is pretty pointless since it wont be running anything higher than 98SE.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-29, 13:20:

It’s 2 pc 100 256mb dimms and 2 pc 133 256mb dimms, unless the labels on the dimms are wrong. Should be 1Gb total, but if there […]
Show full quote

dionb wrote on 2025-04-29, 12:50:

I count one dual rank 128Mb chip DIMM and three single rank 256Mb chip DIMMs. That would mean 1x 256MB and 3x 128MB, which comes to 640MB. Better not to use relative "high" / "low" density - what passes as low density for a BX is excessively high density for an i430VX.

It’s 2 pc 100 256mb dimms and 2 pc 133 256mb dimms, unless the labels on the dimms are wrong. Should be 1Gb total, but if there are three single rank sticks and only one dual rank then that's where its getting 640 from as it would only be seeing 128 from each of the single rank sticks. I assume the single sided sticks are the likely culprits here, so they will be getting evicted.

The attachment memory.jpg is no longer available

Its an odd assortment of sticks, in any case there is some 256Mb sticks in there which the BX chipset doesn't like.

I have some dual sided 256Mb ram sticks that I know work fine with 440BX and this board really only needs 512Mb more than that is pretty pointless since it wont be running anything higher than 98SE.

I think you're mixing up your bits and Bytes (or your capitalization) here...

i440BX supports max 128Mbit chips, so it will only be able to address half of256Mbit ones. You can still get 256MByte DIMMs by using DIMMs with 16 128Mbit chips with 16Mx8 structure. Chip capacities are listed in (Mega)bits, DIMM sizes in (Mega)Bytes.

The rated speed doesn't matter for compatibility - it's like speed limits on roads (or maybe on car tyres): you can always use it safely up to the rated speed, go faster and you might crash. It doesn't say anything apart from that.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-29, 12:21:

I don't have many motherboards on my hit list of boards I want but I got one today a nice Soyo SY-6BA+IV, its got a metric ton o […]
Show full quote

I don't have many motherboards on my hit list of boards I want but I got one today a nice Soyo SY-6BA+IV, its got a metric ton of bells and whistles for overclocking along with ATA 66 4 dimm slots and 2 ISA.

Pretty much a board built for the PII/PIII tinkerer.

The attachment Soyo SY-6BA+IV.jpg is no longer available

This one comes with a PIII 667 and 640 Mb of ram ...kinda odd amount of memory .. looking at the photos its got 4 256Mb sticks in it which means some of the sticks are not being detected correctly ..likely got a couple of single rank high density sticks in there.

Still thats not hard to sort out when it gets here.

My ABIT BE6-II says hi 🤣

But really, the 6BA+IV was great, can't deny that, although from most of my experience with both - the award goes to BE6-II (and its subsequent siblings, including the BX133-RAID which I absolutely love!). Even if the BE6-II loses one SDR slot to the 6BA + IV.

The OC options on that one really outweigh Soyo's, as much as I love them. Soyo comes on a STRONG 2nd place though!

Anyways, on track with my contact, and speaking of SOYO, I've already added two boards for next month's lot! They are as follows:
- Soyo SY-6BA+III
- DFI P2XBL Rev D2

I clearly remember the couple of occasions in the late 90s and early 2000s when I had the chance to use a professional CRT, and but for the lack of space, I've always wanted to own one.

After much deliberation, I finally pulled the trigger on a listing I've been watching for a while. Seems like the UK-based seller has/had a few of these in stock, and I've seen a couple of threads here and elsewhere stating that they're carefully shipped and arrived in good working order. That was enough to convince me that I needed one of these in my life right now- although I still don't really have anywhere to put it!

It's a mid-2004 Sun Microsystems X7149a 22" (20" visible) Diamondtron CRT, based on an NEC/Mitsubishi design. The on screen menu indicates less than 350 hours power-on time, suggesting it's practically unused. Cosmetically, it's in good shape other than a couple of scuffs and a hairline crack in one corner of the plastic screen surround. I've been using a 17" Dell Trinitron for years, but this thing is a whole different experience!

PcBytes wrote on 2025-04-29, 16:42:

My ABIT BE6-II says hi lol […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-29, 12:21:

I don't have many motherboards on my hit list of boards I want but I got one today a nice Soyo SY-6BA+IV, its got a metric ton o […]
Show full quote

I don't have many motherboards on my hit list of boards I want but I got one today a nice Soyo SY-6BA+IV, its got a metric ton of bells and whistles for overclocking along with ATA 66 4 dimm slots and 2 ISA.

Pretty much a board built for the PII/PIII tinkerer.

The attachment Soyo SY-6BA+IV.jpg is no longer available

This one comes with a PIII 667 and 640 Mb of ram ...kinda odd amount of memory .. looking at the photos its got 4 256Mb sticks in it which means some of the sticks are not being detected correctly ..likely got a couple of single rank high density sticks in there.

Still thats not hard to sort out when it gets here.

My ABIT BE6-II says hi 🤣

But really, the 6BA+IV was great, can't deny that, although from most of my experience with both - the award goes to BE6-II (and its subsequent siblings, including the BX133-RAID which I absolutely love!). Even if the BE6-II loses one SDR slot to the 6BA + IV.

The OC options on that one really outweigh Soyo's, as much as I love them. Soyo comes on a STRONG 2nd place though!

Anyways, on track with my contact, and speaking of SOYO, I've already added two boards for next month's lot! They are as follows:
- Soyo SY-6BA+III
- DFI P2XBL Rev D2

Heh

I have both the BX133 and the BE6-II and yes they are truly great boards. The BE6-II has the better Highpoint 370 controller over the Soyo and likely better 133 FSB support too but its nice to have both!

The BX133 is in a class of its own however and its hard to compare it to the slot based boards, its the final evolution of the BX chipset.

dionb wrote on 2025-04-29, 15:33:

I think you're mixing up your bits and Bytes (or your capitalization) here... […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-29, 13:20:

It’s 2 pc 100 256mb dimms and 2 pc 133 256mb dimms, unless the labels on the dimms are wrong. Should be 1Gb total, but if there […]
Show full quote

dionb wrote on 2025-04-29, 12:50:

I count one dual rank 128Mb chip DIMM and three single rank 256Mb chip DIMMs. That would mean 1x 256MB and 3x 128MB, which comes to 640MB. Better not to use relative "high" / "low" density - what passes as low density for a BX is excessively high density for an i430VX.

It’s 2 pc 100 256mb dimms and 2 pc 133 256mb dimms, unless the labels on the dimms are wrong. Should be 1Gb total, but if there are three single rank sticks and only one dual rank then that's where its getting 640 from as it would only be seeing 128 from each of the single rank sticks. I assume the single sided sticks are the likely culprits here, so they will be getting evicted.

The attachment memory.jpg is no longer available

Its an odd assortment of sticks, in any case there is some 256Mb sticks in there which the BX chipset doesn't like.

I have some dual sided 256MB ram sticks that I know work fine with 440BX and this board really only needs 512MB more than that is pretty pointless since it wont be running anything higher than 98SE.

I think you're mixing up your bits and Bytes (or your capitalization) here...

i440BX supports max 128Mbit chips, so it will only be able to address half of256Mbit ones. You can still get 256MByte DIMMs by using DIMMs with 16 128Mbit chips with 16Mx8 structure. Chip capacities are listed in (Mega)bits, DIMM sizes in (Mega)Bytes.

The rated speed doesn't matter for compatibility - it's like speed limits on roads (or maybe on car tyres): you can always use it safely up to the rated speed, go faster and you might crash. It doesn't say anything apart from that.

I think you are reading far too much into text on a Forum my friend, keep it simple and don't overthink this. If you see mb in relation to a ram stick then you can be 100% sure its Megabyte and not Megabit, if I was talking about the individual ICs then sure itll be Megabit.

The three single sided 256MB Dimms will likely be the ones only being detected as 128MB Dimms, the Double sided 256MB Dimm will likely be the only one being detected right. I'm aware of how memory on the BX chipset works I have enough BX boards and prior knowledge to understand the concepts well, the funny thing is I'm pretty sure we have both had this discussion before heh.

I know how hard it can be as a tech person to step back and not overthink what you are reading ...I'm guilty of it too.

Edit - In my own defense here, doing capitals on a phone keyboard is a royal pain in the arse when it also keeps auto correcting.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-29, 12:21:

I don't have many motherboards on my hit list of boards I want but I got one today a nice Soyo SY-6BA+IV, its got a metric ton o […]
Show full quote

I don't have many motherboards on my hit list of boards I want but I got one today a nice Soyo SY-6BA+IV, its got a metric ton of bells and whistles for overclocking along with ATA 66 4 dimm slots and 2 ISA.

Pretty much a board built for the PII/PIII tinkerer.

The attachment Soyo SY-6BA+IV.jpg is no longer available

This one comes with a PIII 667 and 640 Mb of ram ...kinda odd amount of memory .. looking at the photos its got 4 256Mb sticks in it which means some of the sticks are not being detected correctly ..likely got a couple of single rank high density sticks in there.

Still thats not hard to sort out when it gets here.

Awesome board.

Masterchief79 wrote on 2025-04-12, 09:22:

Some of my latest additions.
Asus Ageia P1 128MB PhysX card (already sold again) + a DFI X48-T2R with Mushkin Radioactive memory, water-cooling and my 4870x2 engineering sample.

WOW SO COOL! I've never seen that mushkin radioactive. Very cool.

Not that many interesting finds here for the last few weeks/weekends... but here you go anyways:

- Biostar G31D-M7 socket 775 board with unknown CPU and stock slim Intel push-pin cooler... $2. Has a bulged cap and needs a wash. Not tested yet.
- Athlon II CPU of some sort (forgot model #), but figured it's worth a try for $1 (got it discounted when buying with the above motherboard)
- AsRock AB350M-HDV (socket AM4) mobo in unknown condition for $0.50... I'll eat my socks if this one actually works 🤣
- no-name PCI sound card with a dodgy-looking YMF724 chip on it - untested and dirty for the fair scrap price of $0.50
- three PC cases for $0.50 each (more or less), one of them being an old heavy beige AT/ATX case with side-mounting PSU... and lots of dead roaches inside (YUCK!) The other two cases are nothing to write home about - both relatively more modern with black front bezles and made of very cheap and thin steel. One of these is complete (has the sides and even a Samsung IDE DVD drive). The other is completely empty, with the sides missing and the front bezzle broken off, plus very bent on one side... so probably only good as a "parts holder" box. 🤣 Believe it or not, I have a use even for such things.
- 5x Deep Cool 3-pin 90 mm fans for $0.50 each
- A PCI Wi-Fi card (802.11 B/G only, IIRC) with the antenna for $0.50
- about 20-30 ft. of Cat5.e cable for $0.50 total
- FREE!! 20" (Philips?) LCD monitor... with FREE!! dead roaches inside. 🤣 Ah, why do I keep doing this to myself?! 😁 No live ones or any egg sacks, though... as far as I could tell after taking it apart outside. Time will tell... but I ain't bringing it inside any time soon.
- and lastly... lots of free CDs and DVDs again for my "vintage data hoards"- some pirated software, a few PC Magazine ones from the early 00's with nifty software/trialware/drivers, and even a few games (Need For Speed Vrally??). Also, a few mixed data DVDs (someones data backup?) with mostly terrible quality 128 kbps MP3s, shitty movies, and... if you guessed it... early 00's porn!! 🤣 🤣 - About the most stereotypical example of 2000's P2P garbage.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:17:

Couldnt resist buying these two lovely looking HIS IceQ 4 4850 cards for 20 bucks each, if they both work ok then I have a plan to build a X-Fire machine around them with a Blue and Gold motif.

HIS did make some lovely looking cards and the IceQ coolers were pretty good at cooling these GPUs.

Nice find and at pretty good price, all retro things considered these days.

HIS cards almost always got the coolers right, unlike many other "competitors".
The HD4850 is rated for a little over 100 Watts TDP (max) (IIRC, 115W). The reference single-slot cooler wouldn't have been so terrible if ATI/AMD didn't fit such a small and tiny/whiny fan... on top of using an overly-passive cooling profile (wait for the GPU temps to get up to 80C, then crank up the fans? -WTF??!!)
But these dual-slot IceQ coolers with dual-heat pipes - now that's a lot more proper for the TDP of that card!
FWIW, you should still probably check the fan cooling profile, though. I sugges to keep the running temps below 60C (under load), if that's possible... or if not, then at least under 65C. 4850/4870 GPUs are pretty tough and will last a long time if ran cool. Sadly, the reference cooler and stock fan profile in BIOS do not do this, which is one reason so many of these ended up dead.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:17:

I have a soft spot for the HD4000 series, I have a pair of 2gb Sapphire 4890s which were monster cards for their price ..well monsters till the 8800 Ultra came in and crushed every other GPU on the market.

??
IIRC, nVidia 8000 series came way before the ATI/AMD HD4000 series.
IIRC (x2), ATI/AMD was the first to release a DX10 -capable GPU, and that was with the HD2000 series. Then nVidia quickly followed up with the 8000 series, which did indeed crushed everything else... and by a good margin. Then ATI/AMD tried to turn that around with the HD3000 series.... but still couldn't knock the G80 from the top... which soon got refreshed as the G92 (i.e. 9800 GT/GTX and 8800 GTS 512). Then team red came up with the HD4k series... which once again got crushed by team green's cards (GTX 200 series.)
IIRC (x3?), the HD4850 slots is somewhere between the GTS250 (i.e. roughly on par with the 9800 GT/GTX) and GTX260.

That said, I also have a soft spot for the HD4000 series, with the HD4670 probably being my favorite - it has a fairly low power requirement (and thus heat output), yet will run most XP era games pretty well. It's only got 8 ROPs, though, so not exactly a great card for high resolutions and AA cranked up. I do frequently pair this card with my CRTs, though - 1152x864 and 1280x960 are high enough resolutions not to need AA on a 17" or 19" CRT.
I also have a soft spot for the HD3000 series as well - particularly for the HD3870. These give about the same performance (FPS) as the HD4670, but due to having twice the number of ROPs (16), higher resolutions don't bring these cards down to their knees... not as easily, anyways. The lower TMU count compared to the HD4670 doesn't allow the 3870 to quite fully utilize all of its shaders properly.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-28, 13:54:

So heres hoping this delayed retirement of 939 puts more of them on to the market for more reasonable pricing. Im sure as hell not paying 400 USD for a FX57.

Me neither!
But then, I don't have to - I already got one. 😀
I got in many years back when people jumped on the multi-core Intel bandwagon (1st and 2nd gen i-series... and late Core 2 Quads), making those 939 boards too new to be considered "interesting retro gear" and to old in terms of performance. Granted I did have to fix 3 broken pins, and they weren't in the easiest of spots to get to... + straighten about 936 other pins. 🤣 But it was worth it, IMO. It's a pretty snappy single-core CPU even at the stock speed. Doesn't OC that well, though, at least on the board I tried it on and without increasing the core voltage (which I don't like to do.) Going the opposite way, it can work at the stock frequency with about 0.1V less V_core (IIRC), so I can shave off a few degrees / Watts at max load.

Horun wrote on 2025-04-29, 03:49:

Not a fan of all the 12v lines but still looks good.

I'm the opposite - I don't like the single strong 12V rail designs. Generally, it's not an issue with PSUs under around 350-400 Watts. But above that, when the current rating on the 12V seriously starts to go over 30 Amps, it can become a bad fire hazard risk. The 18-25 Amp rail ratings make sure that if any of the 12V lines on a connector gets shorted, the PSU short-circuit protection should be able to catch that and not melt the wires... or burn huge holes through PCBs when something shorts out. Regarding the latter, I still remember the sparks show we saw from a GTX 780 (or perhaps it was a 980, I forget) in the repair shop I worked - all in a matter of 2-3 seconds of time. Before the tech could even reach for the power button on the back of the PSU, the video card already had multiple layers on its PCB burned and fused together.

Cga.8086 wrote on 2025-04-16, 02:26:

bought this

never had a KT266 nor a KT333, but its supposed to be a good board for a voodoo5 ?

Depends on the CPU, I suppose.
I have mine paired with an ASUS Radeon 9550 GE, only because that video card has the same bright orange PCB color.
I kinda wish orange DDR modules were a thing too. Could make for an "orange box" build. 😉

Munx wrote on 2025-04-10, 07:07:

An AGP Geforce 7800 GS.

Not a "true" AGP card, but unlike ATI, Nvidia had the decency to add cooling to the bridge chip.

Nice find!
And better yet, it's from a known brand (Point-of-View) rather than a Chinesium 7800/7900GS with shitty Sacon FZ caps waiting to pop at any moment on unsuspecting owners.

momaka wrote on Yesterday, 21:03:

Not that many interesting finds here for the last few weeks/weekends... but here you go anyways: […]
Show full quote

Not that many interesting finds here for the last few weeks/weekends... but here you go anyways:

- Biostar G31D-M7 socket 775 board with unknown CPU and stock slim Intel push-pin cooler... $2. Has a bulged cap and needs a wash. Not tested yet.
- Athlon II CPU of some sort (forgot model #), but figured it's worth a try for $1 (got it discounted when buying with the above motherboard)
- AsRock AB350M-HDV (socket AM4) mobo in unknown condition for $0.50... I'll eat my socks if this one actually works 🤣
- no-name PCI sound card with a dodgy-looking YMF724 chip on it - untested and dirty for the fair scrap price of $0.50
- three PC cases for $0.50 each (more or less), one of them being an old heavy beige AT/ATX case with side-mounting PSU... and lots of dead roaches inside (YUCK!) The other two cases are nothing to write home about - both relatively more modern with black front bezles and made of very cheap and thin steel. One of these is complete (has the sides and even a Samsung IDE DVD drive). The other is completely empty, with the sides missing and the front bezzle broken off, plus very bent on one side... so probably only good as a "parts holder" box. 🤣 Believe it or not, I have a use even for such things.
- 5x Deep Cool 3-pin 90 mm fans for $0.50 each
- A PCI Wi-Fi card (802.11 B/G only, IIRC) with the antenna for $0.50
- about 20-30 ft. of Cat5.e cable for $0.50 total
- FREE!! 20" (Philips?) LCD monitor... with FREE!! dead roaches inside. 🤣 Ah, why do I keep doing this to myself?! 😁 No live ones or any egg sacks, though... as far as I could tell after taking it apart outside. Time will tell... but I ain't bringing it inside any time soon.
- and lastly... lots of free CDs and DVDs again for my "vintage data hoards"- some pirated software, a few PC Magazine ones from the early 00's with nifty software/trialware/drivers, and even a few games (Need For Speed Vrally??). Also, a few mixed data DVDs (someones data backup?) with mostly terrible quality 128 kbps MP3s, shitty movies, and... if you guessed it... early 00's porn!! 🤣 🤣 - About the most stereotypical example of 2000's P2P garbage.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:17:

Couldnt resist buying these two lovely looking HIS IceQ 4 4850 cards for 20 bucks each, if they both work ok then I have a plan to build a X-Fire machine around them with a Blue and Gold motif.

HIS did make some lovely looking cards and the IceQ coolers were pretty good at cooling these GPUs.

Nice find and at pretty good price, all retro things considered these days.

HIS cards almost always got the coolers right, unlike many other "competitors".
The HD4850 is rated for a little over 100 Watts TDP (max) (IIRC, 115W). The reference single-slot cooler wouldn't have been so terrible if ATI/AMD didn't fit such a small and tiny/whiny fan... on top of using an overly-passive cooling profile (wait for the GPU temps to get up to 80C, then crank up the fans? -WTF??!!)
But these dual-slot IceQ coolers with dual-heat pipes - now that's a lot more proper for the TDP of that card!
FWIW, you should still probably check the fan cooling profile, though. I sugges to keep the running temps below 60C (under load), if that's possible... or if not, then at least under 65C. 4850/4870 GPUs are pretty tough and will last a long time if ran cool. Sadly, the reference cooler and stock fan profile in BIOS do not do this, which is one reason so many of these ended up dead.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:17:

I have a soft spot for the HD4000 series, I have a pair of 2gb Sapphire 4890s which were monster cards for their price ..well monsters till the 8800 Ultra came in and crushed every other GPU on the market.

??
IIRC, nVidia 8000 series came way before the ATI/AMD HD4000 series.
IIRC (x2), ATI/AMD was the first to release a DX10 -capable GPU, and that was with the HD2000 series. Then nVidia quickly followed up with the 8000 series, which did indeed crushed everything else... and by a good margin. Then ATI/AMD tried to turn that around with the HD3000 series.... but still couldn't knock the G80 from the top... which soon got refreshed as the G92 (i.e. 9800 GT/GTX and 8800 GTS 512). Then team red came up with the HD4k series... which once again got crushed by team green's cards (GTX 200 series.)
IIRC (x3?), the HD4850 slots is somewhere between the GTS250 (i.e. roughly on par with the 9800 GT/GTX) and GTX260.

That said, I also have a soft spot for the HD4000 series, with the HD4670 probably being my favorite - it has a fairly low power requirement (and thus heat output), yet will run most XP era games pretty well. It's only got 8 ROPs, though, so not exactly a great card for high resolutions and AA cranked up. I do frequently pair this card with my CRTs, though - 1152x864 and 1280x960 are high enough resolutions not to need AA on a 17" or 19" CRT.
I also have a soft spot for the HD3000 series as well - particularly for the HD3870. These give about the same performance (FPS) as the HD4670, but due to having twice the number of ROPs (16), higher resolutions don't bring these cards down to their knees... not as easily, anyways. The lower TMU count compared to the HD4670 doesn't allow the 3870 to quite fully utilize all of its shaders properly.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-28, 13:54:

So heres hoping this delayed retirement of 939 puts more of them on to the market for more reasonable pricing. Im sure as hell not paying 400 USD for a FX57.

Me neither!
But then, I don't have to - I already got one. 😀
I got in many years back when people jumped on the multi-core Intel bandwagon (1st and 2nd gen i-series... and late Core 2 Quads), making those 939 boards too new to be considered "interesting retro gear" and to old in terms of performance. Granted I did have to fix 3 broken pins, and they weren't in the easiest of spots to get to... + straighten about 936 other pins. 🤣 But it was worth it, IMO. It's a pretty snappy single-core CPU even at the stock speed. Doesn't OC that well, though, at least on the board I tried it on and without increasing the core voltage (which I don't like to do.) Going the opposite way, it can work at the stock frequency with about 0.1V less V_core (IIRC), so I can shave off a few degrees / Watts at max load.

Horun wrote on 2025-04-29, 03:49:

Not a fan of all the 12v lines but still looks good.

I'm the opposite - I don't like the single strong 12V rail designs. Generally, it's not an issue with PSUs under around 350-400 Watts. But above that, when the current rating on the 12V seriously starts to go over 30 Amps, it can become a bad fire hazard risk. The 18-25 Amp rail ratings make sure that if any of the 12V lines on a connector gets shorted, the PSU short-circuit protection should be able to catch that and not melt the wires... or burn huge holes through PCBs when something shorts out. Regarding the latter, I still remember the sparks show we saw from a GTX 780 (or perhaps it was a 980, I forget) in the repair shop I worked - all in a matter of 2-3 seconds of time. Before the tech could even reach for the power button on the back of the PSU, the video card already had multiple layers on its PCB burned and fused together.

Cga.8086 wrote on 2025-04-16, 02:26:

bought this

never had a KT266 nor a KT333, but its supposed to be a good board for a voodoo5 ?

Depends on the CPU, I suppose.
I have mine paired with an ASUS Radeon 9550 GE, only because that video card has the same bright orange PCB color.
I kinda wish orange DDR modules were a thing too. Could make for an "orange box" build. 😉

Munx wrote on 2025-04-10, 07:07:

An AGP Geforce 7800 GS.

Not a "true" AGP card, but unlike ATI, Nvidia had the decency to add cooling to the bridge chip.

Nice find!
And better yet, it's from a known brand (Point-of-View) rather than a Chinesium 7800/7900GS with shitty Sacon FZ caps waiting to pop at any moment on unsuspecting owners.

Yup got the cards a bit miss remembered here, the 4000 series was AMDs reply to the Geforce 200 cards, the 2Gb 4890 was the reply to the 2Gb GTX 285 .. a reply that didn't quite hit the mark even with 2Gb it couldn't match the 285. (It got pretty dang close)

Apologies, memory requires a kick in the pants these days!

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 23:48:

momaka wrote on Yesterday, 21:03:

Not that many interesting finds here for the last few weeks/weekends... but here you go anyways: […]
Show full quote

Not that many interesting finds here for the last few weeks/weekends... but here you go anyways:

- Biostar G31D-M7 socket 775 board with unknown CPU and stock slim Intel push-pin cooler... $2. Has a bulged cap and needs a wash. Not tested yet.
- Athlon II CPU of some sort (forgot model #), but figured it's worth a try for $1 (got it discounted when buying with the above motherboard)
- AsRock AB350M-HDV (socket AM4) mobo in unknown condition for $0.50... I'll eat my socks if this one actually works 🤣
- no-name PCI sound card with a dodgy-looking YMF724 chip on it - untested and dirty for the fair scrap price of $0.50
- three PC cases for $0.50 each (more or less), one of them being an old heavy beige AT/ATX case with side-mounting PSU... and lots of dead roaches inside (YUCK!) The other two cases are nothing to write home about - both relatively more modern with black front bezles and made of very cheap and thin steel. One of these is complete (has the sides and even a Samsung IDE DVD drive). The other is completely empty, with the sides missing and the front bezzle broken off, plus very bent on one side... so probably only good as a "parts holder" box. 🤣 Believe it or not, I have a use even for such things.
- 5x Deep Cool 3-pin 90 mm fans for $0.50 each
- A PCI Wi-Fi card (802.11 B/G only, IIRC) with the antenna for $0.50
- about 20-30 ft. of Cat5.e cable for $0.50 total
- FREE!! 20" (Philips?) LCD monitor... with FREE!! dead roaches inside. 🤣 Ah, why do I keep doing this to myself?! 😁 No live ones or any egg sacks, though... as far as I could tell after taking it apart outside. Time will tell... but I ain't bringing it inside any time soon.
- and lastly... lots of free CDs and DVDs again for my "vintage data hoards"- some pirated software, a few PC Magazine ones from the early 00's with nifty software/trialware/drivers, and even a few games (Need For Speed Vrally??). Also, a few mixed data DVDs (someones data backup?) with mostly terrible quality 128 kbps MP3s, shitty movies, and... if you guessed it... early 00's porn!! 🤣 🤣 - About the most stereotypical example of 2000's P2P garbage.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:17:

Couldnt resist buying these two lovely looking HIS IceQ 4 4850 cards for 20 bucks each, if they both work ok then I have a plan to build a X-Fire machine around them with a Blue and Gold motif.

HIS did make some lovely looking cards and the IceQ coolers were pretty good at cooling these GPUs.

Nice find and at pretty good price, all retro things considered these days.

HIS cards almost always got the coolers right, unlike many other "competitors".
The HD4850 is rated for a little over 100 Watts TDP (max) (IIRC, 115W). The reference single-slot cooler wouldn't have been so terrible if ATI/AMD didn't fit such a small and tiny/whiny fan... on top of using an overly-passive cooling profile (wait for the GPU temps to get up to 80C, then crank up the fans? -WTF??!!)
But these dual-slot IceQ coolers with dual-heat pipes - now that's a lot more proper for the TDP of that card!
FWIW, you should still probably check the fan cooling profile, though. I sugges to keep the running temps below 60C (under load), if that's possible... or if not, then at least under 65C. 4850/4870 GPUs are pretty tough and will last a long time if ran cool. Sadly, the reference cooler and stock fan profile in BIOS do not do this, which is one reason so many of these ended up dead.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:17:

I have a soft spot for the HD4000 series, I have a pair of 2gb Sapphire 4890s which were monster cards for their price ..well monsters till the 8800 Ultra came in and crushed every other GPU on the market.

??
IIRC, nVidia 8000 series came way before the ATI/AMD HD4000 series.
IIRC (x2), ATI/AMD was the first to release a DX10 -capable GPU, and that was with the HD2000 series. Then nVidia quickly followed up with the 8000 series, which did indeed crushed everything else... and by a good margin. Then ATI/AMD tried to turn that around with the HD3000 series.... but still couldn't knock the G80 from the top... which soon got refreshed as the G92 (i.e. 9800 GT/GTX and 8800 GTS 512). Then team red came up with the HD4k series... which once again got crushed by team green's cards (GTX 200 series.)
IIRC (x3?), the HD4850 slots is somewhere between the GTS250 (i.e. roughly on par with the 9800 GT/GTX) and GTX260.

That said, I also have a soft spot for the HD4000 series, with the HD4670 probably being my favorite - it has a fairly low power requirement (and thus heat output), yet will run most XP era games pretty well. It's only got 8 ROPs, though, so not exactly a great card for high resolutions and AA cranked up. I do frequently pair this card with my CRTs, though - 1152x864 and 1280x960 are high enough resolutions not to need AA on a 17" or 19" CRT.
I also have a soft spot for the HD3000 series as well - particularly for the HD3870. These give about the same performance (FPS) as the HD4670, but due to having twice the number of ROPs (16), higher resolutions don't bring these cards down to their knees... not as easily, anyways. The lower TMU count compared to the HD4670 doesn't allow the 3870 to quite fully utilize all of its shaders properly.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-28, 13:54:

So heres hoping this delayed retirement of 939 puts more of them on to the market for more reasonable pricing. Im sure as hell not paying 400 USD for a FX57.

Me neither!
But then, I don't have to - I already got one. 😀
I got in many years back when people jumped on the multi-core Intel bandwagon (1st and 2nd gen i-series... and late Core 2 Quads), making those 939 boards too new to be considered "interesting retro gear" and to old in terms of performance. Granted I did have to fix 3 broken pins, and they weren't in the easiest of spots to get to... + straighten about 936 other pins. 🤣 But it was worth it, IMO. It's a pretty snappy single-core CPU even at the stock speed. Doesn't OC that well, though, at least on the board I tried it on and without increasing the core voltage (which I don't like to do.) Going the opposite way, it can work at the stock frequency with about 0.1V less V_core (IIRC), so I can shave off a few degrees / Watts at max load.

Horun wrote on 2025-04-29, 03:49:

Not a fan of all the 12v lines but still looks good.

I'm the opposite - I don't like the single strong 12V rail designs. Generally, it's not an issue with PSUs under around 350-400 Watts. But above that, when the current rating on the 12V seriously starts to go over 30 Amps, it can become a bad fire hazard risk. The 18-25 Amp rail ratings make sure that if any of the 12V lines on a connector gets shorted, the PSU short-circuit protection should be able to catch that and not melt the wires... or burn huge holes through PCBs when something shorts out. Regarding the latter, I still remember the sparks show we saw from a GTX 780 (or perhaps it was a 980, I forget) in the repair shop I worked - all in a matter of 2-3 seconds of time. Before the tech could even reach for the power button on the back of the PSU, the video card already had multiple layers on its PCB burned and fused together.

Cga.8086 wrote on 2025-04-16, 02:26:

bought this

never had a KT266 nor a KT333, but its supposed to be a good board for a voodoo5 ?

Depends on the CPU, I suppose.
I have mine paired with an ASUS Radeon 9550 GE, only because that video card has the same bright orange PCB color.
I kinda wish orange DDR modules were a thing too. Could make for an "orange box" build. 😉

Munx wrote on 2025-04-10, 07:07:

An AGP Geforce 7800 GS.

Not a "true" AGP card, but unlike ATI, Nvidia had the decency to add cooling to the bridge chip.

Nice find!
And better yet, it's from a known brand (Point-of-View) rather than a Chinesium 7800/7900GS with shitty Sacon FZ caps waiting to pop at any moment on unsuspecting owners.

Yup got the cards a bit miss remembered here, the 4000 series was AMDs reply to the Geforce 200 cards, the 2Gb 4890 was the reply to the 2Gb GTX 285 .. a reply that didn't quite hit the mark even with 2Gb it couldn't match the 285. (It got pretty dang close)

Apologies, memory requires a kick in the pants these days!

The HD 4000 series were very well received at the time because they were a fantastic value. The 4850 and 4870 at $199 and $299 were priced to compete with the 8800GT\9800GT - 9800GTX, but were often much closer to the performance range of the GTX 260 and GTX 280 priced at $399 and $650. The 4890 came out later at $250 and was competing against the GTX 275 at $250 and GTX 285 at $360. I don't think AMD actually released a 2GB 4890 of their own... the 2GB single GPU cards at the time were very niche and hardly anything benefited from that much memory for at least another generation or two. Even the GTX 480 and GTX 580 were only 1.5GB.

It's interesting how Nvidia's flagship 280 was $650 when AMD wasn't competing... but after AMD released the HD4870 and was within spitting distance of the 280's performance for less than half the price, Nvidia's followup 285 was dropped all the way to $360 MSRP.

Those were pretty interesting times. I remember putting HD 4870, HD 4670 and HD 5670 cards into some builds for people back then, as well as AM2 boards with 700G series chipsets for that sweet Radeon HD 3000 IGP. Prior to that, I don't think I'd gone anywhere near a Radeon since the 9600 Pro.

EDIT: Sources...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/2626/10
https://www.anandtech.com/show/2556/23
https://www.anandtech.com/show/2745/23

Ozzuneoj wrote on Today, 02:36:

The HD 4000 series were very well received at the time because they were a fantastic value. The 4850 and 4870 at $199 and $299 w […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 23:48:

momaka wrote on Yesterday, 21:03:

Not that many interesting finds here for the last few weeks/weekends... but here you go anyways: […]
Show full quote

Not that many interesting finds here for the last few weeks/weekends... but here you go anyways:

- Biostar G31D-M7 socket 775 board with unknown CPU and stock slim Intel push-pin cooler... $2. Has a bulged cap and needs a wash. Not tested yet.
- Athlon II CPU of some sort (forgot model #), but figured it's worth a try for $1 (got it discounted when buying with the above motherboard)
- AsRock AB350M-HDV (socket AM4) mobo in unknown condition for $0.50... I'll eat my socks if this one actually works 🤣
- no-name PCI sound card with a dodgy-looking YMF724 chip on it - untested and dirty for the fair scrap price of $0.50
- three PC cases for $0.50 each (more or less), one of them being an old heavy beige AT/ATX case with side-mounting PSU... and lots of dead roaches inside (YUCK!) The other two cases are nothing to write home about - both relatively more modern with black front bezles and made of very cheap and thin steel. One of these is complete (has the sides and even a Samsung IDE DVD drive). The other is completely empty, with the sides missing and the front bezzle broken off, plus very bent on one side... so probably only good as a "parts holder" box. 🤣 Believe it or not, I have a use even for such things.
- 5x Deep Cool 3-pin 90 mm fans for $0.50 each
- A PCI Wi-Fi card (802.11 B/G only, IIRC) with the antenna for $0.50
- about 20-30 ft. of Cat5.e cable for $0.50 total
- FREE!! 20" (Philips?) LCD monitor... with FREE!! dead roaches inside. 🤣 Ah, why do I keep doing this to myself?! 😁 No live ones or any egg sacks, though... as far as I could tell after taking it apart outside. Time will tell... but I ain't bringing it inside any time soon.
- and lastly... lots of free CDs and DVDs again for my "vintage data hoards"- some pirated software, a few PC Magazine ones from the early 00's with nifty software/trialware/drivers, and even a few games (Need For Speed Vrally??). Also, a few mixed data DVDs (someones data backup?) with mostly terrible quality 128 kbps MP3s, shitty movies, and... if you guessed it... early 00's porn!! 🤣 🤣 - About the most stereotypical example of 2000's P2P garbage.

Nice find and at pretty good price, all retro things considered these days.

HIS cards almost always got the coolers right, unlike many other "competitors".
The HD4850 is rated for a little over 100 Watts TDP (max) (IIRC, 115W). The reference single-slot cooler wouldn't have been so terrible if ATI/AMD didn't fit such a small and tiny/whiny fan... on top of using an overly-passive cooling profile (wait for the GPU temps to get up to 80C, then crank up the fans? -WTF??!!)
But these dual-slot IceQ coolers with dual-heat pipes - now that's a lot more proper for the TDP of that card!
FWIW, you should still probably check the fan cooling profile, though. I sugges to keep the running temps below 60C (under load), if that's possible... or if not, then at least under 65C. 4850/4870 GPUs are pretty tough and will last a long time if ran cool. Sadly, the reference cooler and stock fan profile in BIOS do not do this, which is one reason so many of these ended up dead.

??
IIRC, nVidia 8000 series came way before the ATI/AMD HD4000 series.
IIRC (x2), ATI/AMD was the first to release a DX10 -capable GPU, and that was with the HD2000 series. Then nVidia quickly followed up with the 8000 series, which did indeed crushed everything else... and by a good margin. Then ATI/AMD tried to turn that around with the HD3000 series.... but still couldn't knock the G80 from the top... which soon got refreshed as the G92 (i.e. 9800 GT/GTX and 8800 GTS 512). Then team red came up with the HD4k series... which once again got crushed by team green's cards (GTX 200 series.)
IIRC (x3?), the HD4850 slots is somewhere between the GTS250 (i.e. roughly on par with the 9800 GT/GTX) and GTX260.

That said, I also have a soft spot for the HD4000 series, with the HD4670 probably being my favorite - it has a fairly low power requirement (and thus heat output), yet will run most XP era games pretty well. It's only got 8 ROPs, though, so not exactly a great card for high resolutions and AA cranked up. I do frequently pair this card with my CRTs, though - 1152x864 and 1280x960 are high enough resolutions not to need AA on a 17" or 19" CRT.
I also have a soft spot for the HD3000 series as well - particularly for the HD3870. These give about the same performance (FPS) as the HD4670, but due to having twice the number of ROPs (16), higher resolutions don't bring these cards down to their knees... not as easily, anyways. The lower TMU count compared to the HD4670 doesn't allow the 3870 to quite fully utilize all of its shaders properly.

Me neither!
But then, I don't have to - I already got one. 😀
I got in many years back when people jumped on the multi-core Intel bandwagon (1st and 2nd gen i-series... and late Core 2 Quads), making those 939 boards too new to be considered "interesting retro gear" and to old in terms of performance. Granted I did have to fix 3 broken pins, and they weren't in the easiest of spots to get to... + straighten about 936 other pins. 🤣 But it was worth it, IMO. It's a pretty snappy single-core CPU even at the stock speed. Doesn't OC that well, though, at least on the board I tried it on and without increasing the core voltage (which I don't like to do.) Going the opposite way, it can work at the stock frequency with about 0.1V less V_core (IIRC), so I can shave off a few degrees / Watts at max load.

I'm the opposite - I don't like the single strong 12V rail designs. Generally, it's not an issue with PSUs under around 350-400 Watts. But above that, when the current rating on the 12V seriously starts to go over 30 Amps, it can become a bad fire hazard risk. The 18-25 Amp rail ratings make sure that if any of the 12V lines on a connector gets shorted, the PSU short-circuit protection should be able to catch that and not melt the wires... or burn huge holes through PCBs when something shorts out. Regarding the latter, I still remember the sparks show we saw from a GTX 780 (or perhaps it was a 980, I forget) in the repair shop I worked - all in a matter of 2-3 seconds of time. Before the tech could even reach for the power button on the back of the PSU, the video card already had multiple layers on its PCB burned and fused together.

Depends on the CPU, I suppose.
I have mine paired with an ASUS Radeon 9550 GE, only because that video card has the same bright orange PCB color.
I kinda wish orange DDR modules were a thing too. Could make for an "orange box" build. 😉

Nice find!
And better yet, it's from a known brand (Point-of-View) rather than a Chinesium 7800/7900GS with shitty Sacon FZ caps waiting to pop at any moment on unsuspecting owners.

Yup got the cards a bit miss remembered here, the 4000 series was AMDs reply to the Geforce 200 cards, the 2Gb 4890 was the reply to the 2Gb GTX 285 .. a reply that didn't quite hit the mark even with 2Gb it couldn't match the 285. (It got pretty dang close)

Apologies, memory requires a kick in the pants these days!

The HD 4000 series were very well received at the time because they were a fantastic value. The 4850 and 4870 at $199 and $299 were priced to compete with the 8800GT\9800GT - 9800GTX, but were often much closer to the performance range of the GTX 260 and GTX 280 priced at $399 and $650. The 4890 came out later at $250 and was competing against the GTX 275 at $250 and GTX 285 at $360. I don't think AMD actually released a 2GB 4890 of their own... the 2GB single GPU cards at the time were very niche and hardly anything benefited from that much memory for at least another generation or two. Even the GTX 480 and GTX 580 were only 1.5GB.

It's interesting how Nvidia's flagship 280 was $650 when AMD wasn't competing... but after AMD released the HD4870 and was within spitting distance of the 280's performance for less than half the price, Nvidia's followup 285 was dropped all the way to $360 MSRP.

Those were pretty interesting times. I remember putting HD 4870, HD 4670 and HD 5670 cards into some builds for people back then, as well as AM2 boards with 700G series chipsets for that sweet Radeon HD 3000 IGP. Prior to that, I don't think I'd gone anywhere near a Radeon since the 9600 Pro.

Hehe . .yes competition does do that!

My favourite card from the 4000 series was the 4870X2 .. thing was a pure beast and hearing two of them in X-Fire spool up in your PC was something truly unique, HOT noisy and power sucking but they could spit frames, the GTX 295 was great too but for me just didnt have that smoking red coolness factor the 4870X2 had.

I still have both my 4870X2 cards and picked up a pair of GTX 295s later when they were going for pennies and before the retro market destroyed all the cheap hardware prices.

I dont use them any more but not because they dont work, they work fine but they are just crazy cards to setup and get working right ... X-Fire and SLI are great but do come with a bunch of caveats .. mostly poor scaling, lack of support and micro stutter.

I just keep them on my display shelf as a reminder of how damn cool that period of PC gaming was.

I had an HD4670 in 2009 and it seemed like more GPU than I knew what to do with, as I was still picking up cheaper/older games, not paying release prices. Also was at modest monitor res. So seemed like overkill just that. For XP/Vista/Early7 builds sticking with "office" resolution monitors, they still seem to cover a wide range adequately, as long as it's okay on DX10. Heck they still come into consideration for near modern, since they do as well as a 440GTX or something.

Just got what appears to be an MSI Geforce 7900 GTX from a certain online auction site. It was actually listed as a GTO card, and was suspiciously cheap compared to other GTO/GTX listings. The vBIOS number printed on the card doesn't match any of the GTO vBIOSs online, and after installing drivers it appears to be detected as a GTX card. For those curious, the vBIOS version is "5.71.22.34.05"