Socket3 wrote on 2026-06-20, 19:35:

The TNT2 has no hardware table fog support whatsoever as far as I know. The rage 128 pro 4x (rage fury pro / rage fury ultra) have partial hardware support for table fog. It's very apparent in Dungeon Keeper and Homeworld 1, games that look better and score better on ATi hardware.

Results here: ATi Rage 128 series benchmarks and performance comparrison

With Rage128 cards and Direct3D to Glide wrapper you can get table fog normally show up in NFS games like NFS2SE, NFS3, NFS4 - I have used GLDirect for that.

An older, no-name build because of the motherboard—the last Intel AGP socket in this revision, which "officially" supports some C2Q and C2D processors at a 1066 FSB, albeit through overclocking.
And a beautiful red sound card from Gainward that will match the red MSI K9VGM I bought earlier. Now I just need to find a red PCI-E graphics card with Windows 98 drivers...

i7 960 on its way. My plan is to benchmark it against the i7 965 using standard clock speed in both to see whether the 6.4 vs 4.8 GT/s QPI makes any difference in real life. I foresee that I would need some SLI/CFX graphics and some intensive disk/ network load to see anything?

H3nrik V! wrote on 2026-06-22, 12:26:

i7 960 on its way. My plan is to benchmark it against the i7 965 using standard clock speed in both to see whether the 6.4 vs 4.8 GT/s QPI makes any difference in real life. I foresee that I would need some SLI/CFX graphics and some intensive disk/ network load to see anything?

It might just be a case of if you provoke it into texture load or i/o based bus thrash it's 30% less bad. Because if everything from era or a couple of years past is only demanding 3 or 4 GT/s out of it, you may not notice.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2026-06-22, 12:26:

i7 960 on its way. My plan is to benchmark it against the i7 965 using standard clock speed in both to see whether the 6.4 vs 4.8 GT/s QPI makes any difference in real life. I foresee that I would need some SLI/CFX graphics and some intensive disk/ network load to see anything?

I highly doubt it.
Qpi is only to the southbridge.
Sli is likely marginal thanks to the Sli bridge, but crossfire might get a tiny boost.
Raid... Maybe but it seems unlikely that you would notice.

Alesia wrote on 2026-06-19, 09:11:

2 weeks ago I saw that my local tech recyclers had just gotten a 486 in but they had not wiped the drive so they wouldn't let it […]
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2 weeks ago I saw that my local tech recyclers had just gotten a 486 in but they had not wiped the drive so they wouldn't let it go or price it. I came back this week and to my suprise it was still there, and priced at only $30, on a week I had $30 of money I could spend on whatever I wanted. I never thought I would be able to complete my MS-DOS/Windows line-up with a 486 era machine but everything came together after many years of searching. Let me introduce the Zeos 486.
Featuring a Zeos Upgradable Systems Motherboard, 486DX on a daughter board, a Diamond Stealth VRAM, and Pro Audio Spectrum 16, Seagate ST3491A, and the weight of the core of a white dwarf it is the 486 of my dreams....kind of. It is missing the Intel Cache Module these could come with and that is a big bummer. They seem to be unobtainium and probably extremely expensive if there were any available, maybe someone super smart will figure out a homebrew replacement somehow eventually. The 4.5V CMOS battery is also proving to be a nightmare to find replacements for. Making a DYI battery holder requires tools that are somewhat expensive (for me) and no one seems to be selling pre-made ones on ebay which struck me as odd. It is also not the VLB capable motherboard that this same model could come with but I'm sure I'll figure that out as well if the Diamond card proves to be unsatisfactory. I couldn't find any real info on the performance of the Diamond card so I guess I'll see. Worst case it gets replaced with something faster (IDK what) and I can put the Diamond card in my 286 which is currently using a very slow integrated Trident graphics setup.

However, it came with all the core parts and it does just work despite having to punch in hard drive parameters in every time I turn it on, and the bios settings corrupting on reset (to the point of a soft-lock at times!) I got DOS 5.0 installed and I'm working on picking out a list of software/games I want to have on it. Also fixed the cable management and cleaned out the psu fan and the intake(!) fan as it has intake slots and does something other then move hot air around. Currently planning to hunt down 16-32mb of memory and run Windows 3.1 on it, probably upgrade to a 486DX2 which is the max the board can support aside from exotic things like overdrive chips. Also installed a CD-drive and figured out some jumper setting conflicts with the hard drive but I haven't gotten drivers installed to test it out yet. I have Red Baron CD and Dragon's Lair CD on hand to test everything out when I get all the core drivers and software figured out and stable. I know I've complained a lot here but new machine always equals new issues. I am jittery levels of excited over finally getting a 386/486 class machine and I can't wait for when I get it fully up and running even without any upgrades.

EDIT: Spammed the thread somehow, alerted the mods as the website won't let me remove the junk posts for some reason. Sorry everyone.

Congratulations on this acquisition! It's a beautiful piece; it looks spotless and well-maintained. It will never cease to amaze me how these 90s machines hold up much better than hardware from 2000s.

Recently I found a rather good deal on cooler from aussie seller on ebay.

It's an ASUS Silent Square , open box. It's quite decent looking and supports range of sockets... 754, 939, 775... etc Plan to pair it with Athlon 64 4000+ I purchased recently, or maybe even a higher speed Presscott.

Being a hardcore ATI fan I also got a pair of interesting ATI items... mainly to add some vibe for my future ATI display case. I know these ain't hardware but... they do belong to a hardware manufacturer.

From what Ruby figurines I could find online, this one is the only one that seemed decent-looking. There are some others out there that really look horrifying... idk who was making those but they look like Ruby needs immediate medical care...

The second item is an ATI Graphics 1985-2005 20 Years Of Innovation Gargoyle Coin w/ Box. Apparently these were awarded to a range of ATI employes for the 20th anniversary at an event. As around that period they also got acquired by AMD it seemed a good idea to get this piece...

Finally 'found' an ARK1000VL.

60 70ns memory and a 110MHz RAMDAC as a bonus.

And it works at 0 wait states in my DX4 system. 👍

Most recent acquisitions:
- P3 933MHz SL5DW skt370
- GTX280 1GB
- ASUS P6T Deluxe + i7 940 + 6GB DDR3
- Intel D850EMV2 + P4 1.8A + 512MB (4x128) RDRAM (and a MX400 that killed itself upon powering up. MB survived tho, and worked fine with another GPU.)
- Radeon HD4890 1GB (XFX)
- Sound Blaster Live CT4620 + CT4660 combo
- ASUS Cerberus GTX1050Ti 4GB
- Gigabyte GF7600GS 256MB AGP8x
- Radeon X800XT AGP
- Radeon X1950 Pro AGP

PD2JK wrote on Yesterday, 17:08:

Finally 'found' an ARK1000VL. […]
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Finally 'found' an ARK1000VL.

The attachment 45312 (1).jpeg is no longer available

60ns memory and a 110MHz RAMDAC as a bonus.

And it works at 0 wait states in my DX4 system. 👍

Nice, where are you reading 60ns though, they say 70 on the memory chips.

BitWrangler wrote on Yesterday, 19:59:

Nice, where are you reading 60ns though, they say 70 on the memory chips.

Thanks! I'm not sure why I thought it was 60 ns. Maybe the heat got the better of me.

Got a Thermaltake Mozart TX case. The perfect case to put in an old Asus Workstation board and two GTX780Ti's to run in SLI. 😀

myne wrote on Yesterday, 06:06:

I highly doubt it. Qpi is only to the southbridge. Sli is likely marginal thanks to the Sli bridge, but crossfire might get a ti […]
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H3nrik V! wrote on 2026-06-22, 12:26:

i7 960 on its way. My plan is to benchmark it against the i7 965 using standard clock speed in both to see whether the 6.4 vs 4.8 GT/s QPI makes any difference in real life. I foresee that I would need some SLI/CFX graphics and some intensive disk/ network load to see anything?

I highly doubt it.
Qpi is only to the southbridge.
Sli is likely marginal thanks to the Sli bridge, but crossfire might get a tiny boost.
Raid... Maybe but it seems unlikely that you would notice.

Haha,I was under the impression that the QPI link went to the chipset, who then "unfolded" to the PCI-express channels, as in I really thought that the CPU didn't have its own PCIe lanes onboard 🤣 I see I learn something new every day.

Did the Xeons then use QPI to inter-socket communication or is it really only to the south bridge? It seems like a horrible waste to have the increased speed on the 965 vs the 960 then?

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 12:57:

myne wrote on Yesterday, 06:06:

I highly doubt it. Qpi is only to the southbridge. Sli is likely marginal thanks to the Sli bridge, but crossfire might get a ti […]
Show full quote

H3nrik V! wrote on 2026-06-22, 12:26:

i7 960 on its way. My plan is to benchmark it against the i7 965 using standard clock speed in both to see whether the 6.4 vs 4.8 GT/s QPI makes any difference in real life. I foresee that I would need some SLI/CFX graphics and some intensive disk/ network load to see anything?

I highly doubt it.
Qpi is only to the southbridge.
Sli is likely marginal thanks to the Sli bridge, but crossfire might get a tiny boost.
Raid... Maybe but it seems unlikely that you would notice.

Haha,I was under the impression that the QPI link went to the chipset, who then "unfolded" to the PCI-express channels, as in I really thought that the CPU didn't have its own PCIe lanes onboard 🤣 I see I learn something new every day.

Did the Xeons then use QPI to inter-socket communication or is it really only to the south bridge? It seems like a horrible waste to have the increased speed on the 965 vs the 960 then?

Did a bit of reading. Looks like the i7-9xx (Nehalem based) doesn't have PCIe on board, but that it is on the chipset via QPI

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 15:36:

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 12:57:

myne wrote on Yesterday, 06:06:

I highly doubt it. Qpi is only to the southbridge. Sli is likely marginal thanks to the Sli bridge, but crossfire might get a ti […]
Show full quote

I highly doubt it.
Qpi is only to the southbridge.
Sli is likely marginal thanks to the Sli bridge, but crossfire might get a tiny boost.
Raid... Maybe but it seems unlikely that you would notice.

Haha,I was under the impression that the QPI link went to the chipset, who then "unfolded" to the PCI-express channels, as in I really thought that the CPU didn't have its own PCIe lanes onboard 🤣 I see I learn something new every day.

Did the Xeons then use QPI to inter-socket communication or is it really only to the south bridge? It seems like a horrible waste to have the increased speed on the 965 vs the 960 then?

Did a bit of reading. Looks like the i7-9xx (Nehalem based) doesn't have PCIe on board, but that it is on the chipset via QPI

If I'm not mistaken , for intel CPU's you would need something higher than socket 1366 to get integrated PCIe lanes.

weedeewee wrote on Today, 15:48:

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 15:36:

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 12:57:

Haha,I was under the impression that the QPI link went to the chipset, who then "unfolded" to the PCI-express channels, as in I really thought that the CPU didn't have its own PCIe lanes onboard 🤣 I see I learn something new every day.

Did the Xeons then use QPI to inter-socket communication or is it really only to the south bridge? It seems like a horrible waste to have the increased speed on the 965 vs the 960 then?

Did a bit of reading. Looks like the i7-9xx (Nehalem based) doesn't have PCIe on board, but that it is on the chipset via QPI

If I'm not mistaken , for intel CPU's you would need something higher than socket 1366 to get integrated PCIe lanes.

Looks like Lynnfield (i7-8xx) in lga 1156 has it, but that's on the expense of "only" dual channel memory ..

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 16:55:

weedeewee wrote on Today, 15:48:

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 15:36:

Did a bit of reading. Looks like the i7-9xx (Nehalem based) doesn't have PCIe on board, but that it is on the chipset via QPI

If I'm not mistaken , for intel CPU's you would need something higher than socket 1366 to get integrated PCIe lanes.

Looks like Lynnfield (i7-8xx) in lga 1156 has it, but that's on the expense of "only" dual channel memory ..

Interesting, I was mistaken. I guess those lanes will likely be used for the first PCIe slot, intended for a GPU.
I should have remembered the odd behaviour I had with a thunderbolt3 card in an LGA1366 board.
Thunderbolt connectivity was possible in linux if in the right slot but encountered some memory mapping issues when connecting/disconnecting devices.