VOGONS


First post, by Lylat1an

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Hello, I have a compact baby-AT board on order with an an early AGP slot, and I'm not sure what video cards will be good candidates.

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/pcpart … 4-35-8954-00-00

My goal is to play games for DOS 6.22 and Windows 98SE. (Possibly Windows 3.11 as well)

What video cards do you guys imagine will run stable on this system?

Reply 1 of 11, by marxveix

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You need VIA AGP driver that works well on your motherborad and videocard at Win9x. What videocards you have or you need to buy it first? I would start from VIA AGP 405B up to VIA4in1 4.23 if needed.

Best ATi Rage3 drivers for 3DCIF / Direct3D / OpenGL / GLUT / DVD : ATi RagePro drivers and software
33+MiniGL / OpenGL Win 9x dll files for all ATi-Rage3 based cards : ATi RagePro OpenGL files

Reply 2 of 11, by rmay635703

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Voodoo based cards and earlier GeForce cards

The ideal agp card for Socket 7 is one that behaves more like pci66 than agp, too many obscure agp features and more likelyhood of nonsense.

Reply 3 of 11, by Pino

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I've tested a good amount of different AGP cards on my VIA super socket 7 board and mostly work OK.

What I actually keep installed is a simple Geforce FX 5200, mainly because it has a DVI output.

If you want something simple, cheap that just works and covers most needs in DOS and Win98 I would go with a Geforce 2 MX.

Reply 4 of 11, by Lostdotfish

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Just watch your VRM temps. A lot of super socket 7 boards cannot handle cards that pull a lot of amps on 3.3v without cooking to death.

Voodoo 3 is generally too much for a lot of these boards.

Reply 5 of 11, by BitWrangler

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IDK about this board specifically but you'll have to check, you may find it uses 3.3V direct when you use the ATX power socket, unloading the regulators. If it doesn't it may be somewhat straightforward to strap it in yourself.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 6 of 11, by jakethompson1

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Another option especially if you have a PCI Voodoo2 to go along with it, is to use an early AGP 3D "decelerator" from before the ATI/Nvidia dichotomy took hold since it's really the compatibility you're after. I have a Cirrus 5465 in my MVP3 system for example. A comparable S3 should work fine as well, though some of those have a video BIOS that defaults to brightening black backgrounds.

Reply 7 of 11, by Lylat1an

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Thank you for your responses so far.

What would you think about a GeForce 6200? My old board seemed to run decently enough with a PCI version, and they're available with 512MB RAM and a DVI port.

Reply 8 of 11, by rmay635703

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Lylat1an wrote on Today, 11:06:

Thank you for your responses so far.

What would you think about a GeForce 6200? My old board seemed to run decently enough with a PCI version, and they're available with 512MB RAM and a DVI port.

My view is different than others in that if it fits its ships given how hard finding a gpu is now days.

Test it with your favorite games and see if you can live with it.

But you have to accept that your drivers are less than ideal and pretty heavy so you aren’t in the sweet spot, you will need to try and use the older driver versions even if it’s forceware to reduce stuttering and other issues.

Have fun.

Reply 9 of 11, by andrea

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You'd be more than fine with cards that in other contexts would be plenty undesirable, and therefore ought to be (relatively, since they've been e-waste for more than 20 years now) cheap and easier to find.
Cards such as TNT2 M64, OEM 64 bit Rage 128/128 Pro, RV100 or the GF2 MX200.
Radeon 7200/7500 or full 128 bit GF2 MX/MX400 are about the fastest that are reasonable for such a machine.

Voodoo3 ≤2000 or Banshee are fine too but the prices for those are just silly.

Reply 10 of 11, by jakethompson1

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Lylat1an wrote on Today, 11:06:

Thank you for your responses so far.

What would you think about a GeForce 6200? My old board seemed to run decently enough with a PCI version, and they're available with 512MB RAM and a DVI port.

Can you list some games you have in mind? 512MB video RAM is a bit removed from DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 gaming

This post Will Nvidia 6200 AGP work in a AGP v1.0 slot? suggests the 6200 is too far removed from AGP 1.0. The PCI version will have onboard voltage regulators and such making it more backward compatible. Also the PCI versions exist for secondary cards since boards only had one AGP slot, not because it was an intended viable upgrade path for an old Socket 7 system.

Reply 11 of 11, by Repo Man11

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I have all of the parts to build a very similar computer (though my VooDoo2 is only an eight meg version) and I've been thinking about doing it. The K6-III build

A lot of times when you first start out on a project you think, This is never going to be finished. But then it is, and you think, Wow, it wasn't even worth it. - Jack Handey