SlowA wrote on 2026-07-31, 07:29:

2x 1950XTX https://i.postimg.cc/q7Wbcr0h/xtx1.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/rFgfnxMz/xtx2.jpg […]
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2x 1950XTX

I still cannot find anywhere the CrossFire cable...any help is highly appreciated.

Top one is a normal XTX the other is a X-Fire version with the special port on the back, memory is a bit fuzzy but IIRC you need two X-Fire versions and the cable for it to even work.

Not sure if itll work with a standard XTX even if you had the cable for it.

I'm likely wrong as its been a long time since I used these cards but my memory keeps yelling at me that the top card isn't right for X-Fire. Im wrong, there are two versions of the X-Fire cable.

Apparently it can do X-Fire over the bus in software mode with any combination of cards so long as one is a X-Fire master card but its pretty limited. As for finding a cable ... now that is going to be a stretch, even Evilbay doesn't have any listed so you may need to actually buy a card with the cable ...hey at least that way you'll have a spare X-Fire card.

Thandor wrote on 2026-07-31, 09:17:

Dan386DX wrote on 2026-07-30, 20:35:

ASUS A8N-VM Socket 939 motherboard Opteron 148 […]
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ASUS A8N-VM Socket 939 motherboard
Opteron 148

Question - why are 2003 Socket 754 boards, and OG 2003 Athlon 64 CPUs so rare, bordering on unobtainium? At least in the UK.

Late 754 from 2005, bundled with Semprons, when they'd become the budget option are everywhere. But I struggle to find a single 2003 board or CPU.

I guess they didn’t sell that much. S939 was available one year after S754 launched. People who knew S939 was around the corner probably waited for it.

It was well known, maybe 2 years in advance that 754 was always intended to be the budget x64 platform. So enthusiasts were not enthused about it. Early adopter performance enthusiasts with spare cash and impatience, went to socket 940 and Opterons, probably getting an FX on there later. The majority of AMD friendly enthusiasts were still squeezing the pips out of socket A and wringing it dry, they'd just got dual channel a year prior, they weren't giving that up for questionable x64 benefits for software that didn't exist yet, or really for several years, nobody was hurting with 32bit until probably 2007.

OEMs were probably getting a deal that component retailers weren't though, the pricing didn't drop to "new PC for grandma" build level until '05 or so, but 754 was appearing in compaqs and emachines a little before that. It was a little under cover though due to the budget version of budget, Sempron and even Athlon XP naming on some 754 CPU which made it unsure whether systems were actually 754 or Socket A in the brief details on magazine ads and product cards in store. Not sure it ever looked like a good deal for "best performance for lowest bucks right now" for most self builders, due to sheer mass of Socket A selloff gear. For instance, I put a new parts only, clearance parts, socket A based machine together for under $200 in 2006 that "tuned up" to 2.4 ghz, for that money in 754 I think you only got the motherboard and CPU and stayed a couple hundred behind in "PR" terms. Those who consciously chose 754 I think were misguided as to how futureproof it was, better CPUs never really came out, or were on the roadmap if you actually looked, so it was kinda the Socket 4 Pentium P5 60/66 of the 2000s, the architecture wasn't needed yet at release and the platform went nowhere.

It's saving grace though was it put relatively low power x64 into laptops and evolved into s1g1 and dual core support there.

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-07-31, 12:12:

Top one is a normal XTX the other is a X-Fire version with the special port on the back, memory is a bit fuzzy but IIRC you need […]
Show full quote

SlowA wrote on 2026-07-31, 07:29:

2x 1950XTX https://i.postimg.cc/q7Wbcr0h/xtx1.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/rFgfnxMz/xtx2.jpg […]
Show full quote

2x 1950XTX

I still cannot find anywhere the CrossFire cable...any help is highly appreciated.

Top one is a normal XTX the other is a X-Fire version with the special port on the back, memory is a bit fuzzy but IIRC you need two X-Fire versions and the cable for it to even work.

Not sure if itll work with a standard XTX even if you had the cable for it.

I'm likely wrong as its been a long time since I used these cards but my memory keeps yelling at me that the top card isn't right for X-Fire. Im wrong, there are two versions of the X-Fire cable.

Apparently it can do X-Fire over the bus in software mode with any combination of cards so long as one is a X-Fire master card but its pretty limited. As for finding a cable ... now that is going to be a stretch, even Evilbay doesn't have any listed so you may need to actually buy a card with the cable ...hey at least that way you'll have a spare X-Fire card.

CF Master + regular X1950 XTX is all you need for regular crossfire of these cards. Plus the cable of course. I have no experience with X1950, but I performed some tests on X1900 CF + X1900 XTX connected by the CF cable and it more or less ran as expected.
It should be possible to run SW crossfire too with just two non-master cards... but I was never able to make it run on X1900.

@havli, is there a possibility to find a cable on a Czech or Polish marketplace? I tried Kleinanzeigen.de already but no luck.

Honestly, I have no idea. Bought the cable along with X1900 master card on ebay in 2018. It was from UK I think...
If it is any help, the cable should be the same for X1800 / X1900 / X1950.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-07-31, 13:50:

It was well known, maybe 2 years in advance that 754 was always intended to be the budget x64 platform. So enthusiasts were not […]
Show full quote

Thandor wrote on 2026-07-31, 09:17:

Dan386DX wrote on 2026-07-30, 20:35:

ASUS A8N-VM Socket 939 motherboard Opteron 148 […]
Show full quote

ASUS A8N-VM Socket 939 motherboard
Opteron 148

Question - why are 2003 Socket 754 boards, and OG 2003 Athlon 64 CPUs so rare, bordering on unobtainium? At least in the UK.

Late 754 from 2005, bundled with Semprons, when they'd become the budget option are everywhere. But I struggle to find a single 2003 board or CPU.

I guess they didn’t sell that much. S939 was available one year after S754 launched. People who knew S939 was around the corner probably waited for it.

It was well known, maybe 2 years in advance that 754 was always intended to be the budget x64 platform. So enthusiasts were not enthused about it. Early adopter performance enthusiasts with spare cash and impatience, went to socket 940 and Opterons, probably getting an FX on there later. The majority of AMD friendly enthusiasts were still squeezing the pips out of socket A and wringing it dry, they'd just got dual channel a year prior, they weren't giving that up for questionable x64 benefits for software that didn't exist yet, or really for several years, nobody was hurting with 32bit until probably 2007.

OEMs were probably getting a deal that component retailers weren't though, the pricing didn't drop to "new PC for grandma" build level until '05 or so, but 754 was appearing in compaqs and emachines a little before that. It was a little under cover though due to the budget version of budget, Sempron and even Athlon XP naming on some 754 CPU which made it unsure whether systems were actually 754 or Socket A in the brief details on magazine ads and product cards in store. Not sure it ever looked like a good deal for "best performance for lowest bucks right now" for most self builders, due to sheer mass of Socket A selloff gear. For instance, I put a new parts only, clearance parts, socket A based machine together for under $200 in 2006 that "tuned up" to 2.4 ghz, for that money in 754 I think you only got the motherboard and CPU and stayed a couple hundred behind in "PR" terms. Those who consciously chose 754 I think were misguided as to how futureproof it was, better CPUs never really came out, or were on the roadmap if you actually looked, so it was kinda the Socket 4 Pentium P5 60/66 of the 2000s, the architecture wasn't needed yet at release and the platform went nowhere.

It's saving grace though was it put relatively low power x64 into laptops and evolved into s1g1 and dual core support there.

Nice, I really appreciate this - as a cash strapped teenager who was still running a Celeron Mendocino until 2005, I missed the pricing action completely. Did they really badge 754 chips with Athlon XP though?

I think the Pentium 60/66 Socket 4 comparison is perfect here, at least in terms of P54C being wildly more popular later.

Got a belt for a mistumi floppy drive for a word processor and a Sanrio Smile Floppy disk that supposedly contains screensavers if I can get a good image of it (or at least the contents off of it)

Dan386DX wrote on 2026-08-01, 04:10:

Did they really badge 754 chips with Athlon XP though?

They're essentially Dublin core Mobile Semprons, 32-bit only as the early 754 Semprons were.
IIRC they were custom made for HP.

havli wrote on 2026-07-31, 16:53:

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-07-31, 12:12:

Top one is a normal XTX the other is a X-Fire version with the special port on the back, memory is a bit fuzzy but IIRC you need […]
Show full quote

SlowA wrote on 2026-07-31, 07:29:

2x 1950XTX https://i.postimg.cc/q7Wbcr0h/xtx1.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/rFgfnxMz/xtx2.jpg […]
Show full quote

2x 1950XTX

I still cannot find anywhere the CrossFire cable...any help is highly appreciated.

Top one is a normal XTX the other is a X-Fire version with the special port on the back, memory is a bit fuzzy but IIRC you need two X-Fire versions and the cable for it to even work.

Not sure if itll work with a standard XTX even if you had the cable for it.

I'm likely wrong as its been a long time since I used these cards but my memory keeps yelling at me that the top card isn't right for X-Fire. Im wrong, there are two versions of the X-Fire cable.

Apparently it can do X-Fire over the bus in software mode with any combination of cards so long as one is a X-Fire master card but its pretty limited. As for finding a cable ... now that is going to be a stretch, even Evilbay doesn't have any listed so you may need to actually buy a card with the cable ...hey at least that way you'll have a spare X-Fire card.

CF Master + regular X1950 XTX is all you need for regular crossfire of these cards. Plus the cable of course. I have no experience with X1950, but I performed some tests on X1900 CF + X1900 XTX connected by the CF cable and it more or less ran as expected.
It should be possible to run SW crossfire too with just two non-master cards... but I was never able to make it run on X1900.

All the reading on SW crossfire tells me you needed one of the cards to be a CF master card, the other could be what ever you wanted, it was pretty limited by all accounts and didn't have the performance of hardware CF.

My own experience was with the X1950 XTX Crossfire edition ...for the time it was pretty flash but you did need a stupidly good PSU for the time to even run the two GPUs and was also hot n' noisy. I honestly don't remember keeping if for too long and sold them to get a nVidia GPU instead.

Not that I can complain too much I also ran two 4870X2's in Xfire(Quadfire) later on ...literal jet engines in your PC, Hot Noisy and 100% worth the experience.

I found some things at the thrift today:

And THIS really caught my eye:

It uses the feature connector on the VGA card, so that'll be my first time plugging anything into that. It's never been used, so I'm assuming it should work. Perfect for my "boombox" build. I'm probably not going to get to it for a while, but I'm pretty excided for it.

7800GS? Maybe 7600GS or something, I doubt a 7800 can have that PCB and cooling.

RaverX wrote on 2026-08-01, 20:20:

7800GS? Maybe 7600GS or something, I doubt a 7800 can have that PCB and cooling.

Yes, that is too small and simple to be a 7800GS. It appears to be a 7600GS:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/236702310665

andrea wrote on 2026-08-01, 10:15:

Dan386DX wrote on 2026-08-01, 04:10:

Did they really badge 754 chips with Athlon XP though?

They're essentially Dublin core Mobile Semprons, 32-bit only as the early 754 Semprons were.
IIRC they were custom made for HP.

Oh wow, well today I learned!

Would be interesting to compare them to the final K7 XPs, the rebadged LP Dublins had less L2 cache but were preumably better clock-for-clock.

RaverX wrote on 2026-08-01, 20:20:

7800GS? Maybe 7600GS or something, I doubt a 7800 can have that PCB and cooling.

That would be a 7600GS at any given time, even the sticker over the VGA points to G73 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-07-31, 13:50:

It was well known, maybe 2 years in advance that 754 was always intended to be the budget x64 platform. So enthusiasts were not […]
Show full quote

Thandor wrote on 2026-07-31, 09:17:

Dan386DX wrote on 2026-07-30, 20:35:

ASUS A8N-VM Socket 939 motherboard Opteron 148 […]
Show full quote

ASUS A8N-VM Socket 939 motherboard
Opteron 148

Question - why are 2003 Socket 754 boards, and OG 2003 Athlon 64 CPUs so rare, bordering on unobtainium? At least in the UK.

Late 754 from 2005, bundled with Semprons, when they'd become the budget option are everywhere. But I struggle to find a single 2003 board or CPU.

I guess they didn’t sell that much. S939 was available one year after S754 launched. People who knew S939 was around the corner probably waited for it.

It was well known, maybe 2 years in advance that 754 was always intended to be the budget x64 platform. So enthusiasts were not enthused about it. Early adopter performance enthusiasts with spare cash and impatience, went to socket 940 and Opterons, probably getting an FX on there later. The majority of AMD friendly enthusiasts were still squeezing the pips out of socket A and wringing it dry, they'd just got dual channel a year prior, they weren't giving that up for questionable x64 benefits for software that didn't exist yet, or really for several years, nobody was hurting with 32bit until probably 2007.

OEMs were probably getting a deal that component retailers weren't though, the pricing didn't drop to "new PC for grandma" build level until '05 or so, but 754 was appearing in compaqs and emachines a little before that. It was a little under cover though due to the budget version of budget, Sempron and even Athlon XP naming on some 754 CPU which made it unsure whether systems were actually 754 or Socket A in the brief details on magazine ads and product cards in store. Not sure it ever looked like a good deal for "best performance for lowest bucks right now" for most self builders, due to sheer mass of Socket A selloff gear. For instance, I put a new parts only, clearance parts, socket A based machine together for under $200 in 2006 that "tuned up" to 2.4 ghz, for that money in 754 I think you only got the motherboard and CPU and stayed a couple hundred behind in "PR" terms. Those who consciously chose 754 I think were misguided as to how futureproof it was, better CPUs never really came out, or were on the roadmap if you actually looked, so it was kinda the Socket 4 Pentium P5 60/66 of the 2000s, the architecture wasn't needed yet at release and the platform went nowhere.

It's saving grace though was it put relatively low power x64 into laptops and evolved into s1g1 and dual core support there.

by 2005 on a budget you would def go for a Sempron 754 + Nvidia MCP51, it was a very solid option trading blows with the equivalent Sempron on a Socket A, or Pentium 4 in Socket 478 systems at price / performance point

The result of this was a flood of the used market by 2010 of people getting rid of dead end and obsolete computers, i swear i took in like 200 socket 754 / A processors on those years. Dual core's and PCI Express acelerated this.

It was very different with AM2 and 775, people hold on it and upgraded that pc's giving them a estimated 10 to 15 years of use.

Got these:

2x IBM modules I can't identify correctly.

Ok, it's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/2_Model_70
https://ardent-tool.com/8570/Planar_T3-4.html

Repo Man11 wrote on 2026-06-19, 22:51:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2026-06-18, 00:44:

MattRocks wrote on 2026-06-17, 19:38:

Some people become frustrated and block the whole marketplace.

I find myself wondering if all of the replies to his ad are hitting his spam filter? Another oddity is that he has an ad for the whole computer for $50.00 then a separate ad in "Computer parts" for just the case for $20.00.

IDGI, the ad is still up and though I've sent three emails from two different accounts he hasn't responded.

I sent about five different emails from two different accounts with no response. The seller explicitly said in the ad that he wouldn't respond to any queries about "Is this still available?" and that if the ad was still up then it was still available. After over a month the ad finally expired. Situations like this make me wonder if this was some sort of email address harvesting scheme? I'm sure that I wasn't the only person who would have gladly purchased it for the asking price; when I first saw the ad (hours after it was listed) I worried that I was already too late. Confusing.

Nexxen wrote on 2026-08-03, 23:24:

Got these: […]
Show full quote

Got these:

2x IBM modules I can't identify correctly.

Ok, it's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/2_Model_70
https://ardent-tool.com/8570/Planar_T3-4.html

What you are missing is motherboard to use these. If found a motherboard with 486, still need the 386 bios chips, since 486 daughter board uses unique bios chips.

Rarity is true for both 386 and 486 and the motherboard.

See if you can track down the motherboard for these pair from same source?

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on Today, 11:38:

What you are missing is motherboard to use these. If found a motherboard with 486, still need the 386 bios chips, since 486 d […]
Show full quote

Nexxen wrote on 2026-08-03, 23:24:

Got these: […]
Show full quote

Got these:

2x IBM modules I can't identify correctly.

Ok, it's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/2_Model_70
https://ardent-tool.com/8570/Planar_T3-4.html

What you are missing is motherboard to use these. If found a motherboard with 486, still need the 386 bios chips, since 486 daughter board uses unique bios chips.

Rarity is true for both 386 and 486 and the motherboard.

See if you can track down the motherboard for these pair from same source?

Cheers,

I have to ask the seller.
I didn't think they could have been rare items, looked kinda uncommon at most.
Thanks for the info!

PS/2 machines were decommissioned from industry in truck loads, but were unpopular for personal use secondary market due to MCA and expense of upgrades. Thus they had a period of being dirt cheap and highly available. Which translated into being scrapped by the truckload also. Late 90s you could still hope to put a few hundred Mhz in the case of an old AT 386 or 486, not so much with a PS/2 box. So it was a total lost investment into obsolete stuff, whereas AT bits might be more adaptable and save you $50 or so on the next configuration. It is possible that AT machines are over represented now in the survivors. 92 or 93 it was probably biased in favor of proprietary form factors in the retail chain stores.