NorsteinB wrote on 2026-10-16, 15:31:

Oh by the way, could you maybe dump the BIOS of your card?

That and the exact model of your GPU's RAM chips would be helpful for modifying my own one.

Sure! Is there an easy way to dump the BIOS from WinME? I'm not 100% comfortable in removing the card to stick it in an XP machine after what happened yesterday to one of my FX5600 (that temporarly died after I had to pull it out of the system for testing).
The picture of one of the memory chip I can take it with the card still in the machine when I get back home in a bit. I'll edit this post with the pictures and, eventually, the BIOS dump.

EDIT: Here's the memory chips on my Zotac FX5200 PCI. 8 of them all on the top side.

Mondodimotori wrote on 2026-10-16, 15:34:

Sure! Is there an easy way to dump the BIOS from WinME? I'm not 100% comfortable in removing the card to stick it in an XP machi […]
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NorsteinB wrote on 2026-10-16, 15:31:

Oh by the way, could you maybe dump the BIOS of your card?

That and the exact model of your GPU's RAM chips would be helpful for modifying my own one.

Sure! Is there an easy way to dump the BIOS from WinME? I'm not 100% comfortable in removing the card to stick it in an XP machine after what happened yesterday to one of my FX5600 (that temporarly died after I had to pull it out of the system for testing).
The picture of one of the memory chip I can take it with the card still in the machine when I get back home in a bit. I'll edit this post with the pictures and, eventually, the BIOS dump.

EDIT: Here's the memory chips on my Zotac FX5200 PCI. 8 of them all on the top side.

The attachment 20261016_175904.jpg is no longer available

That's crazy, this is 5ns RAM. 5ns as in it is rated for 200 MHz (400 MHz DDR a.k.a. effective speed).

I think we are having a misunderstanding here. It is much more likely that this was not in fact overclocked to 333 MHz (666 MHz DDR) but rather, what often happened with high density modules like these, they were not running at their rated speed. The web is full of Geforce FX 5200 256 MB cards that are clocked 250 MHz for the core and 166 (333 MHz DDR) for the RAM.

A chip rated at 200 MHz running 375 (750 DDR!) would be... unlikely to say the least.

It would be far more likely that Zotac underclocked them (we know this was common practice at the time) to make up for the lack of cooling and to save power, maybe they even tightened the RAM timings to make up for some of the lost clock speed. That would certainly explain why the chips would then fail to meet their rated speed of 200 MHz, when they are getting less than 2.5V and/or are running on tightened timings.

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-10-16, 18:03:

That's crazy, this is 5ns RAM. 5ns as in it is rated for 200 MHz (400 MHz DDR a.k.a. effective speed). […]
Show full quote

Mondodimotori wrote on 2026-10-16, 15:34:

Sure! Is there an easy way to dump the BIOS from WinME? I'm not 100% comfortable in removing the card to stick it in an XP machi […]
Show full quote

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-10-16, 15:31:

Oh by the way, could you maybe dump the BIOS of your card?

That and the exact model of your GPU's RAM chips would be helpful for modifying my own one.

Sure! Is there an easy way to dump the BIOS from WinME? I'm not 100% comfortable in removing the card to stick it in an XP machine after what happened yesterday to one of my FX5600 (that temporarly died after I had to pull it out of the system for testing).
The picture of one of the memory chip I can take it with the card still in the machine when I get back home in a bit. I'll edit this post with the pictures and, eventually, the BIOS dump.

EDIT: Here's the memory chips on my Zotac FX5200 PCI. 8 of them all on the top side.

The attachment 20261016_175904.jpg is no longer available

That's crazy, this is 5ns RAM. 5ns as in it is rated for 200 MHz (400 MHz DDR a.k.a. effective speed).

I think we are having a misunderstanding here. It is much more likely that this was not in fact overclocked to 333 MHz (666 MHz DDR) but rather, what often happened with high density modules like these, they were not running at their rated speed. The web is full of Geforce FX 5200 256 MB cards that are clocked 250 MHz for the core and 166 (333 MHz DDR) for the RAM.

A chip rated at 200 MHz running 375 (750 DDR!) would be... unlikely to say the least.

Pretty sure we're talking going from 166MHz (333MHz DDR) to something higher. Neither the chips nor the layout would do 375MHz (750MHz DDR)

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-10-16, 18:03:

That's crazy, this is 5ns RAM. 5ns as in it is rated for 200 MHz (400 MHz DDR a.k.a. effective speed). […]
Show full quote

That's crazy, this is 5ns RAM. 5ns as in it is rated for 200 MHz (400 MHz DDR a.k.a. effective speed).

I think we are having a misunderstanding here. It is much more likely that this was not in fact overclocked to 333 MHz (666 MHz DDR) but rather, what often happened with high density modules like these, they were not running at their rated speed. The web is full of Geforce FX 5200 256 MB cards that are clocked 250 MHz for the core and 166 (333 MHz DDR) for the RAM.

A chip rated at 200 MHz running 375 (750 DDR!) would be... unlikely to say the least.

It would be far more likely that Zotac underclocked them (we know this was common practice at the time) to make up for the lack of cooling and to save power, maybe they even tightened the RAM timings to make up for some of the lost clock speed. That would certainly explain why the chips would then fail to meet their rated speed of 200 MHz, when they are getting less than 2.5V and/or are running on tightened timings.

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-10-16, 18:07:

Pretty sure we're talking going from 166MHz (333MHz DDR) to something higher. Neither the chips nor the layout would do 375MHz (750MHz DDR)

Yeah yeah, sorry for the misunderstanding. I was talking about effective speed. That card came with 166mhz (333mhz effective) memory modules, which is slower than the reference FX5200 PCI. I pushed them up to 200 (400 effective) without major issues, since it should be the speed of rererence menory, but settled to 187 (375 effective) as stable overclock when I encountered rare and small artifacts in some 2D loading screens.

I always use effective speed because that's what I get in coolbits when OCing the card. That software reasons with effective clock speeds, thus I read 333 stock and 400 when OCing.

About dumping the BIOS... Do I need to move the card to an XP machine or can I do it from WinME with a different software?

Don't worry about dumping the VBIOS - since your card wasn#'t using timings for faster memory speeds after all, I can just as well dump my own BIOS and then edit it as I go.

Here is a 3DMark 2001 SE score without any modifications, running stock clocks.

Just remembered that might be useful to evaluate the performance gain if this works.

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-10-17, 05:01:

Don't worry about dumping the VBIOS - since your card wasn#'t using timings for faster memory speeds after all, I can just as we […]
Show full quote

Don't worry about dumping the VBIOS - since your card wasn#'t using timings for faster memory speeds after all, I can just as well dump my own BIOS and then edit it as I go.

The attachment Zotac Geforce FX 5200 128 MB 3DMark 2001SE.jpeg is no longer available

Here is a 3DMark 2001 SE score without any modifications, running stock clocks.

Just remembered that might be useful to evaluate the performance gain if this works.

That's 3D Mark 2001, shame I was never able to start it on that WinME PC. I tested it in 3D mark 2000 and, with all at stock (core and memory at 333 effective) I would get around 5200 points with the stock bench settings on a 1.2 ghz athlon at 133mhz FSB (on SDR RAM).

I now get around 5600/5700 points with the memory at 375 effetive. I bet that with the 1.4 ghz athlon I could get even higher scores. Also weird they used lower timing memory and still didn't clock it up to reference values. Probably it was unstable at 400mhz even when new. But, considering how expensive are fast PCI cards, I'll just take what I get.

I'm still out and won't be returning until late Saturday, but haven't forgotten about this (obviously).

Can't wait to try it!

A friend will help me with the soldering and we're already knee-deep in theory.

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-10-22, 11:25:

I'm still out and won't be returning until late Saturday, but haven't forgotten about this (obviously).

Can't wait to try it!

A friend will help me with the soldering and we're already knee-deep in theory.

Memory goes out tomorrow as well, so you have some spare if you need it.