I have a similar setup, although with a 6600GT not a 9800 PRO. I'll see how it performs in 3DMark and post some results 😜

Nice!

I've got an RDRAM Pentium 3 866MHz with a Radeon X800 Pro video card. Runs Half Life 2 pretty well!

MPEG-6 wrote:

First post! Here's my old new P3 machine, tuned to perfection. Specs: -Asus TUV4X mobo […]
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First post! Here's my old new P3 machine, tuned to perfection. Specs:
-Asus TUV4X mobo

-P3 1.4-S at 1.6GHz, 152MHz FSB, 1.5v

-1.5GB of generic CL3 PC133 at 152MHz and CL2 (this cheap eBay RAM is impressive--the CL2.5 Kingston I had before wouldn't go this high at CL2)

-Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB at AGP 2X. I couldn't get this or any other card to run at AGP 4X, even with the CPU/FSB at 1.4/133. Chrome and a few other programs would cause the system to hang when AGP 4X was enabled. The slower AGP doesn't seem to be hurting system performance.

-250GB WD IDE hard drive, LG 16X DVD burner, 350w generic PSU, and a case that's just beyond ugly. That'll be my next upgrade.

This case just screams Teen Gaming Rig 2002. 😒

The CPU is cooled by an old PowerLeap HSF, but there's no socket converter under it. The mobo is Tualatin compatible. Cards: Radeon 9800 Pro, D-Link gigabit network card, and SB Live.

I also had it playing 720p H.264 encoded TV shows with CoreAVC/WMP11. Playback was nice and smooth. The video only started falling behind the audio when MSE updated.

You should really change the 9800 Pro for a X800/X850 if you're running 2k/XP or a GeForce 6 if you're running Win9x. You'll see much better framerates and/or be able to turn on more eye candy in the more demanding games.

On a P3 I do not think the performance difference is that big tbh. X800/Geforce 6 series cards were made for P4 / Athlon XP's in the 2-3 ghz range.

Indeed, you shouldn't really see any big difference. GeForce 4 Ti4600 should already be kinda bottlenecked by a P3-S 1.4
The cpu is just too slow to be provide faster frames. I gave Half Life 2 a try on my P3-S and 6600GT and it was giving me around 20-25fps on Medium Details under Win98SE.
Obviously you don't want to play that kind of game on such a machine!

I had a 9800Pro with a Nortwood 2.6 and the card was the latest and greatest at that time. If anything the P3 might be holding it back?

Just threw the 9800Pro in an ECS KM266-based board with an Athlon XP 2400+ and 1GB of DDR266.
AXP 3DMark01SE: 11,490 (P3-S: 11,026)
AXP 3DMark03: 5438 (P3-S: 5295)
AXP 3DMark03 CPU: 382 (P3-S: 330)

I'm actually quite surprised at how close they are. I wonder if that freakishly thin ECS board is holding the AXP back a little (or if the AXP's lack of SSE2 is holding it back)

I am working on a monster A64-X2/AGP/x1950Pro rig as well. Once that's up and running, I'll throw in the 9800Pro and run a few tests.

F2bnp wrote:

I have a similar setup, although with a 6600GT not a 9800 PRO. I'll see how it performs in 3DMark and post some results 😜

Yes, please! 😁

I too have a 9800 Pro and 6600GT. I think they perform similarly. The 9800 Pro has a bit of a memory bandwidth advantage but I'm not sure if it matters.

What's entertaining is seeing a 6600GT be like twice as fast as a 5950 Ultra. Even in games like KOTOR. In D3D9 games it's just obscenely faster. But this is when I compared them on a Core 2 system so no CPU bottlenecks.

I have an X800 in my Pentium 3 and I can play half life 2 @ 1680x1050 with pretty good graphic settings.

I'll need to work out how to get the FPS...

Are you guys who run HL2 on these machines using an up-to-date copy of the game? Because even though it ran acceptably on my 3.0Ghz P4 with a PCI Radeon X1550 back in the day, I can't get it to run very well at all nowadays on my 2.6 P4/6600GT system. I'd assumed that's because the update that converted HL2 to the Orange Box version of Source Engine took a big hit on performance, but if you guys still run it well on a Pentium 3 I'm baffled...

I wonder if there's a way to get a copy that uses the older version of the engine. 🤣

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I wonder if there's a way to get a copy that uses the older version of the engine. 🤣

I think the cracked pirated version will come to your rescue
🤣

vetz wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I wonder if there's a way to get a copy that uses the older version of the engine. 🤣

I think the cracked pirated version will come to your rescue
🤣

Yep... 😜

Haha fair enough, just wasn't sure if there was something else you guys were doing or if it was that simple. I'll have to give that a go sometime, it bothered me when they retroactively updated the older Source games. CSS switching to Orange Box made me particularly sad because the video stress test has been messed up ever since; I loved watching that thing.

It does look a ton better, the updated HL2. Not quite as good as Episode 2, but still.
Where the hell is Episode 3 anyway :@?

I installed HL2 via steam, so it should be the latest.

-Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB at AGP 2X. I couldn't get this or any other card to run at AGP 4X, even with the CPU/FSB at 1.4/133. Chrome and a few other programs would cause the system to hang when AGP 4X was enabled. The slower AGP doesn't seem to be hurting system performance.

VIA chipset from the 90's, that's the reason. Only the Intels were stable at the time. Nvidia drivers have compatibility modes for several problematic chipsets (which probably disables the AGP 4x mode). Don't know about ATI.
I cannot get a Geforce 2MX to run on a PV133 without random blackouts at all.

F2bnp wrote:

vetz wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I wonder if there's a way to get a copy that uses the older version of the engine. 🤣

I think the cracked pirated version will come to your rescue
🤣

Yep... 😜

What about just buying an old copy that was printed back in '04?