Mau1wurf1977 wrote:This thread made be look for some of the faster and newer PCIe (vintage :lol: ) video cards. I got all these cards with minimum […]
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This thread made be look for some of the faster and newer PCIe (vintage 🤣 ) video cards. I got all these cards with minimum bids:
- 7800GT 256
- 7800GT 512
- 7800GTX 256
- 7600GT
- Geforce 4 Ti (not sure which one)
I then forgot about an auction and let a Radeon 9700Pro AIW slip through my fingers. It went for like a dollar 😒
I don't have the time to play with this gear yet anyway, but many of these cards can be had for next to nothing. Although they take up more room than the older cards I think it's good to start grabbing a few.
Personally I would like to get all the "value" cars like the GF4 Ti 4200, 6600GT, 7600GT and so on. With the 8800GT it got a bit out of hand. I believe the last and final / best card with that chip is the GTS250, basically a 9800GTX+ and back then Nvidia had so many models with tiny differences. The 9600GT was also a very good card. Half the guts, but clocked higher and not that far behind the 8800GT.
For DX9 I believe any of these cards will do fine. I don't know if later cards / drivers cause issues with DX9. And what is the deal with Windows XP and new cards?
The G92 appeared as:
- 8800GS
- 8800GT
- 8800GTS 512MB
- 9600GSO
- 9800GT
- 9800GT "Green Edition"
- 9800GTX
- 9800GTX+
- 9800GX2
- GTS 150
- GT 230
- GTS 240
- GTS 250
- GTS 250 "Green Edition"
That doesn't mean those are all equals, the 8800GS, 9600GS, GT 230, are all cut down to 12 ROPs and 48 TMUs (from 64:16 on the "full" chip), the GTS 240 is cut down to 56 TMUs. Clock and memory specs will vary too. Depending on who you ask and how, either the GTS 250 (and/or 9800GTX+ - I think the biggest difference is that 1GB 250s are more common than 1GB 9800s) or 9800GX2 will be the "best."
Regarding DX9 gaming:
The GeForce 4 will not do DirectX 9 - its a DirectX 8.1 card. The GeForce 7600GT will struggle with some later-era DirectX9 games run at high settings (like Oblivion or Hitman 4; I would suggest something else (faster) for games like Mass Effect, Fallout 3, or Skyrim (I think Skyrim actually lists an 8800 as its minimum requirement)). The 7800/7900 and 8800 boards shouldn't give you as much grief - especially the higher spec ones (like 7900GTX). I've personally never had any issues with a DirectX 9 game on newer hardware (up through Radeon HD 4870X2); the bigger issues probably stem from wanting to run the game on Windows Vista, 7, or 8 64-bit - but even there I haven't encountered any problems (the oldest DirectX 9 games I've got, Halo and Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, both run fine under Windows 7 64-bit on HD 4800s). I've also had no issues with getting those cards to work on XP, but the biggest "gotcha" will be the memory address limit - a lot of cards from the GeForce 9 and higher will come with at least 512MB (and more often 1GB) of memory, which will chew into the address space pretty seriously.
Beyond that, there are some *very* demanding DirectX 9 games, like Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, and Grand Theft Auto 4. DirectX 9 is hard to drop into a bin for a single generation of hardware - on one hand you have games like Halo and Doom 3 that will run (more or less) dandy on a GeForce FX and Athlon or Pentium 3, and on the other you have games like Skyrim that require a multi-core processor, multiple GB of system memory, and a 512MB graphics card.
Regarding XP and "new" cards - the newest I've played around with is from the Radeon 4000 series, and it had no problems under WindowsXP. I've had consistently bad luck with very-new cards (like Radeon 7000 series or GeForce 600 series) in terms of either the boards coming dead on arrival, the drivers not liking the board, or the boards not working with the PCIe motherboards I have.
Arctic does sell some very nice coolers, my personal pick is the Accelero Mono Plus:
http://www.arctic.ac/us_en/products/cooling/v … -mono-plus.html
It keeps my HD 4890 very cool and runs very quiet. It did turn the card into a triple-slot monster though... 😵 However for older-era cards, like the GeForce 6 and 7, I do not remember any of them being particularly hot running with their stock coolers. For example my 7900GS uses a reference single-slot design and runs cool, and is quiet. For older cards I'd suggest saving your money and getting a Zalman VF-700 (if you can still find one) if you need to upgrade the cooling.
If DX9 gaming is your goal, something like the 7900GTX or 8800GTX is a fine place to be - it won't run the final-era DX9 games with all the settings on, but it should run them, and it'll tear through the earlier games quite easily.
Oh, and regarding AIW - have you looked into the AIW X800 series cards?