havli wrote:

Darkman wrote:

well I managed to find an HIS branded X1900XT 512MB so we will see when I get the card, what drivers are the best in terms of stability/performance for it? the latest ones on AMD's site are the 10.2 I believe.

Catalyst 10.2 is ok. I have tested many games with that driver and all of them were running fine.

I see, its set then.

Might still try and find a working GX2 in the future though , its a great card.....when it works

Yesterday i received my almost looking new Coolermaster HAF922 case..
Its the latest version with black interior and USB 3.0. Because iam going to use this case for an older build, i hope i would find an older USB 2.0 top part.
Mainly i wanted this case because it looks more nicer then the older HAF 932 brother. And this case have space for an 1.44MB floppy drive as well.
I really dont like the worst quality cases from 2002 till 2005

I knew the top part was broken.

But price wise / quality wise was it the best bet..

I only have to replace the top part.. The rest is use as new.. Very happy with this hard to find case (every one wants one)

I had also bought / won:

Diamond S3 Trio64 Dram

Tseng ET4000/W32P 2MB

S3 Trio64 Dram

thats a nice case, frankly better than my Thermaltake case

That case is really ugly as sin

Haha! Yeah I agree, I wasn't going to say anything but it really is horrible imho. The design is much too complex, simple lines and light colors for me thanks. 🤣
90's Beige FTW! 😜

n1mr0d wrote:

That case is really ugly as sin

Explain?

You got the vlb cards on ebay? How much?
Btw cap c9 doesnt look to healthy anymore on the tseng.

Sorry i cant tell how much i spend for these..
All i can say that i have a pile of these VLB cards.
But maybe when iam in a good mood i will trying to benchmark them all.

🤣 I take it you paid an arm and a leg then.

Probably really really cheap and he doesnt want to make us jealous, what nice.
I can take the thruth just want to know what the're worth, i am not going and try to buy them from you 😀

I only paid the amount i think they are worth. (and lesser is always better of course) But if they are to expensive, i just look else where. I have a good paid job, so i really cant worry about it.
But the latest times i dont buying to much anymore..

I got six of those ET4000/W32P VLB cards too last week 😀

Then you are a lucky guy, i guess.. Here and then they would show up, but the stock is more limited each time..

I think i have two of those ET 4000/W32P and an normal Tseng ET4000EX VLB card ( i think these are a little bit slower) And some other S3 high grade VLB cards.. and a little cirrus logic ones.
Maybe i will made a topic in the future and will show them all i have got.

Darkman wrote:

I actually tried Bioshock on an x1950 Pro (which uses the weaker R570 chip , as opposed to the top of the line R580 used in the X1900 versions) with the same A64 X2 4400 CPU , and it actually ran Bioshock surprisingly well.
full detail at 1280X1024 , and it generally ran in the 40-50fps range. maybe not too amazing, but not bad for an upper mid-range card from a year earlier.

Im still not sure what the heck is wrong with that 7950 . the corruption is visible during the boot up sequence, but Windows Safe mode will load just fine , as will normal Windows if I uninstall the drivers. I am using the latest BIOS and chipset drivers (this is a compatible board, according to ASUS) The only other card in this PC is an SB X-fi , so I can't imagine that causing the issue. the PSU is an Antec TP-550 , which should be more than capable too.

Bioshock really isn't all that demanding - it's Unreal based and lots of cards can run it well. My 4870X2 could run it at 2560x1600 with every setting at maximum, 16x AF, and 24x edge-detect AA enabled and achieve acceptable frame-rates, and on the other side my 7900GS also ran it just fine at lower resolution (and ofc no DX10 options). Oblivion is the one to watch though, especially if you're going to run with a lot of mods - it can easily become a more demanding game than Bioshock. 😊

On the card itself - corruption during bootup says, to me, BIOS enumeration problems with the bridge (and I don't put much stock in that nVidia and Asus claim the board is compatible - I own the ritzier SLI version of the board and it exhibits problems with these cards, when other boards that aren't on the list run them flawlessly - they are *not* universally compatible with PCIe boards), but issues within Windows during gaming may be heat, bad joints (I've never actually experienced this on a GeForce 7; I bring this up not to argue if it exists or not, but to say that I don't know what it looks like first-hand), or again BIOS compatibility problems. My advice is to try the card on another system and see if the issues persist, improve, or change.

On the PSU - absolutely AOK as long as it has decent 12V supply. nVidia massively over-stated the power requirements for GX2 and QuadSLI; if I remember right the first draft of system requirements said something like 800W PSU and you had reviewers doing entire QuadSLI systems on 400W PSUs without issues. My own QSLI testing used a Corsair 520W and in normal gaming it never broke 350W at the wall (that's with two 7950GX2s). Enabling 32x SLI-AA (which heavily loads the GPUs) took it up to around 400W. That's not bad at all. Especially for a modern PSU. 😀

Darkman wrote:

well I managed to find an HIS branded X1900XT 512MB so we will see when I get the card, what drivers are the best in terms of stability/performance for it? the latest ones on AMD's site are the 10.2 I believe.

weird thing I noticed about the GX2 , is that while in some games like Quake4 , the GX2 was significantly faster than the X1950 Pro (that engine apparently really likes the Nvidia cards) , in Hitman , the maximum frame rate was almost the same, although there were less instances of slowdown during the most demanding parts of the game.

HIS makes nice cards IME (and a lot of them from that era had Arctic Silencers pre-installed), it should be a good choice (any powerful single GPU would be a good choice imho - I really don't care Radeon or GeForce or Quadro). I think 10.2 are fine as well - I can't recall any problems with them for either my HD 4800s, or the limited testing I've done with my X1600s. Do note that they REQUIRE .NET 2.0 and WILL NOT install it on their own; they will let you install with zero .NET resources on the system, and then when you restart throw errors all over about .NET not being present. Save yourself the headache and load up .NET beforehand if you don't already have it installed. .NET 1.1 (and its SP1) is easily found on Microsoft's website, but 2.0 is a web installer if you go through Microsoft. However Lenovo has the entire redistributable here: http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds002897 😎

It seems all vlb cards offer s3 -p chips that utilize only 64 bit of ram bandwith. Why? Are there any vlb cards with real 128bit memory paths?

Picked up of of these for $13.50 shipped. New unused, unfortunately they half-assed packaged it when they shipped it to me. 😢

Haven't played with it yet, I'm interested how well it will function with the Descents.

Oh yeah, this thing is huge, it's 11 inches wide at the base!

Robin4 wrote:

n1mr0d wrote:

That case is really ugly as sin

Explain?

I'm with you. I think its a nice case. I use the Coolermaster HAF912 Combat which is very similar but has a larger side window and its great. Very easy to work with and of quite high quality. I chose the HAF 912 over the HAF 922 due to the side window being twice as large but the 922 does look a little nicer from the front of the case.

@obobskivich

I have a feeling it may well be defective, the tempratures aren't high , and given that it works when it wants to , I don't think its a motherboard incompatibility either.

Sadly the only other PCI-E board I have is my modern PC, but obviously I don't think it would work . Of course it could be that the motherboard itself has a fault , but I guess I will find out with the X1900.

As for resolutions, the monitor Im using is my Apple Studio Display, which has a max res of 1600X1200, so that is the highest I would go , a game like Oblivion will probably need to be lowered a couple of notches though.

bushwack wrote:

Picked up of of these for $13.50 shipped. New unused, unfortunately they half-assed packaged it when they shipped it to me. :dep […]
Show full quote

Picked up of of these for $13.50 shipped. New unused, unfortunately they half-assed packaged it when they shipped it to me. 😢

Haven't played with it yet, I'm interested how well it will function with the Descents.

Oh yeah, this thing is huge, it's 11 inches wide at the base!

That's beautiful. As a purveyor of screwball peripherals, my interest is piqued.

JaNoZ wrote:

It seems all vlb cards offer s3 -p chips that utilize only 64 bit of ram bandwith. Why? Are there any vlb cards with real 128bit memory paths?

128 bit 'paths were only starting to appear in the middle of 90's. S3 did not make one until Savage 2000. If you have dual ported memory in mind, that does not count as actual 128 bit path.