Skyscraper wrote:

I can report that the Radeon X1950XTX got 114 FPS in FEAR at 1280*960 with all settings maxed.
Perhaps it would not handle 1600*1200 but anything below is fine.

Massive performance 😀

There is one graphics setting which costs a lot of performance: Soft shadows. Just disabling this will give you a huge boost to performance.

The default "MAX" settings, enabled AA but not soft shadows (it's one or the other). AA also costs a lot of performance but I believe soft shadows is more demanding.

That card should actually do fine at 1600 x 1200. Of course there might a few scenes giving slow downs but that's usually not a big deal.

Another question is: What is easier and cheaper to source, a 7900 GTX / X1900 card or a 8800 GT / 9600 GT. I actually haven't looked in a while to see what availability and prices are like.

I just bought a GTX 275 for ~8 Euro and I often see the 8800 GT or 9600 GT sell for 5-10 Euro here in Sweden. Im pretty sure the Ebay prices are higher. the Geforce 8 and 9 series of cards are easier to find than the 7900 GTX or X1900/X1950XTX though. The X1950 Pro is more commen and cheap but not very fast.

Those are very good prices! Yea on eBay you have to pay quite a bit more.

eFatal2ty wrote:

Here is video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj7eT---Xfs If i find somewhere next pair of Corsair PC3500 it will have 4GB of RAM

Cool. One thing to note: before you get too eager on the 4GB of RAM, some older motherboards from this era will not be able to address greater than around 3GB, even if the manual says you can install 4GB. My PC-DL (which is i875p) is like that - maximum it will give you with 4GB installed is around 3.3GB in the BIOS. I'm not sure if this is all 875p boards or not, and of course Windows will not address 100% of 4GB if you have a graphics card installed, but it's just something to keep in mind. IMO 2GB is a very good value for machines from this era - it's ridiculous overkill by 2002-2004 standards, but it isn't horribly expensive nowadays. 😀

philscomputerlab wrote:

Another question is: What is easier and cheaper to source, a 7900 GTX / X1900 card or a 8800 GT / 9600 GT. I actually haven't looked in a while to see what availability and prices are like.

GeForce 7 is much cheaper and easier to find in the US, as long as you don't absolutely have to have the 7900GTX. Finding 7800GTX, 7950GT, 7900GS, 7800/7900GT, etc is very easy, and getting them for around $10 isn't that impossible either.

GeForce 8/9 is not terribly more expensive (as long as you don't demand 88GTX/Ultra or 98GX2), and will run cheaper than most 7900GTX that I've seen - like $20-$30 for a lot of GF8/9 cards, whereas people seem to think $40-$60 is realistic for a 7900GTX. 🤣

The Radeon X1800/1900 cards are usually gouged up - I have no idea why (Radeon X and Radeon HD 2000 series are both rock-bottom cheap; 2900XTs are under $30 very commonly). X1950Pro does appear more common as Skyscraper points out, and it has the advantage of much better CrossFire support over the others too - wouldn't be a bad choice until you remember that HD 2900, GF8/9, etc will probably cost about the same... 😵 🤣

Best price-to-performance is probably HD 2900 or one of the more common GF8/9 cards. GeForce 200 series is usually not terribly more money either. Best price-to-performance-to-power would be the GeForce 7 though, going with like a 512MB 7950GT or similar.

Yea the 7900 GTX cards cost me $30 each and that was also from the US. Postage is what kills it for me when it comes to the cheaper cards. Unless the seller has several and combines postage.

First run 😁 without motherboard, it is quite silent

That looks awesome! Seeing those green LED fans makes me remember the year 2004 fondly.

Were there some AGP-Pro editions of gaming cards in the past?

I will post my results soon... 😈

Nice build, one of the best cases of the year 2003-2004.. Looks really nice.

Check MAXIMUMPC magazine - september 2003, 2004 etc. on google for Dreambuilds since 1997, or here http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/pdf_archives

eFatal2ty wrote:

Were there some AGP-Pro editions of gaming cards in the past?

I will post my results soon... 😈

No, only Quadros, FireGLs and WildCats.

eFatal2ty wrote:

Were there some AGP-Pro editions of gaming cards in the past?

Yes and no. There are AGP Pro variants of the Radeon 9500/9700 based FireGL (which would still be capable of gaming - they also tend not to be very expensive), and some GeForce cards that were sold for Macs (and may be modifiable to work in a PC, ignoring no ADC support). I'm not aware of any AGP Pro Quadro, and the AGP Pro Wildcat cards are very large, and have very limited gaming capabilities. There's no real advantage to AGP Pro beyond increased power delivery, and many of the more demanding gaming cards use external power connectors instead. 😊

Something like these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/380771593511
http://www.ebay.com/itm/141262343095

Also note that these don't include TV-out; the DIN connector is for 3-pin stereo. 😊

Up to next week(month) I will complete this Matrix build, then I have here MSI K7N2 Delta2 Platinum + TwinMos 1.5GB DDR400 CL2.5 unused, CPU+VGA missing, I want some Radeon now + Purple or Carrot red LED fans to this build 😀 Or will nVidia performs better than ATi on nForce? Does it matter? There are a lot of Radeon 9600 128/256M out there..

eFatal2ty wrote:

Up to next week(month) I will complete this Matrix build, then I have here MSI K7N2 Delta2 Platinum + TwinMos 1.5GB DDR400 CL2.5 unused, CPU+VGA missing, I want some Radeon now + Purple or Carrot red LED fans to this build 😀 Or will nVidia performs better than ATi on nForce? Does it matter? There are a lot of Radeon 9600 128/256M out there..

No problems with ATi cards on nForce, or nVidia cards on ATi chipsets. The only limits you'll run into with a few years newer hardware is multi-GPU where it's tied to same-vendor gear (e.g. nVidia SLI requires certain nForce chip, and ATi CrossFire requires certain ATi chip).

I know I've read about a multi-head mode that some ATi IGP chipset could engage with Radeon 9 graphics, but I've never actually seen it in person, or even in a video/photo-journal for that matter. I honestly don't know if the nForce IGP + GeForce graphics are capable of anything like that (years later with the final nForce chipsets and GeForce 9 cards they were though).

Radeon 9600 is not a bad choice of a card, as long as it's an honest 9600. Lots of hinky stuff went on with cheap memory and fibbed specs back then, and I'm sure there's also unscrupulous or ignorant sellers these days labeling 9550s as 9600s because they use the same core. But a bona fide 9600Pro or XT is a very competent card. You might also look at the Radeon 9500 (*not* the same thing as 9550), and 9700 series, which will offer similarly good performance (the 9700Pro being somewhat faster). None of those should command the price premium of the Radeon 9800s either.

If you really want AGP Pro, a FireGL Z1 or X1 would be a fine choice too. 😀

Boards, finally

remember what i said, DONT use the dual channel in that MSI Socket A...

Living wrote:

remember what i said, DONT use the dual channel in that MSI Socket A...

Why shouldn't he use dual channel on that K7N2 Platinum?
I'm getting a K7N2 and I want to do that too btw. (run RAM in dual channel)

Living wrote:

Back in the day i had that MSI. GREAT motherboard BUT...

DONT use the dual channel, its unstable and u will get Bsods every 1 or 2 hours.

i quote myself

Dual channel on Socket A isn't really all that important either (especially if not using IGP). Give this a perusal:
http://techreport.com/review/5285/dfi-lanpart … ra-motherboards
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/nforce2-1vs2channels/

Next stage. Everything running well, but Inno3D turn to be broken (bad ass - seller), so I should get another 7600GT - from Qleadtek Winfast with DDR3 too and I found also Leadtek nVidia 7800GS 256M DDR3 256bit will it be better than 7600GT?? Here is some weird results: http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/review-leadtek … 20-benchmark-13