VOGONS


First post, by Sedrosken

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I recently acquired a Dell Optiplex GX150 SFF computer. Before you start hissing and telling me to toss it, consider the following:

- It's in very good condition. Caps look to be in mint condition, minimal cosmetic damage (considering its stint in a public school system) and the fans seem to be in good working order.
- I happen to like the clamshell-era Dells. They're what I grew up with in school (yes, I am still in my teens), so I have a soft spot for them despite their design flaws and whatnot. You call them ugly, I call them ugly-cute. Yes, I've had to work on them before. Yes, it's a pain. No, it does not diminish the love I feel for these machines.

I'm at the stage where I need to come across a video card for it. It should be able to use one given that it has the 815E chipset as Dell says it does, and the integrated 810 video is not my idea of a good time.

I have several options that I could pursue. Normally I'd go for the best card the machine can reliably run, but knowing what I do about bottlenecking... I'm not looking to replace the CPU (at least, not yet) so I'm wondering which of these would be most appropriate for a 933MHz PIII system:

- GeForce 4 MX 440 64MB
- Radeon 7000 32MB
- TNT2 16MB
- Rage 128 16MB

I don't own any of these cards, they're just what I can find for non-astronomical prices on Ebay.

The games I'm looking to run on this thing are of the same era as the machine itself. Perhaps the newest thing I'd consider running on it is Warcraft III, but the newest I'd run with any regularity is Halo 1. I'd figure the GeForce 4 card would be my best bet for those games, but if I should abandon hope of playing them on there I can -- they're those rare games that run perfectly well on my new machines, after all.

Shoushi: Dimension 9200, QX6700, 8GB D2-800CL5, K2200, SB0730, 1TB SSD, XP/7
Kara: K7S5A Pro, NX1750, 512MB DDR-286CL2, Ti4200, AU8830, 64GB SD2IDE, 98SE (Kex)
Cragstone: Alaris Cougar, 486BL2-66, 16MB, GD5428, CT2800, 16GB SD2IDE, 95CNOIE

Reply 1 of 6, by Tetrium

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GF4 MX 440 would be my take here.

It doesn't use a lot of power and Dell PSUs tended to not be easily upgraded as many used non-standard pinouts (I'm not sure about your model though, I trashed or gave away all my Dell systems years ago, partially due to how limited they were and because I needed more space and because I simply don't like Dell very much).

TNT2 worked fine when I used it in my Coppermine 800, but I found that even with that CPU, the TNT2 (non-ultra) was already a bit on the weak side.

I never used a Radeon 7000 and the Rage doesn't seem like a really good deal to me. Many different versions of the Rage were made though and most are probably even slower than a TNT2.

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 2 of 6, by Smack2k

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If you are going period correct, GeForce2 Pro or Ultra (both 64 MB) hits the era right on the head...

Radeon 7200 or Radeon 7000 is period correct as well....

Reply 3 of 6, by PhilsComputerLab

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Tetrium wrote:

GF4 MX 440 would be my take here.

+1

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Reply 4 of 6, by Sedrosken

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Tetrium wrote:

GF4 MX 440 would be my take here.

Bought it. We'll see how it performs!

Shoushi: Dimension 9200, QX6700, 8GB D2-800CL5, K2200, SB0730, 1TB SSD, XP/7
Kara: K7S5A Pro, NX1750, 512MB DDR-286CL2, Ti4200, AU8830, 64GB SD2IDE, 98SE (Kex)
Cragstone: Alaris Cougar, 486BL2-66, 16MB, GD5428, CT2800, 16GB SD2IDE, 95CNOIE

Reply 5 of 6, by ODwilly

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+1 on the mx440

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 6 of 6, by SRQ

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I use a Geforce 256 in mine for 'dating', a Geforce 2 high end would be perfect though for "high end 2000".
A TnT2 wouldn't be bad but it'd be underpowered.