VOGONS


Reply 60 of 97, by swaaye

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I feel like editing the hate out of the topic title because that's flame bait. The cards have their uses. Great for OpenGL games of the time especially. Like Bioware games that were quite problematic for ATI. Doom3/idTech4 is also a pretty GeForce FX centric engine with its stencil shadows and texturing focus (it's not floating point shader heavy).

They are also great for Glide wrappers. Hardware palletized texture support.

ATI 9x00 were mainly excellent for DirectX 7-9 (old game issues) and they had superior gamma corrected anti aliasing. However with NV you can play with SSAA or toy with quincunx AA that is interesting at high resolution.

ATI can certainly run pixel shader 2 much better, because pixel shader 2 is basically R300, but pixel shader 2 was quickly left behind. As X800 owners discovered.

Last edited by swaaye on 2020-03-10, 21:51. Edited 3 times in total.

Reply 61 of 97, by pentiumspeed

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pixel shader 2.0 on 9x00 vs x800 owners found out? Explain more on this?

Radeon 9x00 is much harder to find than I expected.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 62 of 97, by swaaye

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pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-03-10, 20:47:

pixel shader 2.0 on 9x00 vs x800 owners found out? Explain more on this?

Radeon 9x00 is much harder to find than I expected.

Pixel shader 3.0 quickly became popular with developers. Even in 2004 there were some games starting to use it. The X800 cards lost the ability to run all the effects in games. Eventually games requiring PS 3.0 arrived. I remember Bioshock being very controversial. Internet petitions and all that.

Radeon 9500/9700/9800 cards frequently die so that could be part of the rarity, aside from the fact that they are just a popular item, and that everything from then is rather uncommon these days.

Reply 64 of 97, by SPBHM

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yes but Bioshock we are talking August 2007, and after that a number of games continued to support PS 2.0 as the minimum and the FX was almost never supported while the 9700 still was, the 6800 was also quite slow by 2007/2008 at SM 3.0 effects based on the Xbox 360 hardware, it's true that it was a good advantage over the x800 no doubt, the x800 would have been relevant for a little longer if it did supported SM 3.0, but for the 9700/9500 SM2.0 helped it be relevant for at least 5 years or more of game releases, even Crysis (on low 800x600) is playable.

the support for SM 3.0 in 2004 was very limited, mostly pushed by Nvidia obviously, I remember the Far Cry patch and so on, and then Counter Strike Source with the HDR option requiring SM 3.0 (but I think by then it's 2005), the problem is that the performance hit was hard enabling those things with a Geforce 6 on CSS and maybe you couldn't enable MSAA at the same time.

AMD's plans with future architectures are looking ambitious, the consoles are also looking quite interesting this time,
the current RDNA/Navi looks like a good step for them, obviously Nvidia is in a much stronger position since 2014, and I would think they are going to be harder to catch then Intel (AMD was greatly helped by Intel being stuck with their 10nm woes and their conservative plans to milk quad cores forever for the mainstream), but who knows,

Reply 65 of 97, by Baoran

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I have used FX5950 Ultra for 8 bit paletted textures support in my win9x/winxp hybrid pc. This made me wonder that if I were to make a pure winxp pc and I could just put my previous main pc video card 780ti in it, would there be any reason compatibility wise to use some other card that has come after FX5950 Ultra with winxp? Like FX5950 ultra is decent up to directX 8 and has 8 bit paletted textures support in my hybrid pc and I assume 780ti still has decent directx 9 support and is one of the last cards that have winxp drivers.

Reply 67 of 97, by KT7AGuy

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Baoran wrote on 2020-03-11, 04:01:

... would there be any reason compatibility wise to use some other card that has come after FX5950 Ultra with winxp?

For early XP builds, the Radeon 9600 and 9800 cards are also great. Especially so if you also have an HDTV Wonder installed as you get a few features that are unique to that particular configuration. 8-bit palletized textures and table fog don't work with them under Win9x, but they do with the 10-2 drivers under WinXP. In particular, the 9600XT runs so cool that you can use a passive heatsink on it. They're great if you want 8-bit palletized textures and table fog in WinXP.

Other than that, I think the GeForce 285 and Radeon 7770 are probably the best for later WinXP systems. Personally, I use the Radeon 7770 cards because they run cooler and use less power, but you lose PhysX support with them. As always, the Catalyst software is also crap.

Reply 68 of 97, by swaaye

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I think my favorite old Radeon is the X19xx series. The R5xx cards actually have slightly better texture filtering quality than the DX10-11 cards and better game compatibility too. Catalyst 7.11 is a good bet for cards that can run it. It fixes KOTOR and Republic Commando for example compared to newer (and various older) drivers.

Otherwise I have the 8800U or GTX 580. Usually these are foolproof choices. Probably the best choices really. If a game seems to be running funky on the Radeon, test it on the GF!

Reply 69 of 97, by pentiumspeed

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KT7AGuy wrote on 2020-03-11, 20:37:
Baoran wrote on 2020-03-11, 04:01:

... would there be any reason compatibility wise to use some other card that has come after FX5950 Ultra with winxp?

For early XP builds, the Radeon 9600 and 9800 cards are also great. Especially so if you also have an HDTV Wonder installed as you get a few features that are unique to that particular configuration. 8-bit palletized textures and table fog don't work with them under Win9x, but they do with the 10-2 drivers under WinXP. In particular, the 9600XT runs so cool that you can use a passive heatsink on it. They're great if you want 8-bit palletized textures and table fog in WinXP.

Other than that, I think the GeForce 285 and Radeon 7770 are probably the best for later WinXP systems. Personally, I use the Radeon 7770 cards because they run cooler and use less power, but you lose PhysX support with them. As always, the Catalyst software is also crap.

Wait a minute?

For 9600/9800 cards for early XP:
8 bit palletized texture and table fog works under XP? That's exactly describes what DOS games does? But is there other games that only works under windows (generally 98se and XP 32bit) still use 8-bit palletized texture and table fog that would work well with these radeon 9600/9800 under XP? 9600 XT are much easier to get and some types of 9800 as well.

I'm would be surprised that is true as I was struggling to find FX 5xxx of any decent performance.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 70 of 97, by The Serpent Rider

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swaaye wrote:

Otherwise I have the 8800U or GTX 580. Usually these are foolproof choices.

Don't recommend choices which with 90% will die after prolonged use =P

KT7AGuy wrote:

Other than that, I think the GeForce 285 and Radeon 7770 are probably the best for later WinXP systems.

GeForce GTX 280 is better than 285. You can software mod it to reduce power consumption and heat dissipation drastically.

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Reply 71 of 97, by mockingbird

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-03-12, 02:38:
KT7AGuy wrote:

Other than that, I think the GeForce 285 and Radeon 7770 are probably the best for later WinXP systems.

GeForce GTX 280 is better than 285. You can software mod it to reduce power consumption and heat dissipation drastically.

Can you please elaborate?

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Reply 72 of 97, by SPBHM

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-03-12, 02:38:
Don't recommend choices which with 90% will die after prolonged use =P […]
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swaaye wrote:

Otherwise I have the 8800U or GTX 580. Usually these are foolproof choices.

Don't recommend choices which with 90% will die after prolonged use =P

KT7AGuy wrote:

Other than that, I think the GeForce 285 and Radeon 7770 are probably the best for later WinXP systems.

GeForce GTX 280 is better than 285. You can software mod it to reduce power consumption and heat dissipation drastically.

is there a significant disadvantage for Fermi over GT200s?
because the GTX 460 1GB is basically equal to the 280 but using 100W less

Reply 73 of 97, by The Serpent Rider

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Can you please elaborate?

GTX285 was cost reduced version of GTX280. VRM on GTX280 allowed software tweaking (less/more voltage) via BIOS.

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Reply 74 of 97, by KT7AGuy

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SPBHM wrote on 2020-03-12, 03:15:

is there a significant disadvantage for Fermi over GT200s?
because the GTX 460 1GB is basically equal to the 280 but using 100W less

From what little I understand of the issue, Fermi and previous generations of NVIDIA cards are susceptible to solder joint failures over time due to thermal expansion/contraction. While Fermi is less susceptible than Tesla and previous generations, failures can still happen leading to "baking adventures", as another VOGONer once described it.

I've been running a 560 Ti 448 as my daily driver since 2013 with no issues. However, I modded mine with an aftermarket GELID Icy Vision cooler right away. This may be contributing to its longevity.

Reply 75 of 97, by The Serpent Rider

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because the GTX 460 1GB is basically equal to the 280 but using 100W less

GTX 460 should be fine too. You can mod voltage via MSI Afterburner.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 76 of 97, by swaaye

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My trusty Radeon 6950 died about a year ago. Started to sporadically come up on boot and eventually stopped working altogether. I thought it was the motherboard at first. Apparently not unheard of for the Cayman cards.

I wanted a 8800 Ultra around but yeah I suppose it could fail. G80 is one of the most interesting GPUs to me though and they have been quite cheap.

Last edited by swaaye on 2020-03-12, 05:27. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 77 of 97, by SPBHM

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KT7AGuy wrote on 2020-03-12, 04:28:
SPBHM wrote on 2020-03-12, 03:15:

is there a significant disadvantage for Fermi over GT200s?
because the GTX 460 1GB is basically equal to the 280 but using 100W less

From what little I understand of the issue, Fermi and previous generations of NVIDIA cards are susceptible to solder joint failures over time due to thermal expansion/contraction. While Fermi is less susceptible than Tesla and previous generations, failures can still happen leading to "baking adventures", as another VOGONer once described it.

I've been running a 560 Ti 448 as my daily driver since 2013 with no issues. However, I modded mine with an aftermarket GELID Icy Vision cooler right away. This may be contributing to its longevity.

I see, the GTX 460 being a much smaller die should help with that,
but I remember the solders being a big problem during the g80 and g9x days, I thought by Fermi they had it sorted, I've lost 3 8600GTs to what I'm almost sure was the solder issue common to those cards...

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-03-12, 04:36:

because the GTX 460 1GB is basically equal to the 280 but using 100W less

GTX 460 should be fine too. You can mod voltage via MSI Afterburner.

ahh yes, having voltages unlocked is a good feature, my reference 5850 offers a decent amount of control, I run it with .08v of undervolt at stock clocks, or even used a lot in the past with around 0.07v overvolt for running at 925MHz, it can even run on 3d with the minimum voltage (2d clock voltage) at around 690MHz, it saves some power, and the 5850 was considered already a power efficient card back then.

Reply 78 of 97, by swaaye

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I think my brother RMAed an 8800GT 3 times. I remember about 3 dead 8600GTs and one or two 8500GTs. But my 8800GTX was solid for the 4 years I used it. And a coworker is still using my old GeForce 8200 motherboard and a 8600GT is in there too. Random fun stuff.

I have had to RMA a 1070 and 1080 Ti for driver crashes just like with those GF8 cards. Was it more lead-free solder troubles? Who knows.

Reply 79 of 97, by The Serpent Rider

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That's why GTX280 should be safest bet from that time period. After voltmod it works very cool.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.