Spark wrote on 2025-03-16, 21:19:

In my 810 system, I tried a Radeon 9250 64bit, and a Gforce fx 5200 64bit. This is with a P3 900. Both PCI of course. The Radeo […]
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In my 810 system, I tried a Radeon 9250 64bit, and a Gforce fx 5200 64bit. This is with a P3 900. Both PCI of course.
The Radeon 9250 was quite a bit better in my tests.
Later I also got a Radeon 9000 128 bit which is even better, but this is a long card and I doubt it would fit in that small case.
If you are looking for the best to fit into that case, I would go for a 128 bit radeon 9250.

The 9250 should be a great card. The problem is availability and price. The Chinese FX5200 costs around €40. The 9250s I've seen are around €150.

Feanor_twh wrote on 2025-03-17, 00:56:

I agree. I already have the adapter on the way and a 2.5" SATA SSD waiting to be mounted. The motherboard has a stupid ATA33 lim […]
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Trashbytes wrote on 2025-03-15, 11:54:

A SSD would give you an even bigger performance boost, something worth considering since a 2.5" SSD with a SATA to IDE board would produce less heat than the spinning rust factory and be a million times faster.

Yes you would notice it even on a P3 rig, it would feel right snappy and load games a lot faster. Trim support isn't worth worrying about on a retro machine, you wont be using it 24/7 nor will you be filling up the SSD so its on board garbage collection can handle provisioning and empty cells just fine.

I agree. I already have the adapter on the way and a 2.5" SATA SSD waiting to be mounted. The motherboard has a stupid ATA33 limit, but even so the SSD will run more than twice as fast as the HDD.

I've been testing with RivaTuner. I discovered several things:
- The maximum memory speed without artifacts is exactly 346MHz. So I think I'll be fine with 333MHz (166MHz), right?
- There's no noticeable difference between RTCW or Max Payne when changing the GPU and memory settings. Switching between 200-300MHz on the GPU and 200-350MHz on the memory speed results in a difference of 4 or 5 fps

So I'm thinking that the PIII's 100MHz bus or the PC-100 SDRAM is the bottleneck, or the PCI bus, regardless of which GPU I'm going to mount.

Really, both RTCW and Max Payne are playable, the latter even at 1024x768, so I don't think I'm too bad. Being able to play Mafia 1 would be great, but I think I can live without it.

Hmmm that does sound like you are CPU bound there, you are right the 100Mhz bus and PC 100 ram wouldn't be helping but are far less of an issue.

Feanor_twh wrote on 2025-03-17, 00:56:

I agree. I already have the adapter on the way and a 2.5" SATA SSD waiting to be mounted. The motherboard has a stupid ATA33 lim […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-03-15, 11:54:

A SSD would give you an even bigger performance boost, something worth considering since a 2.5" SSD with a SATA to IDE board would produce less heat than the spinning rust factory and be a million times faster.

Yes you would notice it even on a P3 rig, it would feel right snappy and load games a lot faster. Trim support isn't worth worrying about on a retro machine, you wont be using it 24/7 nor will you be filling up the SSD so its on board garbage collection can handle provisioning and empty cells just fine.

I agree. I already have the adapter on the way and a 2.5" SATA SSD waiting to be mounted. The motherboard has a stupid ATA33 limit, but even so the SSD will run more than twice as fast as the HDD.

I've been testing with RivaTuner. I discovered several things:
- The maximum memory speed without artifacts is exactly 346MHz. So I think I'll be fine with 333MHz (166MHz), right?
- There's no noticeable difference between RTCW or Max Payne when changing the GPU and memory settings. Switching between 200-300MHz on the GPU and 200-350MHz on the memory speed results in a difference of 4 or 5 fps

So I'm thinking that the PIII's 100MHz bus or the PC-100 SDRAM is the bottleneck, or the PCI bus, regardless of which GPU I'm going to mount.

Really, both RTCW and Max Payne are playable, the latter even at 1024x768, so I don't think I'm too bad. Being able to play Mafia 1 would be great, but I think I can live without it.

If you're running Socket 370, maybe consider getting a 133 MHz FSB (EB) Coppermine, plus some PC133 memory. That will up your performance quite a bit. Don't need to get the 1 ghz one, but 866 or so ought to be cheap and a huge boost. If on Slot 1, though, I hear a Tualatin Celeron is a good fit, as long as you really know what you're doing with a slotket adapter...

Also, I would do a bit of a burn in test on that overclock. Make it run something stressful like a benchmark for about 5 - 8 hours. 166 MHz ought to be fine, but maybe back it off to 163 or 160 if you get any, even small glitches. Mine was rock solid at 170 MHz, but results may vary, of course.

Feanor_twh wrote on 2025-03-15, 10:40:

bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-03-15, 03:38:

What games are you running?

RTCW and Max Payne are the most demanding ones. They run but I can't play at 1024x768, I have to go down to 800x600 if I want to keep high settings on everything else.

That sounds about right, you are actually doing pretty good seeing that is with a PCI video card, I'd have to say I'm impressed. My last P3 was about that mhz on a bx440 with an AGP GF2 Ti and 800x600 in those games was also where it was at. Smoothness in those (and a few of my other favs like mafia or NFSHP2) at 1024x768 didn't come until I migrated to a Via based board with a 1+ ghz p3 on 160mhz fsb and a GF3.

It's unfortunate there were never any intel 810 chipset boards that would allow higher FSB (that I know of), it would be interesting to see how they performed highly overclocked.

In any case, I've been down a similar rabbit hole before- I once had a compaq with a bx440 board that with the help of a slot-t eventually ended up running a 1.4 tualatin. I remember being underwhelmed in the end - it was not at all much faster then the 900mhz p3 it replaced, I suspect the low FSB was the main limitation

Even a Pentium 233MMX can max out a 64-bit GeForce FX.

emu34b wrote on 2025-03-18, 01:33:

If you're running Socket 370, maybe consider getting a 133 MHz FSB (EB) Coppermine, plus some PC133 memory. That will up your performance quite a bit. Don't need to get the 1 ghz one, but 866 or so ought to be cheap and a huge boost. If on Slot 1, though, I hear a Tualatin Celeron is a good fit, as long as you really know what you're doing with a slotket adapter...

Also, I would do a bit of a burn in test on that overclock. Make it run something stressful like a benchmark for about 5 - 8 hours. 166 MHz ought to be fine, but maybe back it off to 163 or 160 if you get any, even small glitches. Mine was rock solid at 170 MHz, but results may vary, of course.

The chipset is limited to 100MHz FSB and PC-100. It was originally 66MHz FSB, and I had to make a hardware modification to get the full 100MHz bus.

So I have a 1000mhz 133FSB PIII, running at 750, 100FSB, wonderfully cool 😉

Maybe I could reach 1ghz with a faster processor, if that would do any good.

bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-03-18, 14:41:

That sounds about right, you are actually doing pretty good seeing that is with a PCI video card, I'd have to say I'm impressed. My last P3 was about that mhz on a bx440 with an AGP GF2 Ti and 800x600 in those games was also where it was at. Smoothness in those (and a few of my other favs like mafia or NFSHP2) at 1024x768 didn't come until I migrated to a Via based board with a 1+ ghz p3 on 160mhz fsb and a GF3.

It's unfortunate there were never any intel 810 chipset boards that would allow higher FSB (that I know of), it would be interesting to see how they performed highly overclocked.

In any case, I've been down a similar rabbit hole before- I once had a compaq with a bx440 board that with the help of a slot-t eventually ended up running a 1.4 tualatin. I remember being underwhelmed in the end - it was not at all much faster then the 900mhz p3 it replaced, I suspect the low FSB was the main limitation

And so it is. I'm starting to think we can't go any further with the PCI, 100FSB, and PC-100 trio.

But I'm still curious to try that same configuration with an even more powerful GPU, while still being PCI. If I get to do that test I will post the results.

Feanor_twh wrote on 2025-03-18, 17:34:

bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-03-18, 14:41:

That sounds about right, you are actually doing pretty good seeing that is with a PCI video card, I'd have to say I'm impressed. My last P3 was about that mhz on a bx440 with an AGP GF2 Ti and 800x600 in those games was also where it was at. Smoothness in those (and a few of my other favs like mafia or NFSHP2) at 1024x768 didn't come until I migrated to a Via based board with a 1+ ghz p3 on 160mhz fsb and a GF3.

It's unfortunate there were never any intel 810 chipset boards that would allow higher FSB (that I know of), it would be interesting to see how they performed highly overclocked.

In any case, I've been down a similar rabbit hole before- I once had a compaq with a bx440 board that with the help of a slot-t eventually ended up running a 1.4 tualatin. I remember being underwhelmed in the end - it was not at all much faster then the 900mhz p3 it replaced, I suspect the low FSB was the main limitation

And so it is. I'm starting to think we can't go any further with the PCI, 100FSB, and PC-100 trio.

But I'm still curious to try that same configuration with an even more powerful GPU, while still being PCI. If I get to do that test I will post the results.

I believe the 100 MHz FSB Ghz models (1.0 and 1.1) would be easier to find, due to them being less desirable. Saw an adapter on ebay a few days ago to adapt a Tualatin to older 370 boards if you want to go to 1.4 Ghz (with a celeron).

I would like to modify the BIOS to return this card to its original FX5200 state. Does anyone know how to do this?

It's not really necessary, but I think be nice if the card BIOS didn't trick the system for think it is a 5500, only for trick the drivers to think again it's a 5200.

I know the drivers can be modified, but if I were to use the Omega drivers, for example, this would be more difficult since I haven't been able to unpack them yet.

Feanor_twh wrote on 2025-03-24, 21:12:

I would like to modify the BIOS to return this card to its original FX5200 state. Does anyone know how to do this?

It's not really necessary, but I think be nice if the card BIOS didn't trick the system for think it is a 5500, only for trick the drivers to think again it's a 5200.

Dump the card's BIOS. Get "X-BIOS Editor" and try to change device ID in your videocard's BIOS file to the one for the FX 5200 cards - I think "0322" should work. Flash the card with this new modified BIOS.