songoffall wrote on 2025-09-22, 07:09:

I wonder, with these older cards, can you mod them to make them 128-bit by populating the missing memory chips?

Or is the memory bus locked down in firmware?

You could always get the 128bit firmware and compare it to what is on the cut down card. I bet the VGA BIOS is the same on the full cards and the cut rate cards, because custom VGA BIOS costs money. But the BIOS is mainly used in DOS and the difference between 64bit ram and 128bit ram isn't going to be noticeable in DOS.

The Windows driver is likely more important. If the full amount of memory it is detected by the windows driver, you have unlocked the additional memory bandwidth. Each chip has a direct path to the GPU on these cards, so if the driver can see the chips, you have unlocked the bandwidth.

If your Windows drivers can't see the memory after adding the chips, (and you got the right chips and your solder is good) seems more likely that there's a resistor or two placed different on the cut down board that indicates the ram capacity rather than custom VGA BIOS preventing the Windows driver from seeing the extra RAM.

Edit: Specifically these guys look different between the 16MB/64 vs 32MB/128:

Edit 2: And these capacitors:

douglar wrote on 2025-09-22, 14:48:

You could always get the 128bit firmware and compare it to what is on the cut down card. I bet the VGA BIOS is the same on the […]
Show full quote

songoffall wrote on 2025-09-22, 07:09:

I wonder, with these older cards, can you mod them to make them 128-bit by populating the missing memory chips?

Or is the memory bus locked down in firmware?

You could always get the 128bit firmware and compare it to what is on the cut down card. I bet the VGA BIOS is the same on the full cards and the cut rate cards, because custom VGA BIOS costs money. But the BIOS is mainly used in DOS and the difference between 64bit ram and 128bit ram isn't going to be noticeable in DOS.

The Windows driver is likely more important. If the full amount of memory it is detected by the windows driver, you have unlocked the additional memory bandwidth. Each chip has a direct path to the GPU on these cards, so if the driver can see the chips, you have unlocked the bandwidth.

If your Windows drivers can't see the memory after adding the chips, (and you got the right chips and your solder is good) seems more likely that there's a resistor or two placed different on the cut down board that indicates the ram capacity rather than custom VGA BIOS preventing the Windows driver from seeing the extra RAM.

Edit: Specifically these guys look different between the 16MB/64 vs 32MB/128:

The attachment resistors.png is no longer available

The attachment Photo Sep 22 2025, 11 07 13 AM.jpg is no longer available

Edit 2: And these capacitors:

The attachment Capacitors.png is no longer available

Thanks. I would assume there would be additional resistors/capacitors I might need to touch. The reason for my question is, on modern cards the firmware itself often dictates whether factory unpopulated chips are addressed or not.

I have a Rage 128 Ultra card with 16Mb SDRAM, and it's a 64-bit. I'm willing to experiment with it, maybe even socket the DRAM pins because sometimes the memory chips arrive dead and you end up trying to fix problems that do not exist.

Guess I'll give it a go.

songoffall wrote on 2025-09-22, 16:58:

Thanks. I would assume there would be additional resistors/capacitors I might need to touch. The reason for my question is, on modern cards the firmware itself often dictates whether factory unpopulated chips are addressed or not.

I have a Rage 128 Ultra card with 16Mb SDRAM, and it's a 64-bit. I'm willing to experiment with it, maybe even socket the DRAM pins because sometimes the memory chips arrive dead and you end up trying to fix problems that do not exist.

Guess I'll give it a go.

Do you have a 109-73100-01 or a 109-73100-02 circuit board? I have a 32MB / 128bit -02 card. If you want the BIOS, I'll get you a copy.

This batch of resisters next to the BIOS looks like system switches, yes?

douglar wrote on 2025-09-22, 17:15:

Do you have a 109-73100-01 or a 109-73100-02 circuit board? I have a 32MB / 128bit -02 card. If you want the BIOS, I'll get y […]
Show full quote

songoffall wrote on 2025-09-22, 16:58:

Thanks. I would assume there would be additional resistors/capacitors I might need to touch. The reason for my question is, on modern cards the firmware itself often dictates whether factory unpopulated chips are addressed or not.

I have a Rage 128 Ultra card with 16Mb SDRAM, and it's a 64-bit. I'm willing to experiment with it, maybe even socket the DRAM pins because sometimes the memory chips arrive dead and you end up trying to fix problems that do not exist.

Guess I'll give it a go.

Do you have a 109-73100-01 or a 109-73100-02 circuit board? I have a 32MB / 128bit -02 card. If you want the BIOS, I'll get you a copy.

This batch of resisters next to the BIOS looks like system switches, yes?

The attachment resistors.png is no longer available

I'll make some photos and post them here so we can be sure. Thanks for the help, much appreciated.

So while I was asking my questions the card was still in the mail. I went to pick it up - boy was I disappointed. Instead of a Rage 128 Ultra the seller sent me a GeForce2 MX.

It's not like I hate GeForce2 MX or anything, but that's not what I ordered and I don't think it would make a fun modding project, would it.

songoffall wrote on 2025-09-23, 08:48:

So while I was asking my questions the card was still in the mail. I went to pick it up - boy was I disappointed. Instead of a Rage 128 Ultra the seller sent me a GeForce2 MX.

It's not like I hate GeForce2 MX or anything, but that's not what I ordered and I don't think it would make a fun modding project, would it.

The attachment IMG_3241.jpeg is no longer available

I felt the same way last month when I thought I was getting a Geforce2MX and ended up getting an Athlon XP, Purple SIS 741GX-M motherboard, and 768MB DDR. I would have returned it because I don't really need another 1.5V agp board, except it was cheap, had a nice heat sink and it is getting harder to find nice Socket A heatsinks.

Looks like you got the "good" version of the Geforce 2MX SDRAM card with 4x 32bit SDRAM chips, GA-GF1280. If you had ended up with a GV-GF1280-32E with the 16bit SDRAM instead, then maybe there would be some mod work you could do.

The GeForce 2 MX is an excellent card. Great drivers. Runs cool. Working TnL. It's my go-to for a lot of easy thrown together Windows 9x builds. It's worth keeping if you got it as a good price, even if you only whip it out for your test bench.

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-09-23, 18:03:

The GeForce 2 MX is an excellent card. Great drivers. Runs cool. Working TnL. It's my go-to for a lot of easy thrown together Windows 9x builds. It's worth keeping if you got it as a good price, even if you only whip it out for your test bench.

I actually had an MX200 back in the day, which should be a bit slower than the plain MX. In 2002 I upgraded from 486DX4 to Pentium 4 1.8GHz, and the GPU was a GeForce2 MX200. Believe it or not, it was seen as a higher end solution - as long as you didn't get onboard SiS or Intel video you were going to game on it.

It took forever to load Return to Castle Wolfenstein levels. Hitman 2 was a slideshow. Max Payne and Drakan ran well though.

In 2005 I upgraded to LGA775 with Pentium 4 HT 3GHz and GeForce 6200, which was quite a huge step up, and I even played Oblivion on it. By 2008 I was making enough money to upgrade to 8800GT.

What I learned is back in the day we were pushing hardware upwards, like getting an MX200 and then having to play games from later years on them, but with my collection, I'm more pushing them downwards, playing older games than the card is.

So I think this time my experience will be better.

I'm just disappointed that I didn't get to play with an ATI Rage 128 Ultra - getting it to full 128-bit bandwidth could be a fun project. I never had an ATI graphics card in those days, but a friend of mine did, and he had those shader effects on Need For Speed Underground, and he had ATI TruForm, so his games looked at least a generation better 😁 Now I got some ATI cockroaches - I'm not using the term in the wrong way, it's just that any old PC or box of old parts I open, there's a few stashed away there - 9200 and 9250 cards - the NVIDIA equivalent being TNT2 M64, MX440 and FX5200.

songoffall wrote on 2025-09-24, 06:54:

I'm just disappointed that I didn't get to play with an ATI Rage 128 Ultra - getting it to full 128-bit bandwidth could be a fun project. I never had an ATI graphics card in those days, but a friend of mine did, and he had those shader effects on Need For Speed Underground, and he had ATI TruForm, so his games looked at least a generation better 😁 Now I got some ATI cockroaches - I'm not using the term in the wrong way, it's just that any old PC or box of old parts I open, there's a few stashed away there - 9200 and 9250 cards - the NVIDIA equivalent being TNT2 M64, MX440 and FX5200.

I quite like these "cockroach" cards to be honest. If not building a completely period correct system they are a great choice for K6-2 systems for example. They have plenty of performance and capabilities and cost nothing. Btw, last week I benchmarked all my Rage 128, Rage 128 Pro and Rage 128 Ultra cards + overclocking attempts on a Pentium III 866, 512MB RAM and Windows 2000. I'll try to post the results tomorrow.

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2025-09-24, 11:22:

songoffall wrote on 2025-09-24, 06:54:

I'm just disappointed that I didn't get to play with an ATI Rage 128 Ultra - getting it to full 128-bit bandwidth could be a fun project. I never had an ATI graphics card in those days, but a friend of mine did, and he had those shader effects on Need For Speed Underground, and he had ATI TruForm, so his games looked at least a generation better 😁 Now I got some ATI cockroaches - I'm not using the term in the wrong way, it's just that any old PC or box of old parts I open, there's a few stashed away there - 9200 and 9250 cards - the NVIDIA equivalent being TNT2 M64, MX440 and FX5200.

I quite like these "cockroach" cards to be honest. If not building a completely period correct system they are a great choice for K6-2 systems for example. They have plenty of performance and capabilities and cost nothing. Btw, last week I benchmarked all my Rage 128, Rage 128 Pro and Rage 128 Ultra cards + overclocking attempts on a Pentium III 866, 512MB RAM and Windows 2000. I'll try to post the results tomorrow.

Oh I LOVE the cockroaches, they are often so well made that they survived to this day and even the unworking ones mostly just require a recap. And the fact I don't have to stress myself to get one and that I can always replace one if I need - I'd say the cockroaches are the lifeblood of the retro community. Especially if you use them to play games one or two generations older than they are.

TNT2 M64 is about on par with Riva TNT 128, so it's a plug-in replacement. GeForce4 MX440 is better than any GeForce2 card. Radeon 9250 128-bit punches well above its weight.

songoffall wrote on 2025-09-25, 08:30:

TNT2 M64 is about on par with Riva TNT 128, so it's a plug-in replacement. GeForce4 MX440 is better than any GeForce2 card. Radeon 9250 128-bit punches well above its weight.

This is perfect summary. All of these cares are excellent, so long as you are playing games of the era where they would work well.

So here are my test results!

I used the latest official driver version 5.13.01.3279 which I slightly modded (modified the .inf file so every card is recognized). A very common problem with the "Pro/Ultra" cards was that every third party manufacturer had some slightly different card IDs and the stock driver didn't want to install.

So here are the results.

Rage 128 GL 32MB: this is the original "performance" Rage 128. It has a small heatsink that gets insanely hot and probably needed cooling in retrospect.
Core 80MHz, Memory 60MHz (from Powerstrip)
Quake 3 1024x768 all high: 12.3 fps
3dMark 2000 1024x766 32 bit: 926

Rage 128 Pro from HIS: these ones have a heatsink with about 3-4x the mass from the original Rage 128, the card stays cool.
Core 119MHz, Memory 119MHz (from Powerstrip)
Quake 3 1024x768 all high: 14.9 fps
3dMark 2000 1024x766 32 bit: 1061

Rage 128 Ultra from Gigabyte: Pro and Ultra cards are the same, the name change is only marketing. So the score is exactly the same.
Core 119MHz, Memory 119MHz (from Powerstrip)
Quake 3 1024x768 all high: 14.9 fps
3dMark 2000 1024x766 32 bit: 1061

Rage 128 Ultra from Gigabyte overclock: now this is interesting. Thanks to the big heatsink this card stays cool even overclocked, 160/160 is the max I'm allowed to configure in Powerstrip and it's still rock stable with a huge performance boost of 35%
Core 160MHz, Memory 160MHz (done via Powerstrip)
Quake 3 1024x768 all high: 20.6 fps
3dMark 2000 1024x766 32 bit: 1423

songoffall wrote on 2025-09-23, 08:48:

So while I was asking my questions the card was still in the mail. I went to pick it up - boy was I disappointed. Instead of a Rage 128 Ultra the seller sent me a GeForce2 MX.

It's not like I hate GeForce2 MX or anything, but that's not what I ordered and I don't think it would make a fun modding project, would it.

The attachment IMG_3241.jpeg is no longer available

The universe must love this running joke because the same exact thing happened to me last month, I got a GeForce2 MX instead of the card I ordered. I've kept it because it's fairly solid especially for testing!

The GeForce/2 TnL engine should not be underestimated for low end retro systems, like Socket 7. It shoulders a lot of the processing needed for 3D acceleration that would otherwise be very taxing on the CPU.

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2025-09-27, 15:54:

So here are my test results!

Sorry if I missed it, but what was the CPU and motherboard?

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-09-27, 19:06:

The GeForce/2 TnL engine should not be underestimated for low end retro systems, like Socket 7. It shoulders a lot of the processing needed for 3D acceleration that would otherwise be very taxing on the CPU.

I agree. As long as you don’t get the ones with a crappy memory config, the Geforce MX family can really shine on T&L work loads where other superior cards are limited. Here are some K6-3 400 bench marks I did —- Even at that speed, socket 7 has some considerable CPU limitations. The NV18 cards are cheap and did even better than the 4 MX on 3dmark 2000.
Re: K6-III Socket 7 AGP vs PCI Tester

Sorry I don’t have the drivers listed, it was a real scramble trying to get the different nvidia generations to work in 3D mark 2000

The Rage 128 cards were very competitive with the TNT2 cards.

douglar wrote on 2025-09-27, 20:30:

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2025-09-27, 15:54:

So here are my test results!

Sorry if I missed it, but what was the CPU and motherboard?

P3 866, 512MB on an i815 platform (a Dell PC) running on Windows 2000.

GeForce 2 MX can also run older drivers, which can benefit slower CPUs. I think that at some point that CPUs got fast enough, Nvidia started putting more preprocessing and catching instructions info the drivers, which can tank performance on older systems. I don't have an exact version number off the top of my head, but if I remember correctly, performance begins to tank in the late GeForce 3-era drivers or early GeForce 4; I can't remember which.