TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[erek]

Here's my completed collection (probably done with collecting)

Starting at Top Left: ATI Rage Fury MAXX, XGI Volari Duo V8 Ultra,

3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP, 3dfx Voodoo5 6000, S3 GammaChrome S18 Pro

SiS Xabre 600, nVidia GeForce FX 5800 Ultra (ES), Intel Larrabee Prototype

Gravis UltraSound MAX, 3dfx Voodoo1, ATI Radeon HD 2900 XTX (A12 Prototype)

 

[Trekkie4]

Semi rare/rare card does not make it a good card. Just desirable due to lack of availability.

It reminds me of Evil Kyro cards... The first gen that is, the one with terrible driver support. And/or Savage 2000. Never had Savage card (other than Savage4 Pro, but that's a whole other story), but I do own Kyro... From what I heard, even experienced from other folks (who asked me if I'd be willing to trade, or sell it), it is quite a rare & appealing model - despite having awful gaming performance due to its lousy drivers.

In fact, some of the games experienced a total "meltdown" with Kyro, such as NFS Hot Pursuit 2 for example. The colors were all messed up, and textures totally wrong. Quite psychedelic environment, very similar to "drugs" powerup in Carmageddon II, in case any of you here remember?

 

[delshay]

Sorry, no GFX card(s) is worth that much, no matter how rare it is. Everything get's rare after a period of time & automatically becomes antique after 100 years.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Sorry, no GFX card(s) is worth that much, no matter how rare it is. Everything get's rare after a period of time & automatically becomes antique after 100 years.

Worth is in the eyes of the beholder.

 

[Ruru]

Looks cool, the ugly just the sticker
But in that era ATI radeon cards using that

I liked the stickers Sapphire used back then.

I still need a PSU for that, the Antec on my sig should be arrive next week.. after testing it with my Socket A system, I think I'll put that with my AM2NF3-VSTA setup with A64 X2 6000+ and 4GB DDR4-800..

 

[Trekkie4]

Working on "Lassie", the system which got back (home) to me I honestly don't know what I'm doing, and/or why I even bother with another S478 build, but either way... Figured I'd share some of the progress I've done so far:

The entire case has been stripped apart, cleaned from dust & then re-assembled, adding additional (missing) standoffs for the motherboard.


Followed by the repairs on Radeon 9600Pro. This one turned out to be super annoying, even... The original fan was seized up, to the point where conventional methods wouldn't work. But then I realized that even swapping the heatsinks is out of the question, because of the PCB component layout around the GPU, it's as if they designed this thing like that on purpose, so that you couldn't use any other heatsink. Sooo, what I ended up doing is removing the rotor (fan itself) assembly alone, leaving the motor base & heatsink original.


And now I'm re-assembling everything back... Will report back once I got more pics/updates to share

 

[Trekkie4]

Still working on Lassie the Pentium...




Think I've created a monster...!!

 

[Apocalypsee]

Nice rig trekkie4, is that ASUS P4P800 motherboard? The CPU must be 800MHz FSB Northwood, and coupled with 9600Pro its a beast. God I miss those days, I have P4 2A GHz coupled with Albatron PX845G and Powercolor 9600XT Bravo back in the day, overclock the CPU to 3GHz 1.75V and voltmod the 9600XT, it beat 9700 scores in 3DMark03. Playing Far Cry for the first time is such a treat!

 

[Trekkie4]

Nice rig trekkie4, is that ASUS P4P800 motherboard? The CPU must be 800MHz FSB Northwood, and coupled with 9600Pro its a beast. God I miss those days, I have P4 2A GHz coupled with Albatron PX845G and Powercolor 9600XT Bravo back in the day, overclock the CPU to 3GHz 1.75V and voltmod the 9600XT, it beat 9700 scores in 3DMark03. Playing Far Cry for the first time is such a treat!

Yup, it's (still) a P4P800 SE inside, but I took the liberty of upgrading RAM, video card & changing, downgrading OS to Win XP

It was originally a Pentium 4 2.6GHz, with Radeon 9600Pro & 1.5GB DDR400, running Vista. But now it's P4 2.6 (planning to upgrade the CPU with 3.00GHz one) with nVidia GeForce 6600GT & 2GB of DDR400, in dual-channel configuration, running WinXP.


For what it's worth, I was going to keep the "original" Radeon 9600, but due to all the trouble with the heatsink & thermal pads, which are necessary for correct heatsink alignment (in order to prevent the short) I've decided to remove it & replace it with 6600GT. At least until I sort out the heatink issues, then I'll decide what to do with it...

 

[Ruru]

Well, I had to make the best even better.

 

[TOMCAT]

OK, back home (not only for christmas)

let me show the cooling solution for my red Radeon 3850 AGP

Go

 

[Robert B]

I never had a Zalman VF700 back in the day and I always liked them but after I found this card at the flea market and it was warped because of the pressure of the VF700 I will think twice before I use one on any of the cards in my collection. While it is great for cooling I really think that the mounting system could've been better. Even if I will mount one I wont leave it installed for great lengths of time.

The card is a Quadro FX 1000 which is bye bye. Even the heastspreader on the graphic chip had its corners lift up over time. The card shows vertical coloured lines on the screen.

There is a small probability that maybe the card has sustained this damage while it was tossed around but it doesnt have marks on the PCB to indicate this. At any rate I really dont like the mounting system and the diagonal backplate.

 

[Fouquin]

I know PCI Voodoo4 are rare, but wow.
Bet that puppy never even gets powered up.

View attachment 112614

Holy crap, that's insane. Wish I had the box for mine, I could pay a few months rent with that! Joking, joking. Not for sale.

 

[Aaron_Henderson]

Well, I had to make the best even better.

I used to put Zalman cooling on everything lol

 

[SniperHF]

I used to put Zalman cooling on everything lol

Same. But in hindsight a lot of them were underwhelming for the cost.
The only one that made a big impact for me was the CNPS9700

 

[Mr.Scott]

Well, I had to make the best even better.

Does it run any cooler?

 

[Trekkie4]

Yup, it's (still) a P4P800 SE inside, but I took the liberty of upgrading RAM, video card & changing, downgrading OS to Win XP

It was originally a Pentium 4 2.6GHz, with Radeon 9600Pro & 1.5GB DDR400, running Vista. But now it's P4 2.6 (planning to upgrade the CPU with 3.00GHz one) with nVidia GeForce 6600GT & 2GB of DDR400, in dual-channel configuration, running WinXP.


For what it's worth, I was going to keep the "original" Radeon 9600, but due to all the trouble with the heatsink & thermal pads, which are necessary for correct heatsink alignment (in order to prevent the short) I've decided to remove it & replace it with 6600GT. At least until I sort out the heatink issues, then I'll decide what to do with it...

Finishing on P4 rig, I've managed to boost up additional 500 3D marks, up to 14,000 in total. Just through the software & BIOS tweaks, nothing hardware related

It runs all Half Life 2 games (original & Lost Coast are even maxed out), but then I had to reduce the texture quality for Episodes 1, 2 & Portal, because of the VRAM limitation (128MB in total). Otherwise this thing would run on full without any issues whatsoever.

It also runs Doom 3, F.E.A.R, Driv3r (aka Driver 3) and several others, all tweaked on max or second to max. In fact, this system now officially outperforms my RetroMaster 4000 rig, based on a S775 Pentium 4 (@3.00GHz) with Radeon X1550 PCIe graphics & 2GB of DDR400, therefore the same amount of RAM as this other rig here. Quite fascinating actually!

 

[Ruru]

Does it run any cooler?

Haven't tried yet, just assembled the whole AGP PC, and I'll leave in few hours to my parents for Christmas.

 

[Robert B]

Ehrling - Palm Trees

Epic day today!!! Flea market big score!!!

1. MSI MS-6168 VER:2 - 440ZX / 3dfx VooDoo 3 2000 8MB ONBOARD / CREATIVE ES1373 - It needs repairs and a northbridge heatsink. Easy fixes if the board is still alive. We'll see. I never thought that I'll find one.
2. Gigabyte GA-622-16 REV 1.0 / TNT 2 M64 with TURBO SETTING - interesting card.
3. Asus GF256/DDR AGP-V6800DDR/32MB (TVR) I wanted a GF256/DDR and I got one
4. Advanced Gravis Ultrasound ACE V1.1 - I wanted a Gravis and I got one.
5. Celeron 500MHz S370.(less epic but what the hell ) - maybe I'll need it some time down the line...who knows. I have fond memories tied to Mendocino.

10 EUR for everything

 

[Apocalypsee]

After having a looong thought of buying the Dimension 4100, I think I better not buying that because it will be too much hassle for me (no CD/DVD for reinstalling Windows, not much IDE drive, probably no USB boot etc.). Instead, I'm buying this for 1/3 of the price (RM50 or around USD 12).

Its filled with dust bunnies as you might expect but at least it will POST, and support SATA. Its P5VDC-MX and thankfully revision 2.0 which means I could put a Core 2 Duo inside (currently its Pentium Dual Core E2140) but for Windows XP PC I think its enough. It only have 512MB DDR2 (it supports both DDR and DDR2) but I have plenty of DDR2 around, both value and performance ones.

The reason I bought the PC is this, Sapphire Radeon 9550. The GPU itself could be sold for almost the same price as the rig price. Again its dusty but cleaning is easy.

 

[Trekkie4]

After having a looong thought of buying the Dimension 4100, I think I better not buying that because it will be too much hassle for me (no CD/DVD for reinstalling Windows, not much IDE drive, probably no USB boot etc.). Instead, I'm buying this for 1/3 of the price (RM50 or around USD 12).

View attachment 113186

Its filled with dust bunnies as you might expect but at least it will POST, and support SATA. Its P5VDC-MX and thankfully revision 2.0 which means I could put a Core 2 Duo inside (currently its Pentium Dual Core E2140) but for Windows XP PC I think its enough. It only have 512MB DDR2 (it supports both DDR and DDR2) but I have plenty of DDR2 around, both value and performance ones.

The reason I bought the PC is this, Sapphire Radeon 9550. The GPU itself could be sold for almost the same price as the rig price. Again its dusty but cleaning is easy.

View attachment 113187

A while ago, I've had something similar... Asus "P5S800VM Vintage" mATX board, which needed (and was, eventually) entirely recapped. Unfortunately, I was never able to work out the weird graphics issue, and so because of that I gave it up (passed it on to others), before I got my hands on something similar, a P5GD1-VM/Vintage.

It was/is coupled with SL7Z9 Pentium 4, running @3.00GHz.


Eventually, this project became "RetroMaster 4000", which I mentioned recently Scored 8,162 3D marks, which is way, WAY under "14,000" from my latest, S478 build

 

[uuuaaaaaa]

Eventually, this project became "RetroMaster 4000", which I mentioned recently Scored 8,162 3D marks, which is way, WAY under "14,000" from my latest, S478 build

I've have been out of this thread for way too long... Would you kindly share the specs of this 14000 points S478 build?

 

[Trekkie4]

I've have been out of this thread for way too long... Would you kindly share the specs of this 14000 points S478 build?

Sure thing...



CPU: Pentium 4, S478 @2.6GHz (not sure which model code exactly, but it does support HT)
MBO: Asus P4P800 SE, with latest BIOS
RAM: 4x 512MB DDR400, in dual 2x 1GB channel configuration
GPU: nVidia GeForce6 6600GT 128MB VRAM (by LeadTek, requires external/additional power supply through on-board molex)
HDD: Western Digital, 80GB (was downgraded from 120GB one, because I really don't need that much storage capacity)
ODD1: Plextor CD-RW 8/4/32A
ODD2: Hitachi DVD-ROM
OS: Windows XP Professional, SP3 (off-line, without any updates or security patches)

Other: Pinnacle TV tuner (because it came with the system) & Dial-Up Fax modem ... because why not!

I got the system with Radeon 9600Pro, which does work, but will need some repairs to the heatsink/fan assembly. Or I will just scrap the entire thing & order a decent replacement, we shall see. Either way, the card DOES work & will be re-purposed eventually


And this here is the current 6600GT...


To those of you who celebrate, wishing you Happy Holidays!

 

[uuuaaaaaa]

Sure thing...



CPU: Pentium 4, S478 @2.6GHz (not sure which model code exactly, but it does support HT)
MBO: Asus P4P800 SE, with latest BIOS
RAM: 4x 512MB DDR400, in dual 2x 1GB channel configuration
GPU: nVidia GeForce6 6600GT 128MB VRAM (by LeadTek, requires external/additional power supply through on-board molex)
HDD: Western Digital, 80GB (was downgraded from 120GB one, because I really don't need that much storage capacity)
ODD1: Plextor CD-RW 8/4/32A
ODD2: Hitachi DVD-ROM
OS: Windows XP Professional, SP3 (off-line, without any updates or security patches)

Other: Pinnacle TV tuner (because it came with the system) & Dial-Up Fax modem ... because why not!

I got the system with Radeon 9600Pro, which does work, but will need some repairs to the heatsink/fan assembly. Or I will just scrap the entire thing & order a decent replacement, we shall see. Either way, the card DOES work & will be re-purposed eventually


And this here is the current 6600GT...


To those of you who celebrate, wishing you Happy Holidays!

Damn!!! This surely is a nostalgic build! Brings back memories of DooM 3, FarCry, Half-Life 2 and Quake 3/IV. I absolutely loved that era!
That P4P800SE reminded me that I have an inbox brand new ASUS CT-479 socket adapter and a Pentium M 780 waiting to be used...

 

[Trekkie4]

Damn!!! This surely is a nostalgic build! Brings back memories of DooM 3, FarCry, Half-Life 2 and Quake 3/IV. I absolutely loved that era!
That P4P800SE reminded me that I have an inbox brand new ASUS CT-479 socket adapter and a Pentium M 780 waiting to be used...

Oh yeah! It runs Doom 3 (even F.E.A.R, since we are discussing horror games lol) smoothly & without any problems, whatsoever. The only serious downside, aka limitation to the hardware is the amount of video memory, 128MB of VRAM which is not really that much even by retro standards. But it gets the job done, so I won't complain