Project 2004, a retro time capsule

[Deleted member 237269]

A few 2000~2004 games

Warcraft III + Frozen Throne
Diablo 2 + Lord of Destruction
Age of Empire II
C&C Red Alert 2
Age of Mythology
Cossacks Back to War
Black and White
Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis
Empire Earth

With the stuff you already have it’s good enough to last until Humanity perish.

 

[natr0n]

I like the idea of old builds. I have many.

One thing I do is use higher spec/end gpu to not be limited on the experience as well as maximum supported system ram.

 

[AusWolf]

Gees, they are hard to find now! It was AGP yeah? I have seen/heard of a 7950 GT AGP but never seen one in the flesh.

Yup. That's why I swapped it, as it was said to be the last and fastest AGP card, although I don't think it was any faster than my X800 XT. It had Shader Model 3.0 at least.

 

[stinger608]

Hey @wolf , I seen you have UT2003 icon on the desktop.
Do you ever fire that up?

If so, have you played DeathBall?

Frigging fun!!!!!!

If you haven't, I've got the mod and can upload it on Google drive or something for ya. Hell, it's a blast with just the UT2003 bots.

 

[wolf]

A few 2000~2004 games....

Great suggestions! Many already earmarked. I'm slowly still chipping away, up to 32 games now

With the stuff you already have it’s good enough to last until Humanity perish.

Yeah it's already a collection of running games that gives me the tingles haha. Still trying to get HL2 running but the more other things that run, the more I know I cbf starting again with xp32-bit for slightly better compatibility...

I like the idea of old builds. I have many.

One thing I do is use higher spec/end gpu to not be limited on the experience as well as maximum supported system ram.

I'm toying with this now, It'd be dead easy to drop in an 8800GTX, or even something far newer and supported like a 750Ti or 950/960, but part of the charm to be is the era specific hardware, especially the video rendering pipeline being sort of feature set specific. Nevertheless many more cards to cycle through and test.

Hey @wolf , I seen you have UT2003 icon on the desktop.
Do you ever fire that up?

If so, have you played DeathBall?

Frigging fun!!!!!!

If you haven't, I've got the mod and can upload it on Google drive or something for ya. Hell, it's a blast with just the UT2003 bots.

I do indeed! But I must admit my softest spot is for UT 2004 which I poured much more time into.

Having said that, I'll gladly take you up on that offer, more options? Hard to argue with that.

 

[AusWolf]

Great suggestions! Many already earmarked. I'm slowly still chipping away, up to 32 games now

Yeah it's already a collection of running games that gives me the tingles haha. Still trying to get HL2 running but the more other things that run, the more I know I cbf starting again with xp32-bit for slightly better compatibility...

I'm toying with this now, It'd be dead easy to drop in an 8800GTX, or even something far newer and supported like a 750Ti or 950/960, but part of the charm to be is the era specific hardware, especially the video rendering pipeline being sort of feature set specific. Nevertheless many more cards to cycle through and test.

I do indeed! But I must admit my softest spot is for UT 2004 which I poured much more time into.

Having said that, I'll gladly take you up on that offer, more options? Hard to argue with that.

The 4590 is a fairly modern CPU, and with 8 GB RAM and a 7600 GT (or that 8800 GTX), you shouldn't have a problem running Vista, or even 7. 64-bit XP is a compatibility mess, I wouldn't bother with it.

 

[Macro Device]

The 4590 is a fairly modern CPU, and with 8 GB RAM and a 7600 GT (or that 8800 GTX), you shouldn't have a problem running Vista, or even 7

I'd say it's overqualified for the OP's tasks by about 500 percent. You can run XP perfectly fine even if you have a C2D E7xxx.

 

[AusWolf]

I'd say it's overqualified for the OP's tasks by about 500 percent. You can run XP perfectly fine even if you have a C2D E7xxx.

Agreed. To run XP, I'd probably get one of those, or an Athlon 64 FX. I had a C2D E8400 at some point, which I absolutely loved, although I had Vista running on it. I'm not sure how XP handles 2 cores.

 

[stinger608]

Having said that, I'll gladly take you up on that offer, more options? Hard to argue with that.

Give me a day or two to get that mod out and get it uploaded to a cloud drive. It's a frigging awesome mod to play.

It was such a blast at LAN parties back in the day.

 

[agent_x007]

I'm on a mission to compare 6600GT to 6800U to X850XT and 6800U, I can't find any true direct comparisons from in the day, so I'll do my own, both at stock and max oc for my samples.

I own 6600 GT 256MB, and two and half years ago I did just that, but no X8x0 from ATI (since I went for true 9.0c/SM3.0 experience and focus on slow-end of DX10 stuff) :


I got 3DMark as well and few other games
Test were done on OC'ed X3370 (another name for Q9650) on P45 Gigabyte MB under WinXP SP3 x86 (2x2GB RAM) :

 

[wolf]

I got 3DMark as well and few other games

I would love to see any other data you have of those cards! 7600Gt vs 6800U vs X850XT is going to be an awesome battle, your data sheds so much light!

Up to 39 fully working games now really need to look at cloning it.

7600GT overclock purring along and the Zalman VF700 keeps it in the low 50's, as is the 4590 hitting and holding boost clocks.

 

[agent_x007]

OK, but a side note :
ALWAYS check GPU/VRAM clocks near the cards name, and compare to what you actually have.
Usually, I used frequencies that are NOT the default of most of those cards (in some cases there are multiple versions of the same card).
FPS is [Average], except stated otherwise. DX10 cards are Core/Shader/VRAM (for NV), and VRAM speed is always Actual (not effective).

Well, here's FEAR :


And Quake III Arena :


Crysis :


3DMark 01SE :


3DMark 03 :


I cut 3DMark 06 into two seperate graphs, SM2.0 and SM3.0, for easier multi-platform comparison (since overall score will get boosted by faster CPU).

 

[agent_x007]

I cut 3DMark 06 into two seperate graphs, SM2.0 and SM3.0, for easier multi-platform comparison (since overall score will get boosted by faster CPU).

Says that, and then forgets about adding it... (sorry !)
3DMark 06 SM2.0

SM3.0

Bonus graphs !
3DMark 06 Vertex Shader tests results :

Codecreatures benchmark :

Fillrate Benchmark 2004 (this is geomean of three tests) :

 

[wolf]

Says that, and then forgets about adding it... (sorry !)

All good and I really appreciate the numbers, they very closely match mine so far. Just last night received a 7950GT which is currently in and being tested fast approaching 50 games too!

 

[AusWolf]

All good and I really appreciate the numbers, they very closely match mine so far. Just last night received a 7950GT which is currently in and being tested fast approaching 50 games too!

The good old times when a high-end GPU survived on a single 6-pin power, and with passively cooled variants available! God almighty how I miss these cards!

 

[wolf]

The good old times when a high-end GPU survived on a single 6-pin power, and with passively cooled variants available! God almighty how I miss these cards!

Pretty cool isn't it, this 7950GT only has a tdp of 65W! actually runs fine without pci-e 6-pin connected, jsut can't OC it, so I put it in

So far I think I'm most impressed with the 7600GT of the cards I've tested, but still waiting on the X850XT and 6800U

 

[wolf]

I'm experiencing a very strange and frustrating issue. I recently tried some Radeon cards, popped an X850XT in, installed drivers, all Gucci ran my benchmarks, played games, had a frikken awesome time, did all that with an X1950Pro after that too, great times, got some cool data to share soon but first!

Now seems like a time to maybe DDU ATI drivers to go back to NVidia, expecting the 6800U soon...

Try to go back to the 7950GT after DDU, boots up, acting normal, try to launch any 3D application, instant reboot, anything 3d at all, it even does it with GPUZ launching, you can launch NVCP, but the page with the little 3d logo render makes it instant reboot, seems like triggering 3d in any way = instant reboot.

Put in the X1950Pro again, install drivers, situation normal! so all is not lost, but I'm still stumped.....

Back to an Nvidia card now, tried 7950GT and 6600GT, both identical experience, and tried;

-DDU ATI / Nvidia drivers
-manually uninstalling ATI software
-disable MSI afterburner/ATITool
-reinstall DirectX
-Update to newer nvidia driver version
-single stick of RAM and both sticks tried in all configs

It's definitely not overheating, all cards have great coolers and it crashes at launch of anything at all that seems to trigger 3d capabilities... limited to Nvidia only, help!

 

[AusWolf]

I'm experiencing a very strange and frustrating issue. I recently tried some Radeon cards, popped an X850XT in, installed drivers, all Gucci ran my benchmarks, played games, had a frikken awesome time, did all that with an X1950Pro after that too, great times, got some cool data to share soon but first!

Now seems like a time to maybe DDU ATI drivers to go back to NVidia, expecting the 6800U soon...

Try to go back to the 7950GT after DDU, boots up, acting normal, try to launch any 3D application, instant reboot, anything 3d at all, it even does it with GPUZ launching, you can launch NVCP, but the page with the little 3d logo render makes it instant reboot, seems like triggering 3d in any way = instant reboot.

Put in the X1950Pro again, install drivers, situation normal! so all is not lost, but I'm still stumped.....

Back to an Nvidia card now, tried 7950GT and 6600GT, both identical experience, and tried;

-DDU ATI / Nvidia drivers
-manually uninstalling ATI software
-disable MSI afterburner/ATITool
-reinstall DirectX
-Update to newer nvidia driver version
-single stick of RAM and both sticks tried in all configs

It's definitely not overheating, all cards have great coolers and it crashes at launch of anything at all that seems to trigger 3d capabilities... limited to Nvidia only, help!

Are those cards functioning ok otherwise? If so, you might need to reinstall Windows to get them working. I remember having lots of issues when swapping brands back in the days. DDU isn't perfect, unfortunately.

 

[wolf]

Are those cards functioning ok otherwise? If so, you might need to reinstall Windows to get them working. I remember having lots of issues when swapping brands back in the days. DDU isn't perfect, unfortunately.

they all boot and get dreivers, are detected etc all fine, just put in a 9800GTX+ too, same story, hiiiighly unlikely they're all dead.

Oh event viewer also shows "System error Category (102) Event ID 1003" when it reboots, looks like maybe a flash of a BSOD

 

[AusWolf]

they all boot and get dreivers, are detected etc all fine, just put in a 9800GTX+ too, same story, hiiiighly unlikely they're all dead.

Oh event viewer also shows "System error Category (102) Event ID 1003" when it reboots, looks like maybe a flash of a BSOD

And it only happens with Nvidia cards? When you pop the ATi ones back in, suddenly everything is fine again? That sounds awfully like a Windows reinstall is waiting around the corner.

Personally, I'd get another hard drive or SSD and have a separate installation for Nvidia cards, and swap the drives whenever you're swapping GPUs.

 

[wolf]

And it only happens with Nvidia cards? When you pop the ATi ones back in, suddenly everything is fine again? That sounds awfully like a Windows reinstall is waiting around the corner.

Yep, all seems perfect back on ATI, so this is what I might be facing :/

Personally, I'd get another hard drive or SSD and have a separate installation for Nvidia cards, and swap the drives whenever you're swapping GPUs.

Might be able to set it up all on NV, then clone, and run a separate ATI disk yeah, if it comes to that... :/

----------

Full event log error

BCCode : da BCP1 : 0000000000000400 BCP2 : FFFFFADF266D2000
BCP3 : 0000000000000037 BCP4 : 0000000000000000 OSVer : 5_2_3790
SP : 2_0 Product : 256_1

 

[wolf]

PHEW! The system automatically had created multiple restore points, and one worked well from a week ago!

 

[AusWolf]

PHEW! The system automatically had created multiple restore points, and one worked well from a week ago!

That's lucky. I'm glad you sorted it out.

 

[KrazyT]

PHEW! The system automatically had created multiple restore points, and one worked well from a week ago!

 

[wolf]

Very little searching landed me looking at Clonezilla , read the website and instructions for about 10-15 minutes to be sure I know what I was getting into.

Turns out it was really quite straight forward, made a bootable drive to do disk-to-disk cloning, and it worked a treat, drive fully cloned in under 20 minutes, tested and fully functional.

I feel a lot more at ease now that it's done, I can go back to ATI cards risking very little now, and have a kickass point in time backup.

Still waiting on a couple of cards to round out all my testing, and I should have quite an extensive post with some fun numbers and observations/comments along the way. It's a strange feeling to test cards that are too powerful for what I want this box to be, and not really what I want. Sometimes the reward is in the struggle.