Good boards, but the damn chipsets are hot as hell... Mine i found brand new, from very old computer store, and they still have old stuff like s939 mobo, 9800GTX cards and others, they also had listed Radeon HD2900XT, sadly when i they gave me the bulk cardboard box with HD2900XT label, i opened it with excitement, to find inside some garbage small card like HD3400 or whatever the fk it was, i was so pissed, as this model is one of these i look for, and was also brand new, but some fker did steal the card and replace it with that crap... So the MSI Diamond mobo, i am sure will hold for years if i decide to make system with it, since is brand new, i will overbuild cooling, in order to try preserve that POS chipset, of cooking itself.... Yes ATi chipsets did not last much, they had like what 1-2 models or maybe 3, not sure why they did not get as popular as nForce did, prob they were like VIA lol...
As long as someone wants something, and is willing to pay ebay prices, there will be someone that will be happy to sell it to them.... 3Dfx, i am hater of that company, as when i did research about them, i got the idea that, they were more greedy then nGreedia, looong before they became nGreedia, is also why they did go bankrupt so fast, as they tough they are Intel in the video card space, they may have been for short amount of time (that being Voodoo II), then they started milking the architecture, also delay the Rampage chip, that was next gen, and was supposed to make them leap in performance (if they did launch the 3Dfx spectre cards, by the time GEforce 256 was introduced, they would have trashed them, and prob buy out the gree(D)n eNVious company), but 3Dfx delayed the Rampage, as they wanted to milk customers with i think the Banshee at the time, or was something else... Anyway 3Dfx got what they deserve, for being too arrogant, greedy, lacking innovation (yeah even ATi and MatroX had 32bir color, but we are the almighty 3Dfx, we dont need this, we have Glide and crowd of fans). They also backstabbed all AIB partners with the purchase of STB systems, crappy AIB vendor, not only they made them all go to the competitors ATi and nGreedia, but they also spend A LOT of money for it, and that was when they hit the final nail in their own coffin....
I am sad few great companies, that had promising start like Rendition, and PowerVR, got out of the game, and never to be seen... Sure PowerVR is in all Android phones, but why the hell they dont do GPUs... Their last attempt with PowerVR Kyro II, the card was amazing, and the Tile architecture was so good, they could compete with half the resorces of what nGreedia had at the time, too bad they left the market....
Seconded, I've done the same with my Sapphire model. A flat NB heatsink with the push-pin loops cut off will work great.
My other tip would be to create an idle (2D) and game (3D) profile for the GPU, VRAM and voltage. My card would always run the highest clocks and volts, regardless of the load. That created unnecessary heat and noise, and would have posssibly shortened the card's life. I experimented with ATI Tray Tools to find the lowest/highest stable values, saved them as profiles and enabled automatic profile switching.
That way the card runs on minimum power outside of games, until the OC profile kicks in.
Will see some day i may do something like this, tho is annoying.... But i think the temperatures of the system and the card was fine, i did tune the fan speed, with proper speed, so the card to run cool. But every advanced user absolutely needs, to install heatsink or at bare minimum small fan, to prevent AGP bridge chip card of frying its small bridge chip and die... Similar goes to other insane heaters like nFrorce chipsets above NF2, hot CPUs like AthlonXP and others.... nGreedia cards usually have their cooling better as the small amount of AGP bridge chip cards, have the chip on the front, and with heatsink from the factory... Tho i dont like that idea, as it heat the front of the card even more... The ATi approach is better, but they suck at the part that, they did not add more then a damn thermal pad to the AGP bridge chip, and in the case of MSI Radeon x1950 AGP, they did not even add the damn thermal pad, not that i think that pad does much anyway, but still...