TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[wolf]

What the hell they were thinking at Biostar? Having a NV40 chip crippled with 64-bit DDR2?

I knew that some lower down 6800 models were slower than the 6600GT (GT, Ultra and "vanilla" clearly the ones to own, at least after the 6600GT came out), but man 64-bit memory bus?.... wow. The card even looks freaky with 3/4 of the pads empty.

Side note, quite fond of pixel pipes myself, it's probably the closest style to the content I eventually want to create.

 

[Greenslade]

How did it work with that broken off CAP.
Wow its another 1366 board cool.
The fans going like Bachman Turner Overdrive ,You ain,t seen nothing yet

 

[lexluthermiester]

What the hell they were thinking at Biostar?

The correct answer? They weren't. They were trying to make a budget card, but boned it up badly..

 

[Ruru]

I knew that some lower down 6800 models were slower than the 6600GT (GT, Ultra and "vanilla" clearly the ones to own, at least after the 6600GT came out), but man 64-bit memory bus?.... wow. The card even looks freaky with 3/4 of the pads empty.

Side note, quite fond of pixel pipes myself, it's probably the closest style to the content I eventually want to create.

One notable comment from that video's comment was that maybe the GPU had broken memory controllers and that's why they went with that weird model instead of just throwing the still somewhat working GPU to the trash. Would've been interesting to see if that card had the potential to unlock those hidden pixel/shader pipes and having it crippled even more by that narrow bus.


edit: and yeah, I like his style of videos, it's always nice to have some history told about older cards even when I personally practically know that stuff already.

The correct answer? They weren't. They were trying to make a budget card, but boned it up badly..

Most likely to just milk from unsuspecting buyers with the 6800 branding... I knew that freaky abominations like the video's 512MB 128bit DDR2 versions did exist, but NV40 with 64-bit memory bus sounds straight illegal.

 

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

My first retail card was a Radeon 9250 128MB as an upgrade from my GF2 MX. Of course I did some research and bought the better version with 128-bit memory bus.

My second card was the original Radeon 64 ddr thne I got a 9500 pro which I still have both of those also.

 

[Radical Vision]

Nice I too have a Asus HD4870 in perfect shape and full retail packaging.

Seems u got better model, box art is great, and the cooler is better as well nice the Dark Knight hah (i'm Batmaaaan with the drunk guy voice lol)

This is the first retail Graphics card I bought way back in the day. Bought it for my Super Socket 7 system running a K6-2 500 which I also still have.

My first retail discrete GPU was GEforce 4 MX440, before that the GPU was some integrated Intel GMA on HP Vectra socket 370, second one was integrated SiS garbage video card on A$$rock 462 GX mobo lmao... I still remember what the difference was in color and image quality, when i replaced the garbage SiS with the GF MX440 i was like wooooow the GEforce did bring so much more colors and stuff compared to the crap SiS....

The box art on these old ATi Rage cards are very nice, the one on the Fury MaXX even more with the Jet pilot that did blow up its target...




Top ATi Rage cards i have are the Pro 128 and AIW.... Still waiting to find the damn ATi Rage Fury MaXX, as i need all the top end ATi cards...

 

[MaxiPro800]

Your 128Pro AIW is RAM halved, this is the full version.

I also will receive the Fury MAXX next month for my AGP collection, alongside X1950 Pro AGP from HIS w/ mods.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Top ATi Rage cards i have are the Pro 128 and AIW.... Still waiting to find the damn ATi Rage Fury MaXX, as i need all the top end ATi cards...

Those are beautiful cards! Before the Radeons, they were the best in versatility! Hell yes!

Your 128Pro AIW is RAM halved, this is the full version.

I had this one. It was a delightful card!

 

[Radical Vision]

Yes seems i got Rage 128 AIW with gimped memory huh, is not impossible to be upgraded to the full, but wont bother with that, the normal Rage 128 Pro has even more memory...

The Rage Fury MaXX is one of the few ATi/ Radeon models i dont have... Tho i know 2-3 ppl that have them, and i missed one, that was sold for peanuts, but someone was faster then me then.... Also did miss brand new Radeon HD 2900XT, someone did steal it, and only the box was left, and moron seller sold the ATi Wonder 8 EGA, that i told him i will buy...

Those are beautiful cards! Before the Radeons, they were the best in versatility! Hell yes!


I had this one. It was a delightful card!

Yes very good build quality on Rage cards, MatroX, Number Nine and some others...




Got new toys and stuff.... The guy i get from now, still has IBM stuff, IBM is always nice.. Tho i got kinda sick of so many Model M122 Battleships, would prefer to get at least one Model M Gen 0 industrial grey metal badge, one Model M13 stealth black, and NorthGate Omnikey 101...

x7 IBM Model M122 Battleship RJ jack
Bunch of metal IBM badges (very happy about these)
x6 IDE HDDs..
Intel Desktop socket 8 mobo
Chaintech Slot 1 mobo
Chaintech s370 mobo
Chips 286 mobo (fast did remove dat damn barrel battery, did not saw leak dmg..)
socket 3 mobo
ECS slot-socket combo mobo
x2 3Com Etherlink ISa cards
IBM Thinkpad R50 on parts...
IBM Netvista s370...






Speaking about metal badges, holy mother of IBM logos lmao.... These are from useless servers, co processors, rack systems, old af printers and other insane IBM machinery, that is useless, takes too much space ect, so i told him to get me the metal badges, as they will be useful... Now i can put 10 badges on a keyboard, 10 badges on a IBM PC lmao... Will remove/ hide now the damn lenovo branding on the T60, and add IBM metal logos hah...





Da star of the show are these, at least for me, since the rest i have better then them... The dual socket-slot mobo is interesting, but nothing special... The socket 8 mobo was nice surprise, as these are so rare, is the second one i have, first was dead, this prob is not, and is also Intel desktop board, how nice, instead of some garbage brand like Elitegroup... That AT mobo, i think is 286, but not sure, as i cant locate the CPU, it should be the 25MHz one, but does not state if is 286 or 386 hah...






3Com lan from the dawn of computers time.... Always fun to see these old send mail cards and stuff, or phone numbers...




Fake Rubycon caps with the K on top, but when i look on the side i see is some crap...
Original IBM box with original IBM duck tape lolol....

 

[MaxiPro800]

The dual socket MB is ECS = trash quality...would avoid

 

[Radical Vision]

Yes ECS/ EliteGroup are crap, same goes for A$$rock... But for some reason they die way less then A$U$ for example... Not to mention my testing boards are ECS the purple ones, the newer gen test bench is JetWay mobo, that actually has great build quality Panasonic caps all over the board... The purple ECS has OST caps, but non is leaking, and it is stable, and did test million of AGP/ PCI cards, HDDs, CDs/ DVDs and "it just works" never had any problems.... Really impressed with that POS of brand... I will never use them for anything else, but for test bench they are amazing....

 

[MaxiPro800]

ASUS, ECS, ASRock, they're equally crap, would not even use for testing.

Gigabyte, DFI, ABIT, and all others, none of those 3 crap. AOpen i855GMEm-LFS for 8x testing is best, followed by GA-7VR, ABIT KV7, MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR. Rest like A7N8X/P4P800/P4C800 is absolute garbage, have had 30-40 returns of them when they were popular.

 

[Radical Vision]

Naaaa i would not dare to use ABIT, AOpen, GIGAbyte, MSI or other brand that is of good quality for testing unknown new old HW, that may be faulty and blow up some good brand mobo... This is why i decided to use garbage brands and ones that i dont care for, as they are best suited for that, if they die i wont care, if they dont same... A7N8X/P4P800/P4C800 not only these, all A$U$ mobos after Pentium III, seem to just die, for no reason at all... Is why i blacklisted that brand, they just piss me off, if i find box of 40 mobos, best bet is if there are many brands, most asus ones would be dead or wont even bother to spin fans lolol.... Saw enough dead socket 462, 478, 775 yellow asus boards, so i dont want to do anything with that brand... I get them when they are high end or rare models, that everyone is looking for.... There is 1 problem with that AOpen for testing AGP cards, it dont have Universal AGP slot... I like to use boards that have Universal AGP slot, so all of them would work on 1 mobo...

Actually i prefer ECS and A$$rock over a$u$ any day, they just work... Lmao i had few ECS boards that was marked with X and words like bad, dead, and when i clean the slots they post..... ECS is the garbage goat at least for me... Bad quality, but at least they work.... meanwhile asus and their good build quality and ruby caps, and still ded lol... One time i even had small amount of water next to the AGP slot of the ECS test bench, while testing GEforce 6800 Ultra, and it did not only test the GPU, but after restart did not want to post, i did dry it up, and it is still working even today...

AOpen is amazing, i have only the dual s370 model and 1 socket 7, very good build quality, i dont have other models sadly... But the dual s370 mobo is insane, it did saw so much crap, and 2 recaps, someone did insert the wrong way SDram stick, blow up the second slot and mem mosfet, after replace still works... Still in the looks for more of their amazing boards... Like the pink s370, oe the AOpen s370 che-che, or the AOpen Tube series 478/ 462, or the black slot 1 AOpen... I saw some normal AOpen models, but i did not buy them, as i look only for the high end...

 

[MaxiPro800]

Nah, ECS is blacklist for me even for test, had one fry Athlons on repeat, another one no POST, others incompatible with any GPU except IGP, they're crappier than A$U$ by long.

Also ASUS was awful since Pentium II, not Pentium III, I've had a lot of bad P2Bs and P3B-Fs with power issues related to bad SB BGA, they're equally bad, P2B-DS that has CuMine compatible VRM but cannot run them dual, that's absolute garbage shredder tier, meanwhile 6BXDU and even Epox KP6-BS manage to run them 650s fine

For uni4X I use MSI, either 6315 or 6337 (815EM Pro or 815EPT Pro), better than that ECS crap posted earlier, AND better than CUSL2/TUSL2 in quality, fk A$U$, nGreedia's beloved MB maker

 

[lexluthermiester]

Yes seems i got Rage 128 AIW with gimped memory huh

That's ok, that 64MB version was still a solid performer. If you're going to use it, it'll perform well for you.

 

[Ruru]

My second card was the original Radeon 64 ddr thne I got a 9500 pro which I still have both of those also.

9500 Pro was pretty dope, practically just a 9700 but with a 128-bit bus. A 9500 with 256-bit bus was an excellent purchase those days if its disabled pipelines were working. 9800 SE 256-bit was a similar story later, I had one with unlocked pipes (didn't even use Omega drivers but a modded .dll for the normal drivers), overclocked to over XT clocks and cooled with a Zalman VF-700AlCu. Great times.

Yes ECS/ EliteGroup are crap, same goes for A$$rock... But for some reason they die way less then A$U$ for example... Not to mention my testing boards are ECS the purple ones, the newer gen test bench is JetWay mobo, that actually has great build quality Panasonic caps all over the board... The purple ECS has OST caps, but non is leaking, and it is stable, and did test million of AGP/ PCI cards, HDDs, CDs/ DVDs and "it just works" never had any problems.... Really impressed with that POS of brand... I will never use them for anything else, but for test bench they are amazing....

View attachment 408311View attachment 408315

Asrock isn't crap to be honest. They started as a low-end sub-brand of Asus and they were fine for low-end boards. I hella loved when they made those truly unique experimental things, like:

-Athlon 64 boards with possibility to install an upgrade card with new socket (754 to 939, 939 to AM2)
-P4 combo board with S478 and LGA775
-the legendary 939Dual-SATA2
-865G/PE boards with native Core2 support
-AM2 boards with native AGP support thanks to nForce3 (AM2NF3-VSTA, ALiveDual-eSATA2)
-S754 and 939 boards with AMD 700 series chipsets (mainly for their then-modern IGP)
-P67 Transformer (LGA1156 board with P67 chipset)

There may be way more interesting and unique products from Asrock but at least those were totally different than your standard retail boards. Personally I've never had any problems with Asrock, two Socket A boards have died but they're exactly from that low-end era so I don't mind. At least I have an Asus A7N8X-X for S462 tinkering.

These days Asrock has high-end stuff just like any other manufacturer.

 

[MaxiPro800]

ASUS is nowhere near high end. Not with their RMA department of today, and in general I would not classify their board component quality near any reputable brand. Gigabyte and MSI were consistent and were less worse than ASUS, even in case of RMA - ASUS deliberately refuses to RMA boards nowadays.

 

[masterdeejay]

Success. Native glide support on Windows11 x64. Modded windows 2003 x64 drivers. Voodoo2
Next dosbox-x glide api passtrough.

 

[MaexxDesign]

I didn't think they existed. I knew about the 7900GS AGP but not the 7950GT.

Does it beat the HD 3850 AGP?

There is a GeForce 7950 GT AGP.
I have two of them:

XFX PV-T71A-YDL3 V1.0
and
XFX PV-T71A-YDF3 V1.0

Here is another 7950 GT AGP.
It's from Leadtek.

NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT AGP Specs

NVIDIA G71, 500 MHz, 24 Pixel Shaders, 8 Vertex Shaders, 24 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 512 MB GDDR3, 600 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

 

[jak_2456]

This brand beating is getting real old, and I don't think it belongs in this thread.

 

[MaxiPro800]

There is a GeForce 7950 GT AGP.
I have two of them:

XFX PV-T71A-YDL3 V1.0
and
XFX PV-T71A-YDF3 V1.0

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View attachment 408446

View attachment 408447

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Here is another 7950 GT AGP.
But I don't know the manufacturer.
Maybe it's a Reference card or from Leadtek.

NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT AGP Specs

NVIDIA G71, 500 MHz, 24 Pixel Shaders, 8 Vertex Shaders, 24 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 512 MB GDDR3, 600 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

Palit/Gainward/Xpertvision made one too

 

[MaexxDesign]

Palit/Gainward/Xpertvision made one too

I spent 20 minutes trying to find another 7950 gt agp.
But I didn't find.
Do you have pictures?

 

[lexluthermiester]

This brand beating is getting real old, and I don't think it belongs in this thread.

Did I miss something? I'm not seeing any brand bashing. But I agree, there is no place for it in this thread.

EDIT: Nevermind, just saw it. It really does need to stop.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Gentle reminder here. Remain nostalgic about your hardware. I don't want to hand out points.

 

[MaxiPro800]

I spent 20 minutes trying to find another 7950 gt agp.
But I didn't find.
Do you have pictures?

This is the original GPU (despite looking like the older 7800 - because it actually uses that same PCB). The PCB layout I posted it earlier I think - it matches most of Gainward's 7800 AGP and 6800GS cards, with the bridge closely below the core.

6800GS on the left, 7950GT on the right.