For those of you needing PCI graphics cards (not PCI-Express)

[Jimbo Mahoney]

Hey guys,

Just thought I would let you know how surprised I was with a recently purchased Geforce 6200.

I'm running it in a lowly Shuttle with P4 2.4 and 1Ghz memory.

It scored 5500 in 3DMark 2001!

I'm really surprised a PCI graphics card could be that fast! (and no, I know this isn't fast wrt high-end stuff - see sig for my rig and 3DMark 2001 score).

Anyway, for the price of a night out, it's well worth it if you are stuck with PCI-only for whatever reason. It's also pretty good at 2D - I run 1600 x 1200 @ 85 Hz on a 22" CRT. The card I had before was an ATI Radeon 7000, which was stupidly slow at 3D and not that great at this resolution / refresh in Windows either.

 

[Tute]

On a similar note, I remember when the FX5200 cards launched and (not knowing better) I snapped one up.

Well I know what everyone's thinking, but it really wasn't that bad!

I was only running 1024x768 on a 15" monitor, and it was pretty capable at that res. I used to play a lot of BF1942 at the time, and it was as smooth as I needed it to be!

 

[HangTime]

The thing is, even a gf3ti200 would easily blitz well past that 5500 score when paired with a 2.4ghz cpu. Yeah, I know that's an AGP part not PCI, but even so it gives you an idea of the kind of performance we are talking about here.

If you absolutely must have a PCI card then I can see the appeal (although a secondhand AGP board + card probably wouldn't cost much more). But judged on performance terms that's really not all that impressive even when comparing with the earliest DX8 hardware.

 

[Jimbo Mahoney]

Yes, but we are talking PCI here.

Given that my Shuttle only has two PCI cards for expansion, it's impossible to get an AGP or PCI-E card in there

Always one to come along and poo-poo something

(and I don't take it personally, in effect you are criticising the mighty power of the PCI bus and its 133 MB/s bandwidth! How very dare you!)

 

[chaparral]

Given that my Shuttle only has two PCI cards for expansion, it's impossible to get an AGP or PCI-E card in there

Which model of shuttle have you got ???


Even my very first shuttle (sn41g2) i brought years ago had a AGP slot....

 

[Jimbo Mahoney]

It's an old S478 model.

I bought it specifically because it was (and probably still is) the quietest model. I don't remember the model number, but it went by the name 'Zen'.

It was never intended for gaming or anything, just as an 'office' PC on which I could store my documents and MP3s or whatnot while I clocked the life out of my gaming rig.

But then I discovered World of Warcraft.....

 

[Banny]

I would not be without my S3 virge for testing purposes, comes in well sometime, especially when a flash goes wrong.

 

[Biffa]

LOL I needed a PCI graphics card to pop into one of my rigs the other day, scrabbled around in my spares box and pulled out what I thought was a PCI TNT2. When I had rebooted discovered it was a Voodoo3!!! Seems ok tho. hehe.

 

[Jimbo Mahoney]

I wouldn't feel complete without abusing the card a little, so I had a play:

Tried unlocking the 4 extra pipes - no go

Tried overlocking the core - 300 Mhz default - won't even do 330Mhz without artifacts.

tried overclocking the memory - 530Mhz default - goes to 850Mhz with no artifacts *and* completed an overnight run of 3DMark

Ok, so it only increases the 3DMark score about 10%.....