What retro things have you done today?

Whilst I'm happy for AM2 and similar age stuff to be discussed, we can't have really have auction links to "newer" hardware - there needs to be a reasonable divide to ensure we don't infringe on the competitor rules set out by the shop.
 
paradigm said:
Performance is pretty similar (usually the V3 edges out ahead), though image quality and compatibility is slightly better with the Voodoo3. Voodoo I (not a typo, I not II) is actually better for DOS-based Glide games, so that's probably a better fit for the S7 machine anyway. Going V2 SLI means that your AGP slot is free for something that's not only your 2D card, but also a good D3D/OGL card (Voodoo II would need a miniGL wrapper for pure OGL, and they tend to suck a bit), again potentially a Geforce 256 SDR/DDR. Personally I find that the Voodoo 3 3000 is a good match for the K6-III, saves the faffing with MiniGL wrappers, has good image quality (compared with both the Voodoo II and the Geforce/Geforce2), and immense compatibility with everything (software and hardware).
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Might try the 3000 then :p

Is it just me or is this a 3000 not a Banshee?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3Dfx-Voo...207974?hash=item1a99aa0c26:g:BxQAAOSwXeJe3gWM
 
Price seems about right, you get the chancers that think they are worth >£100 (they could be, if boxed and complete), the utterly insane who think they are worth >£130, and then those who haven't see that prices are on the rise who still occasionally list them for ~£55 onwards.
 
Here's the two hardware mods I had to do to the Kyro II to get it to play ball in the Shuttle SB51G Pentium 4 machine.

kyro2-mod1.jpg


As you can see, there were two areas of the card that needed modifying. R168 near the fan header is bridged to ground (bridges pin A2 on the AGP connector to ground, this tells the motherboard that the card is AGP 4x capable) using a 0 Ohm resistor, and R37 near the voltage regulator was given a 20KOhm resistor in order to raise core voltage from 2.08v to 2.5v.

kyro2-mod2.jpg


These things are bloody small! Sure I "could" have used a blob of solder or a bodge wire, but I wanted the card to look somewhat factory and not messed with, this way it's using proper SMD components that look "right".

kyro2-mod3.jpg


This one is even smaller, R37 is actually in parallel with R39 here (R38 and R39 form a potential divider which is used as reference voltage for the voltage regulator). Dropping in a 20KOhm resistor on the previously blank pads for R37 drops the resistance of R39, and raises the reference voltage up a tad. This results in 2.5v core rather than the standard 2.08v. Again, could have used a radial resistor and soldered directly between legs 3 (ground) and 5 of the voltage regulator, but this would look ugly as balls, and certainly not passable as "stock".

Again, hot-air rework stations are a godsend for stuff like this, both the 0Ohm and the 20KOhm were pulled from various bits of dead hardware using the hot-air station, I certainly don't keep such small SMD components lying around!
 
So here are the benches (finally). I added some additional cards into the mix to see a) just how gimped MX GeForce cards and SE Radeon cards were, and to see how much a couple of generations moved things on. I'm rather annoyed that I had to substitute in my Quadro FX1000 (GeForce FX 5800 equivalent) in where I had planned on using the GeForce 4 Ti4200, but the Ti4200 appears to have bad RAM :( Going to source some RAM and do some surgery I think!

Machine spec was:
Shuttle SB51G (Intel 845GE Chipset)
Pentium 4 2.8GHz (533FSB variant) @ 3.15GHz (600FSB)
1.5GB DDR 333
Forceware 61.77 for all nVidia cards
ATi 6.11 for the 9200SE
ATi Catalyst 10.2 for the 9800XXL (9800XT OEM)
PowerVR 1.05.15.0084 For the Kyro II without EnT&L
PowerVR 2.02.22.0033 For the Kyro II with EnT&L (Software TnL presented as hardware TnL)

bench-q2.png


bench-q3a.png


bench-ut.png


bench-3dm.png
 
PMSL, cheap at double the price...........

I wonder what appetite exists for an old school review site revisiting hardware and pushing reviews like hexus / anandtech / tomshardware etc etc used to?

Also shame we can't split this sub forum in to PC two, one for PC one for Console.
 
@paradigm That's quite an extensive set of tests you've done there, didn't expect that! So looking at the Kyro scores, it's somewhere between the GF2MX and Ti for the most part. It does quite well in Q3 by the looks of it. Given the limited horsepower the card has it's quite impressive in how it fares IMO.

Interesting that the Radeon 9800XXL can do 287FPS in Q3 at 1280x1024, yet only 246FPS in Q2 at the same resolution! Guess that's indicative of ATI's OpenGL support at the time though.
 
Firestar_3x said:
I wonder what appetite exists for an old school review site revisiting hardware and pushing reviews like hexus / anandtech / tomshardware etc etc used to?
Click to expand...

I think that’s an ace idea, a revisit of reviewing older hardware just because the author WANTS to rather than because it’s the latest and greatest gifted to you by the supplier! It would also (mostly) remove bias due to the lack of monetary transaction involved!

I’d definitely be up for providing content. I’m far more at home with providing written content, video costs too much to produce properly, and I’m not great in front of the camera!
 
hohum said:
@paradigm That's quite an extensive set of tests you've done there, didn't expect that! So looking at the Kyro scores, it's somewhere between the GF2MX and Ti for the most part. It does quite well in Q3 by the looks of it. Given the limited horsepower the card has it's quite impressive in how it fares IMO.

Interesting that the Radeon 9800XXL can do 287FPS in Q3 at 1280x1024, yet only 246FPS in Q2 at the same resolution! Guess that's indicative of ATI's OpenGL support at the time though.
Click to expand...

Agreed, although for the most part the Kyro II is closer to the performance of the full Geforce 2 than the gimped MX. It does really well in real world gaming though that said I can’t explain why the v2.02 driver has such poor minimum framerates in UT. The older 1.05 drivers were far more playable even if the maximum framerates and average framerates drop ever so slightly. I think overall the difference between the EnT&L capable drivers and the newest V1 drivers isn’t worth the effort unless you are specifically needing to trick a game into believing you have hardware TnL for compatibility reasons.

The Quadro and more obviously the 9800XT(XXL) were massively CPU bound in some instances, especially in UT, but also in Quake 3 for the 9800, the framerate simply didn’t change between resolutions.

As for the Q2 vs Q3 performance on the 9800, ATi were never quite as fast in OpenGL compared to nVidia, and Q2s implementation of OpenGL is quite “rough”.
 
paradigm said:
I think that’s an ace idea, a revisit of reviewing older hardware just because the author WANTS to rather than because it’s the latest and greatest gifted to you by the supplier! It would also (mostly) remove bias due to the lack of monetary transaction involved!

I’d definitely be up for providing content. I’m far more at home with providing written content, video costs too much to produce properly, and I’m not great in front of the camera!
Click to expand...

I think it could really work, would also be nice to start pulling together a solid set of reference information / guides in one place.
 
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