The Post Your Old/Retro Builds Thread

Starfalcon said:
Back in the day I got some crazy PC-150 Sdram, it came with some BGA chips instead of the old legged ones. Im sure it is now unobtainium though, heck I dont even remember where I got it. I never really used it as most of the Sdram boards I had were P3 and they would not take a FSB high enough to take advantage of these sticks.
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I've never seen BGA type SDRAM. DDR-400? Yeah, literally just a couple times in my life. Used to seeing the TSOP variety with the legs. That's fascinating. I hope you find them.
 
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Starfalcon said:
Now it is annoying me, I wonder where I put these sticks. Ill have to do some searching through my hoard to try and find them. When I find them Ill post a pic of them so there is at least a record of them on the internet. With all the stuff I have it is easy to loose track of stuff for decades. I just refound my 9500 Pro the other day after looking for it on and off the last 5 years.
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I mean, if you find them AND don't want/need them, I'd give em a run... lol. :D
 
Well good news I found one of my sticks, but I was pretty sure I had 3 of these. I have no idea where the others are, maybe in a system somewhere or hidden somewhere else. Also good news I found my missing corsair XMS DDR 3200 with the blinking lights on the top, along with about 50 ish sticks of PC100, PC133, and some DDR.
 

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Well after some searching found a newegg link to it

https://www.newegg.com/kingmax-256mb-168-pin-sdram/p/N82E16820154002R

Also some other searching it came out somewhere around 2000-2001 as that seems when most of these threads about it were from. Some things also about corruption from the high fsb, not suprising though as I am sure hard drives on the PCI bus were unhappy being driven out of spec.

Edit, found the original link not open box with reviews

https://www.newegg.com/kingmax-256mb-168-pin-sdram/p/N82E16820154002R

Edit #2 found a picture of the box that it came in
 

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Back in the day Socket A was my favorite, and I built more Socket A systems for myself and others then I can recollect. So I decided to build a retro Socket A Windows 98 system as cheap as possible. I started with an OEM HP (made by Asus) motherboard based on the Via KM400 chipset as the board has quality caps on it (and I'm too lazy to do a recap), as most used Socket A boards at this point have bad caps. I chose an Athlon XP 1800+ Thoroughbred core as it runs at a lower 1.5 volts compared to most other Socket A Athlon CPUs, and I'm after as cool running as possible, as speed is secondary on a Windows 98 system. A single 512MB PC2700 DDR1 DIMM, a SoundBlaster Live PCI (seems about the best DOS emulation you're going to find on a cheap PCI card), and an Asus FX5200 128MB AGP card fill out the rest of the major specs.

I have BIOS modded the Asus card and taken the memory clock from 400MHz to 500MHz as the FX5200 lacks memory compression, and with the overclock and the 1024x768 resolution I'm using, it plays most all 3D games that you would want to run on Windows 98 just fine. I have tested Max Payne 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Serious Sam SE so far and no complaints. The FX5200 was hated back in the day, but now it is an affordable card for retro-computing with excellent DOS support and support for table fog and palletted textures that the later Geforce 6 cards lack. Only bummer with this system is the SATA ports don't seem to work with any of the SATA devices I have tried, I suspect that they only work with old first generation SATA devices as the BIOS won't 'see' anything I plug in.

With this system (see signature) I have two retro systems that adequately cover the eras of retro games I'm most interested in. Love seeing others add to this thread!!!!!!!
 

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Not sure if this counts as retro enough but according to the rules Phenom or older so I think I'm good. This PC is still running strong from 2010 (see sig: Phenom II 965 + GTX 580). The GTX 580 was added later but was originally paired with GTX 275; later replaced with GTX 470 and added another 470 for SLI. Both 470s ended up dying... Fermi cards ran stupid hot.

I also still have a Phenom 9500 w/ 4GB of DDR2 but that PC is retired and sitting in my parents basement.

Edit: Added a photo when I had this running GTX 470s in SLI but the Phenom II 965 was in a 990fxa MB at that time. Most of my PCs continuously evolve over time.
 

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Three sticks of RAM instead of four or two? You know you were running this system in single channel, leaving a good 30%+ of performance on the table, right?
psy81 said:
Not sure if this counts as retro enough but according to the rules Phenom or older so I think I'm good. This PC is still running strong from 2010 (see sig: Phenom II 965 + GTX 580). The GTX 580 was added later but was originally paired with GTX 275; later replaced with GTX 470 and added another 470 for SLI. Both 470s ended up dying... Fermi cards ran stupid hot.

I also still have a Phenom 9500 w/ 4GB of DDR2 but that PC is retired and sitting in my parents basement.

Edit: Added a photo when I had this running GTX 470s in SLI but the Phenom II 965 was in a 990fxa MB at that time. Most of my PCs continuously evolve over time.
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Mr. Bluntman said:
Three sticks of RAM instead of four or two? You know you were running this system in single channel, leaving a good 30%+ of performance on the table, right?
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Yes I knew someone would point this out. This pic was taken many years ago and was using left over parts. It now has 2 sticks for a total of 8GB of DDR3.
 
psy81 said:
Yes I knew someone would point this out. This pic was taken many years ago and was using left over parts. It now has 2 sticks for a total of 8GB of DDR3.
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Nice! Shame about the 470s dying on you though. I had a 560 Ti that ran relatively quiet and cool during that era. But that's both a second generation Fermi card and it features a smaller die than the big boy 470/480/570/580 models using GF100 or GF110, so I guess this isn't really 1:1 here, is it? :p

I had that GTX 560 Ti far longer than I wanted to, but it was solid while I had it. I remember [H]'s review of the 480... 100°C under a gaming load like it ain't nothing... LOL

It was ludicrous at the time, but look at where we are today. 300W i9 14900Ks... 450W RTX 4090s...
 
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Mr. Bluntman said:
Nice! Shame about the 470s dying on you though. I had a 560 Ti that ran relatively quiet and cool during that era. But that's both a second generation Fermi card and it features a smaller die than the big boy 470/480/570/580 models using GF100 or GF110, so I guess this isn't really 1:1 here, is it? :p

I had that GTX 560 Ti far longer than I wanted to, but it was solid while I had it. I remember [H]'s review of the 480... 100°C under a gaming load like it ain't nothing... LOL

It was ludicrous at the time, but look at where we are today. 300W i9 14900Ks... 450W RTX 4090s...
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If I recall correctly, I overclocked both 470s in SLI (with stock cooling) by around 130MHz...

One of the 470s died when I was playing Far Cry 3. I remember the fans were running super loud so I had to turn the volume up on the game and had a feeling the cards were being pushed a bit too hard... and then after a few days, I started seeing artifacts and I knew it was the end. The second card, I actually gave to a friend and it died on him shortly afterwards.

In hindsight, the overclocking on stock cooling may have killed both cards...

But yeah, I'm really hoping we get back cooler and more efficient parts as opposed to hot and power hungry...
 
psy81 said:
If I recall correctly, I overclocked both 470s in SLI (with stock cooling) by around 130MHz...

One of the 470s died when I was playing Far Cry 3. I remember the fans were running super loud so I had to turn the volume up on the game and had a feeling the cards were being pushed a bit too hard... and then after a few days, I started seeing artifacts and I knew it was the end. The second card, I actually gave to a friend and it died on him shortly afterwards.

In hindsight, the overclocking on stock cooling may have killed both cards...

But yeah, I'm really hoping we get back cooler and more efficient parts as opposed to hot and power hungry...
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Hmm... That's one of the reasons I've never really overclocked, besides not having good luck winning the silicon lottery for shit... Big Fermi was not very overclocking friendly from what I remember. And on GPUs that already run scorching hot even by today's standards? Yeah... It sucks your cards died (especially the one you gave to your friend) but it's unsurprising to me. It's just a little more fuel to add to the "no overclocking" fire for me.

And same here. I miss the days of 65-95W high-performance CPUs, or GPUs that were sub-200w...
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Hmm... That's one of the reasons I've never really overclocked, besides not having good luck winning the silicon lottery for shit... Big Fermi was not very overclocking friendly from what I remember. And on GPUs that already run scorching hot even by today's standards? Yeah... It sucks your cards died (especially the one you gave to your friend) but it's unsurprising to me. It's just a little more fuel to add to the "no overclocking" fire for me.

And same here. I miss the days of 65-95W high-performance CPUs, or GPUs that were sub-200w...
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I stopped overclocking as well. I had overclocked my FX-8350 and 6700K for several years w/ after market cooling. I even P95 tested the overclock for hours to ensure it was stable but after so many years they became unstable and now they run at stock. I had an older FX-8350 which died on me. When it was overclocked I was pumping 1.5375 volts into the CPU but when it became unstable I had to keep pumping more volts into the CPU just to run it at stock speeds and then it was over. It was nice to get that free bump in performance but after so many years the CPUs degraded... I replaced the FX-8350 with which now runs at stock speed... and yeah if you want your part to last overclocking is not its not worth it. I don't think modern CPUs/GPUs can overclock like in the past anyways...
 
psy81 said:
I stopped overclocking as well. I had overclocked my FX-8350 and 6700K for several years w/ after market cooling. I even P95 tested the overclock for hours to ensure it was stable but after so many years they became unstable and now they run at stock. I had an older FX-8350 which died on me. When it was overclocked I was pumping 1.5375 volts into the CPU but when it became unstable I had to keep pumping more volts into the CPU just to run it at stock speeds and then it was over. It was nice to get that free bump in performance but after so many years the CPUs degraded... I replaced the FX-8350 with which now runs at stock speed... and yeah if you want your part to last overclocking is not its not worth it. I don't think modern CPUs/GPUs can overclock like in the past anyways...
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1.5375v will definitely greatly shorten the lifespan of an AMD CPU; pretty sure anything above 1.4v is not good for an FX part. Not sure what Intel chips max out at; I want to say it's 1.3-1.4v. Electromigration is a real bitch...

Yep, unless I'm forced to sell to finance an upgrade I tend to keep my old stuff if I can. It'd be nice if this stuff still worked 10-20 years from now when I want a stroll down memory lane. I'm not sure how far parts OC today, but I have the feeling you're not wrong about this.
 
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DDR3 is now retro? At 15 years old I guess maybe so. Still rolling with my Dell T3500 and T5500 systems (see signature). 8GB rDIMM modules for the T5500 are dirt cheap now at $5. So are 6 core Xeon X5690 CPUs. Got a complete second CPU riser for the T5500 for next to nothing a while back. May be time to build a 12 core 72GB rig and see what she can do.
 
Does seem like anything Socket A is a bit late for 3dfx though. :) IIRC voodoo 4 is like the one card that does work on the majority of Socket A boards at least.
 
Soft spot for 3dfx ... me too. At least now I do. Full disclosure. I have owned this card since late year 2000. My friend bought a shiny new HP pavilion with this V4 installed. It would crash soon as a game started. Apparently HP sent them out without proper testing. Glide drivers did not jive with the HP board drivers in WinME. Or some such. As we confirmed on the HP forums. After a couple days of bitching with tech support my friend got them to send a new ASUS v7700 card as replacement. I actually picked the V4 out of his trash can. Year or so later he gave me the entire Pavillion box so I now have that card too. Superior card in every way but I like to run the V4 for obvious reasons.

Current situation.

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Susquehannock said:
No argument here. I do have a socket 462 with voodoo4 on Win98 running in the other room right now. So there is that. Plan to enjoy some Max Payne action later.
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I didn't think Max Payne was a Glide game as it was out after 3dfx died...? Did it have a glide patch? Or just fun to play Max Payne on a Voodoo for funzies?

My retro PC is one of my favorites right now... lol. Been enjoying some true Glide API games lately.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
It is not. Direct3D 8.x only and using only the DX7 featureset. Same applies for the sequel.
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You are right of course. And as one would expect, the game slows to a crawl in 32-bit with this card.

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Apparently there is a Max Payne 1 Fix Pack, v1.2023.1 for this but never looked into it.
 

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Mr. Bluntman said:
If memory serves the Voodoo 5 5500 AGP doesn't fare great beyond 800x600, either. These cards weren't designed to push the geometry that cards with vertex shaders or fixed function T&L can.
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Really, Voodoo's didn't shine much outside of Glide or a few early OpenGL/DX games. I love my Voodoo 3 3000 I bought back in the day. But on the retro build I use it on, I stay on mostly games with true glide support.

I'd think a Voodoo 5 5500 can do more than 800x600. I run my Voodoo 3 3000 at 1024x768 in almost every game where the resolution is not hard set. Hell, I even play UT99 at 1280x1024 and maintain about 45~55 FPS with it. I also have it OCed to 3500 speeds.
 
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I finally bit the bullet and opened one of my GTX 295 cards up for some PM. It's a lot less scary than I thought to do once I found some instructions on disassembly, but still took forever to do - making sure not to rush a single step. The stock Shin-Etsu paste was strong (and thick) with this one... I was surprised at how clean this card still was, really. Just needed a couple thermal pads off a donor card for the VRM and display/bridge chip(s) and used Noctua NT-H1 for the GPU cores. I was able to reuse the pads for the GDDR3 modules, however. I just hope it was worth the 2 and a half hour hassle. Temps at idle seem a little better, at least. Questionable at load. Still getting up to 90°C at a high load with about 60-75% fan speed depending on the game. I'm assuming this is normal for this card....
 
Look what gorgeous beauty came in the mail today (Voodoo 5 5500 AGP)... so far testing is going well in Windows 98SE, a very nice addition to my Retro PC. Loving the 4x RGSS AA in Glide Games who can't go above 1024x768... Glad I got this entered into my collection, and it will get use! Already OC'ing it a bit too... lol

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III_Slyflyer_III said:
Look what gorgeous beauty came in the mail today (Voodoo 5 5500 AGP)... so far testing is going well in Windows 98SE, a very nice addition to my Retro PC. Loving the 4x FSAA in Glide Games who can't go above 1024x768... Glad I got this entered into my collection, and it will get use! Already OC'ing it a bit too... lol

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Awesomeness.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
Look what gorgeous beauty came in the mail today (Voodoo 5 5500 AGP)... so far testing is going well in Windows 98SE, a very nice addition to my Retro PC. Loving the 4x FSAA in Glide Games who can't go above 1024x768... Glad I got this entered into my collection, and it will get use! Already OC'ing it a bit too... lol

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where do you find the windows 98 driver. i cant get the 3d screensaver working....
 
Playing some Wing Commander Prophecy on the Voodoo 5 5500 with 4xAA using Glide! The good old days of gaming... 😎 Using the patch to get resolution to 1280x1024 as well, plays great. This is why I wanted a Voodoo 5 5500, for the amazing glide AA, and the ability to use real hardware to do it, no emulators. Going to enjoy some old favorites for sure. I actually never played this game all the way through, so it's something new!

Sorry for the crap~ish looking phone photo over a screenshot... lol.

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There is just something about the way a game look and run using Glide that just pokes all the right dopamine receptors in my brain. It has that feeling of playing on an arcade machine.
 
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