I have a ASUS P2B motherboard, 80GB Western Digital HD, Intel Pentium III 600MHz CPU, 192Mb PC100 SDRAM, 3dfx VOODOO3 3000 16Mb AGP video card, Sound Blaster AWE 64 sound card, 56k modem, 10/100 LAN card, 52x LG CD-ROM drive and 2x LG DVD writer.
I just bought 2x256Mb PC133 CL2 Crucial memory that I should receive shortly. I will probably remove my old memory and put the 2 dimm in instead and try to overclock the FSB a little.
Now I wan't to know what would be the best compatible AGP video card for my motherboard? My motherboard support AGP 1.0 specifications (1x/2x). Does 4x AGP 2.0 video cards would works or not?
What would be some of the best video cards for my old mobo? I will probably buy used anyway since it will be probably old video cards. I'm tired of my old Voodoo 3 3000, it isn't compatible with N64 emulators and other stuff.
You may find a Radeon 9200 8x/4x/2x card, I have seen them at Wallmart. The 9250 may be 8x/4x/2x aswell.
Most 4x cards are both 4x/2x, like Radeon 7000 or Geforce 2 MX400.
I would look for a G4 TI 4200, 4400 or 4600 but not the 4800.
I still have an P3Bf board running one.
Or if you prefer ATI an 8500 would be good also.
Your P3 600 would not push either to their limits. But a cpu upgrade would help a lot.
I would be interested to hear what you figure out on this project. I have an ASUS P2B based system that I have been working on. If you really want to juice up the CPU you should check out the CPU upgrades from Powerleap (www.powerleap.com). For about $120 I got a 1400MHz celeron based slot 1 unit (PL-iP3/T). With maxed memory this sytem works great. It seems faster than the P4 based system I use at work, though I haven't done any real testing. I now want to max out the video card as well. Unfortuntely, since the motherboard came out around 1998, and things have been changing pretty rapidly since then, it is difficult to get good info on what the most advanced video card would have been around that time that will work with this board. At least make sure the tabs and slot match up before buying anything, as these changed with the various standards.
I had almost exactly the same setup as that, i later upgraded my P3 600MHz with a P3 800MHz and what ever graphics card I orginally had (can't remember which one) with a 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP
might still have some of the bits stored away somewhere
I know for certain the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro will work. I also know for certain that's a waste of a system to use with such a great card.
The 9600 Pro won't work, nearly any card with two voltage keys will however. That includes the old 9500 Pro and 9500, but not the 9550 (because it's based on the 9600).
A Radeon 8500 would be a fine card for your system. If you want to get extravegant, an GeForce4 Ti4200 would be more than enough.
One question I still have about this is whether the ATI 9800 cards are really compatible. I checked the specs on the ATI website and it states they are only 8x and 4x compatible. But Crashman feels it will work, so I am not sure on this. I do know the 9600 XT is not compatible. So in the ATI line, the 9700 Pro seems to be the safest bet. The specs say they are 2X (3.3v) compatible. They can be found on ebay for about $50-60. If you want something cheaper, you could go with an earlier card. I don't know about the Nvidia cards mentioned, but you can probably find this info easily. Basically, anything 2x compatible should work. If you want to see how these cards stack up in performance you can check out this article:
Buying an advanced card may be overkill for this system, but it may come in handy with the next "obsolete" castoff you move on to, like a Socket 478 dinosaur.
The ATI documentation problem is MY fault. I write for another site, and noticed they listed the 9600 Pro as 2x compatible, which it isn't. Durring the review I wrote them and said "the card isn't keyed for 3.3v operation and won't even fit in an AGP2x slot" So they removed the 2x documentation from all then-current cards including the 9800 Pro, to play it safe.
The 9800 Pro by original design is 2x compatible, as was the base 9800. The 9800XT removed the 3.3v key notch, but some 3rd party manufacturers made it 2x compatible by using the earlier style circuit board.
So again I say if it's keyed for 3.3v, it's supposed to work. Such cards have two key notches where they insert into the slot, in addition to the notch between the slot and the lock of course.
