Old Diamond Monster 3D graphics card for PCI or other?

[OldtimeGamer]

This is a question you won't see too much anymore....

I have an older HP a1240n which runs a Pentium 4 3.0Ghz CPU and Windows XP 32-bit)

It doesn't have any AGP slots or PCIe slots...just regular old PCI. I just upgraded the CPU up to a 3.4Ghz and went from 1GB memory up to a whopping 4GB.

I'm building a gaming computer for myself (totally separate matter but I'm mentioning it before anyone tells me I should upgrade and get a new system...I just did )''


But I digress..... but to be nice, I wanted to add a 3D graphics card to the wife's HP "work" desktop ....so that she can occasionally take a break and play some older PC 3D type games, such as "Frogger" and stuff like that, while in her home office. Nothing too hardcore or demanding if you get my drift.

I still ...but don't know why...have my old Diamond Monster 3D 3dfx Voodoo1 4MB PCI, that I bought way back in the late 90's...which is PCI but I read that since its so old, getting it to work with Windows XP is a problem.

Since this is not going to be for hardcore gaming...any suggestions on a decent older 3d card that will fit the build for what I'm looking to do?

I'm sure the best of these old cards in PCI are now pretty dirt cheap on ebay etc. Any suggestions?

 

[scout_03]

that is a pci card see this on tom's in 1997 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/3d-accelerator-card-reviews,42-7.html

 

[OldtimeGamer]

Yea...I saw he had a review back in 97.

...only mine is the first model 4GB version with none of the bells and whistles.

 

[J_E_D_70]

Can't help with your question, but that was so sweet back in the day. Think I had a P90 and like an 80MB HDD to go along with it. It was a Zeos Panera fulll tower prebuilt and cost $3K. Ouch.

 

[OldtimeGamer]

Yea...It really was a good graphics card in its a day. A real pioneer so to speak in terms of 3D gaming. Games like Quake were just awesome if I remember correctly. I guess that's why I held onto it for all this time.

Its hard to search for plain PCI cards because all the each engines will turn up with PCI-e results.

I just saw a PNY Nvidia VERTO GeForce 8400 GS 512MB PCI video card for just $15 shipped....so its just a matter of finding the best maker and model for the time they were hot on the market... since price isn't really going to be a big deal the way it looks.

 

[whooleo]

Newegg has some regular PCI cards (GT 520 and stuff like that).

 

[OldtimeGamer]

I think that that my best bang for the buck will be the Radeon X1550 Video card line.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9116

They didn't exactly get the very best reviews but considering what I'm planning to use it for, I think it will do the trick.

I found an older thread talking about it http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/237535-33-best-graphics-card and it got me looking into it. Here was a comparison at http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=460&card2=506 that shows a few options based on the chip set:

-----NAME----------------------------------CORE-----MEMORY
HIS X1550 iFan 256MB DDR2 PCI-----550---------400
Diamond Stealth X1550 256MB...-----450---------260
Visiontek X1550 256MB 550?-------550?--------400?
HIS X1550 iFan 256MB DDR2----------550---------400

I'm posting what I researched, hoping this might be useful to others looking to do a similar PCI card project.