P5 166XL Largest PCI Graphics Card

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.gateway2000 (More info?)

Hello, I have a P5 166XL and have had it for over 10 years.
The Matrox Millenium that came with it gave out. I plugged the
monitor into a laptop and it works perfectly. The computer boots with
no code beeps. I removed the card cleaned the contacts and reseated
the card still no picture. The machine is used by my wife for email
and surfing and to learn MS office basics. My question is what is the
largest MD PCI graphics card I can use with this machine with respect
to price performance. The machine has a 40X CD ROM, a Overdrive CPU
putring out 200mhz, and 64 MB of ram. The mobo is original.. It is
running Win 98 SE.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.gateway2000 (More info?)

Well, the Matrox Millenium II PCI card with 8MB (4MB memory + 4MB memory stick)
is perfectly compatible with your system. I still have a couple of these in
good condition, if you are interested.

ATI and nVidia have also made PCI graphics cards with 8MB or more memory. The
concern with an older system is that a newer card will require a PCI 2.2 spec
motherboard, which you do not have there. The older P1 motherboards are PCI 2.1
compliant at best. Don't ask me the differences. The details are buried in the
PCI specs available from the PCISIG web site. The bottom line is that unless
the graphics card manufacturer has taken pains to design and test cards with the
older PCI spec, then a PCI 2.2 card is unlikely to work.

Finally, large memory graphics cards are best for gamers. The large memory has
some effect on system performance when web browsing and using MS Office
components, but not much.

Get in touch off line if you want to buy a Matrox Millenium II card. I may also
have some other PCI cards for which it is easy to get Windows drivers, but I
have to check... Ben Myers

ben_myers@charter.net

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:57:52 GMT, Stephen M. Gluck <smgluck@earthlink.net>
wrote:

> Hello, I have a P5 166XL and have had it for over 10 years.
>The Matrox Millenium that came with it gave out. I plugged the
>monitor into a laptop and it works perfectly. The computer boots with
>no code beeps. I removed the card cleaned the contacts and reseated
>the card still no picture. The machine is used by my wife for email
>and surfing and to learn MS office basics. My question is what is the
>largest MD PCI graphics card I can use with this machine with respect
>to price performance. The machine has a 40X CD ROM, a Overdrive CPU
>putring out 200mhz, and 64 MB of ram. The mobo is original.. It is
>running Win 98 SE.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.gateway2000 (More info?)

Stephen M. Gluck wrote:

> Hello, I have a P5 166XL and have had it for over 10 years.
> The Matrox Millenium that came with it gave out. I plugged the
> monitor into a laptop and it works perfectly. The computer boots with
> no code beeps. I removed the card cleaned the contacts and reseated
> the card still no picture. The machine is used by my wife for email
> and surfing and to learn MS office basics. My question is what is the
> largest MD PCI graphics card I can use with this machine with respect
> to price performance. The machine has a 40X CD ROM, a Overdrive CPU
> putring out 200mhz, and 64 MB of ram. The mobo is original.. It is
> running Win 98 SE.

Using Quake2 as a measure, I maxed out the processing power of my
Gateway P166 (Thor motherboard, 200 overdrive CPU) with a 16 MG Voodoo3
PCI. It ran very well, but eventually upgraded and sold the card. You
can pick them up for a few dollars on ebay.

Fireclown