super 7 video

[Guest]

i currently have a fic 503+ mb, and a k6 III 450, and am looking to upgrade my <gasp> matrox g200. ive heard many super 7 boards struggle with agp voltage issues with higher end cards. im interested in something like a geforce2 mx.
thanks

 

[Guest]

I would definately check with FIC first as the cards do draw a lot of power.

 

[Guest]

You can definately go with the MX as it doesn't draw a lot of power at all. I have an Aopen MX59pro MB and a CardExpert MX. I've overclocked it a lot (200/225MHz Core/mem) and it's still stable as a rock. I would however go with one of the ones with 5.5ns RAM. Like the SUMA, Cardexpert Golden Sample or the Hercules (Retail only)- OEMs got 6ns.

Boy am I full of it - in every respect.

 

[bojon1]

The Cardex Golden Sample rocks! Just put one in this week. I love it. Blows away my "old" geforce 256 sdram. I highly recommend it, if you can find it.

 

[Guest]

After I posted the last message, I wanted to find out if I could go higher than the max 225Mhz of the internal oc prg.
So i slapped powerstrip on the drive and fired it up. The maximum PowerStrip can do on an MX is 250 MHz. Guess what -IT'S NOT ENOUGH! The Cardexpert does 250 MHz without not even one "snowflake"!!! Now that's 4GB/s bandwidth!!! As opposed to the original 2.66GB/s. I have to add though that I've glued on some small sinks, and a small fan on the chips. I'm not sure how much they help though. What my problem is now however, is that I have no clue how high i can go. Another motherboard where I can pump up the I/O voltage probably helps as well.

Boy am I full of it - in every respect.

 

[Guest]

I have had numerous problems with AGP cards on the two different FIC 503+ boards I have dealt with. One with a K63-450 as you have and the other with a K62-400.

This was back in the era of the original TNT boards. At that point nothing I did could make those TNT boards work in that motherboard. We did however get a Voodoo3 2000 working in one of these machines and a Voodoo3 3000 working in the other.

 

[phsstpok]

I have an FIC 503+ running at 412 Mhz and I have been running a Visiontek Geforce256 SDR for a couple of months.

I wish I could say I have had no problems but it is not true. On the otherhand, I had problems before I got the Geforce.

I used to get spontaneous reboots but somewhere along the way between Windows 98SE reinstalls, multiple Detonator driver (geforce drivers) updates, Bios updates, adding, removing, adding again various tweaks the problem went away.

I still get occasional system crashes but not usually while playing games.

Direct3d games work best with no crashes that I can recall. However, I would have strange experiences with OpenGl. Whenever I reinstalled the drivers,(I have found detonator 6.31 drivers to be the best. 6.47 slowed down performance considerably), things would seem to work fine for a while. Then one day I would have crashes in Half-life and the problems wouldn't go away until I unistalled and reinstalled the drivers. I could still run the game using the Direct3D driver. (I leave Half-life in that mode).

Recently I found some tweaks to the Windows registry that seem to have fixed my OpenGL problems. The "tweaks" can be found at www.3dspotlight.net/tweaks/tnt-geforce. They are intended for geforce users who have Super7 motherboards.

After I purchased the geforce256 card I read, somewhere, that it was probably not a wise choice for a Super7 motherboard because it consumes too much power. For this reason the Geforce2 cards are a better choice. You should also have a 250 watt power supply or better, in any case. Mine is only 235 watts.

I can't tell you if the Geforce is causing me problems any longer or if my FIC 503+ is unstable or what.

I can tell you that the Geforce works great when it is working. As I said I don't seem to have any problems with Direct3D games.

Good luck.

 

[Guest]

If you are worried about voltages issues, consider getting a motherboard that allows you to jack up the voltage to your PCI and AGP slots. My ASUS P5A-B has that ability and works like a charm.

 

[Guest]

what video vard did you get?
i am thinking gf2 sdr 32.
i also have p5ab and k63.
the big question of course that hardly ever gets answered is how much improvement can i expect on low end system running at 472. greg