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Got My Thermaltake Xaser III VM3000A Last Night!

Got My Thermaltake Xaser III VM3000A Last Night!

Postby fastvfr45 » Wed May 05, 2004 10:56 pm

Greetings!

Man, what a beeeeyooootiful case this is! Of the dozens of PC's I have built, none of those lesser caces had the quality and high-tech usability of this little gem. Not to mention ventilation! It cost $102 from Directron.com...

Problem is, I had only an old AMD 700MHz on a Chaintech MOBO from a previous upgrade lying around to use with my new toy...so of course I had to slap it in. Only took about 30 minutes to get it setup and all the tweaks done. I set the memory speed to 133MHz in the BIOS, as well as adding .05% more zap to the proc.

This is a Chaintech 7ATA mobo with a 200MHz FSB, and the performance is really surprisingly good for an ol' dinosaur! It runs a 1x/2x/4x AGP. Will a Radeon 9200 work well in this rig, do you think? It has no onboard GPU but it came to me with a 8MB Intel solution that works fine for Internet but I cringe at the thought of trying Morrowind or similar on it! :roleeyes

I've set aside a bit of cash, as this Antec 350 will soon have a P4P or C800 to keep it warm, and I'll need at least a 2.4C for a processor. Already have a line on some Corsair Platinum low-CAS 256MB stix, so that's cool.

Does the GeForce4 5700FX have the cojones to get decent framerates in the Max Payne II/ Unreal II type games, or is the 5950 really worth that much more grip? I might settle for the 5900 256MB card....fan noise is not a limiting factor for me. Not with this big of a case!

Well, I'm looking forward to your answers on my situation, guys & gals...hopefully the 9200 ATI will work in this board, as a friend just upgraded to a 5200FX 256MB last week and wants to sell his Radeon.

Thanks in advance!

--Eric
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Postby fastvfr45 » Thu May 06, 2004 2:13 am

Well, I wrote the above right after waking from a power-nap, so I hope I can be forgiven.

I am guessing that the ATI Radeon 9200 uses AGP PRO. And that the 4X I have in that board uses the old architecture....so that means I am limited to PCI or ancient 32MB vid cards if I'm correct.

Bummer. Well, at least I have a 64MB GeForce 2 MX400 PCI on hand; I'm just hoping that the framerates are going to be over the 5-15 FPS (>:P) I got in Morrowind on the Compaq POS!

Well, I'm about to see if it was my CD-RW's or the MOBO keeping me from being able to burn CD's shortly.....got my fingers crossed....

Best regards,

Eric
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Postby nioxin » Sun May 09, 2004 7:52 am

You are on the right track....
I was playing around with a friend's computer, and we wanted to test a new Radeon 9800 to check if it was a dud or not. We slapped that sucker in his old machine, but, the computer would freeze and report memory address errors. It occured to me that the 9800 needs 8x FastWrite AGP. (under the SmartGart options).

That motherboard would only go up to 2x AGP FastWrite. So it would be the same issue for your motherboard if you put in that card. Unfortunately, I have to admit, I believe your stuck using more 'ancient' GPU cards.. because your new motherboard won't handle it.

- Nioxin :cool:
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Postby muklin » Thu May 13, 2004 3:49 am

I thought al the 8x radeons wer still compatible with 4x though not 2x or slower, can you borrow a friends to try?
Regards
Muklin

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