k63+ videocard reccomendations and kyro ?

Discussion relating to Socket 7 hardware.
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Hotrodk63
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Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 12:46 pm

k63+ videocard reccomendations and kyro ?

Post by Hotrodk63 »

Hi, I have followed this forum with some interest for awhile now, I've held onto my K63+ rigs through thick and thin, I'm still using one as my primary system, even though I've built the wife a 2500+ xp lol. I will continue to keep my k63 around for fileserver duties etc, however, I am itching for a fast system, also want to play halflife 2and it seems like a time when lots of new technology is out, (sata drives, pci express, etc) so sometime shortly after the first of the year I am going to build a 64 bit nforce4 setup. With all that being said, in the next couple months for the fun of it I am going to play some games such as halflife 1, unreal etc, run some benchmarks and tinker around on the k63 and see what the topend performance is. To keep this from getting too long winded, I am wondering now that lower end videocards are available pretty cheaply, what the absolute fastest video card the k63+ systems can gain anymore benefit from. Also let me add that I am able to run my k63+ at 630 mhz (105 x 6) which is higher than most overclocks I have seen, but obviously I know that it still isn't much of a difference. The geforce 2 mx cards have been used here by many with good results I know, and is still bottlenecked by our socket 7 rigs, but I have been reading up on the kyro II cards, (prophet 4500 64mb etc) and it seems like they were a cool card at the time, and beat the mx and even the gts at alot of benchmarks. I have read though that they do not work on the socket 7 systems, however the test I saw was on a mvp3 chipset and not the ALI. I want to know if anyone has gotten one to work on theirs sucessfully, and if so, how did it perform? What are any other say 30 dollar videocard options that would be faster than a mx, what about a lower end radeon maybe? Thanks for any help or advice anyone can give, including which drivers they are running etc. Thanks!
AT Midtower Case
AMD K6-III+ @ 630 Mhz (105 x 6)
ASUS P5-AB rev 1.03
384 MB PC100 ram
(3) SAMSUNG 120 GB spinpoint HDs
8mb DIAMOND AGP video
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Wiggy
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Post by Wiggy »

Geforce Ti500 or Radeon 8500 are probably the best cards for SS7. Some select drivers relatively suit both the Chipset and the cards. Both Direct X 8 complient. And STILL faster than the bottom of the range cards from ATi and NVidia (not including PCI-X).

Or I also had a GeForce 2 GTS (the one with DDR), that was a goer as well.

All of which are better performers than the Kyro cards. :)
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Hotrodk63
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Post by Hotrodk63 »

Thanks Wiggy, you are right about the geforce ti and radeon cards being faster than the kyro, I was just curious as to whether the kyro would even work on socket 7. I found out not long ago that they are totally incompatible with the nforce 2 boards, the voltage spec is fine, but the driver refuses to load. At any rate, I bid on a geforce 3 ti200 gainward golden sample card, and I found this card on pricewatch

http://www.ikor-design.com/ikor-design/ ... ts_id=3701

Even though it is a 32mb version, and probably running at LE speed or something, I think it is an understatement to say that either of those two cards would put the k63 as the bottleneck hehe. Would the radeon or the geforce 2/3 be easier to get working properly on windows xp? I don't know whether the newer catalyst drivers work good with the older socket 7's or not, but I know the geforce best performing driver is the 12.41 series ins't it? Will it work on xp or just 2000?

p.s. Wiggy is your wife a goer? know what I mean? nudge nudge hehe
AT Midtower Case
AMD K6-III+ @ 630 Mhz (105 x 6)
ASUS P5-AB rev 1.03
384 MB PC100 ram
(3) SAMSUNG 120 GB spinpoint HDs
8mb DIAMOND AGP video
georgep1
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Post by georgep1 »

Hotrodk63 wrote:One of the early regulars here, and/or on the amdzone forum, used a Kyro for awhile, but I don't think he was much of a gamer. Can't remember who it was though.

Wiggy is absolutely right about the cards that will work best on these systems. A Radeon 8500 or GF3 type card would be best. If you were to go ATI, then Win2K/XP should be used to get AGP acceleration. If GF3, keep the drivers under 13, especially for older games. I'm not sure either one will work very well with Unreal, but let us know. I'd go ebay and get a V2 addon if you wanted to play that.
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Sandells
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Post by Sandells »

Hi guys,

Just adding to this thread that I have ran the Radeon 9700 non-pro version as the highest end videocard in my EPoX G5 SS7 System. I found the performance to be better than the GF3 with the K6-III+@450MHz, due to faster memory and core speeds on the Radeon 9700. The best drivers were the Cats 3.2 on both 2K/XP IMO for us SS7 users.

Hope this helps.

Steve
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