@@JoaoSamoucoI got an old PC with a S478 HT P4 3.0GHz, 2GB DDR 400, FX5900XT, SATA150 PCI card and the DVD/floppy drives for 20€, the good deals are out there, just need some searching and some luck 😁
Got a quadro fx 3000G that came in today for $50. Based on a fx 5900 ultra but with a load of extra connections. Its great you're giving old hardware more attention!
I had the FX 5900 ultra from 2003-2006 before I got an 8800 GTX ultra. Great memories from the FX, but it wasn't exactly a great card. The ATI 9800 annihilated it at the time. But the FX was fine for early World of Warcraft and Eve Online, which is what I mostly used it for. The 8800, on the other hand, lasted me 7 years of solid gaming, and I only upgraded because it finally died.
Nice video. What is interesting about the 5700LE is that is uses the same core as the 5700 but downclocked at (usually) 250 mhz instead of the 425 mhz of the 5700. That’s why the GPU of the 5700LE can be easily clocked at 400-470 mhz, increasing it’s performance significantly.
I have several FX 5200s that I've kept because they were low-profile PCI cards that supported dual monitor with a high density breakout cable. I've always run older 3D games (such as Unreal Tournament) and 2D stuff with them without too many limitations. To me, they never seemed to be obnoxiously slow until I started really discovering (and being able to afford) faster parts. It's refreshing to see that there is still a perfectly adequate use for these cards and that their undesirablities make them cheaper options for retro computers. Thank you Phil!
Great video, Phil. Keep them coming! 😁 This is one of the 'bad' GeForce 5700LE cards. There are actually many that had the full 128 bit memory bus, and those are miles better (and they overclock like crazy, since the core is heavily 'factory underclocked').
@@philscomputerlab Yep I have one of these in a Shuttle WinXP build. 128 Bit 256MB , and yes they do o/c very well . Oh and it cost all of about £5 or £6 .
@@philscomputerlab well, yeah, the RAM is slower compared to that on a GeForce FX 5700Ultra (or better), however it's still pretty fast. Keep an eye out for those with 4ns memory, which will work at 250 (500) MHz out of the box for a total of 8 GB/s of memory bandwidth, and can usually be overclocked up to at least 225 (550) MHz, resulting in 8.8 GB/s of memory bandwidth. These cards will actually be faster than a GeForce 4 Ti 4200/4400, and they sometimes can be found for pretty cheap (at least in my neck of the woods).
It's nice that the GeforceFX series finally found something it is good at :) "You can't be too picky" rings so true... the amount of high end 90s/early 00's gaming hardware I (and everyone else) threw away that people would actually want these days...
GeForce FX is my "one size fits all" retro GPU these days. My main build has a Quadro FX 1100, roughly equivalent to a GeForce FX 5700. Even these have almost disappeared from the affordable market (except the GeForce FX 5200, lol). But sometimes, a cheap non-5200 shows up on auction. The faster FX cards however run just about anything that you would need Windows 98 for, plus Glide wrapper support.
@@lucasrem I didn't mean to say it is in my everyday computer, ahaha. Simply, it was the least expensive option for an FX card for my primary older PC setup. Many Quadro cards show up from bulk packaging on auction. And Nvidia drivers for this era are the same for Quadro and non-Quadro, thankfully.
yeah probably , i had a fx5500 256meg with a amd 64 3 gig semptron and it it got like 7 FPS in world of conflict and COH.... embarrasing it even got beaten by a dirt cheap ati 9250 SE in many games , for $120 AUD in 2005 what a pile of ...nice box art though and thats why people pick it
Greetings to Phil from germany. I've left this entire generation out, jumped from a Gainward 4200 Ti GS to a WinFast 6800 GT. Unfortunately the card broke after a few weeks and I took an ATI Radeon X800XT.
What is your favorite driver for win98 Phil? I have any old BFG 6800, but its seems a bit unstable win98. Usually end up going back to my quadro fx2000 because of that. The 6800 works fine in XP.
GeForce 6000 to 9000 series all have a serious design defect where the GPU core's internal solder will eventually crack, which kills the card and it cannot be fixed. My poor 8800 GTS 640MB also died after a short life :(
I learned a lot from this video.I'm currently collecting parts to make a W98SE dedicated PC.The scene where you remove the heat sink push pin with the tip of a ballpoint pen was also a great experience for me.The information provided in the comments section was also helpful.
@@bitelaserkhalif A 750 Ti is a great card IMO. But the most important thing is the price. A 710 if you can get it for free, sure, but if you have to pay, there are better cards.
haha yeah i could play quake 1 in 1996 on my dx4100 486 with 16 ram and a 1 meg ISA trident 8900c and i sure wasnt complaining it was perfectly playable but probably 21 FPS max i didnt even notice it . red alert ran fine too i later found out its one of the slowest budget video cards there is but luckily then the CPU did most of the graphics work and that 486 was a beast in 94,95
I remember back in the day we always kept a pci fx 5200 around as a spare. It was capable of playing painkiller and medal of honor airborne reasonably well with modest settings.
I had a FX 5800. It was not bad for what it was but man was it completely outclassed by the 6800 GT I replaced it with. I went though well over fifty (mostly AGP) fx 5200's because they were inexpensive drop in upgrades I could offer customers who wanted get into a bit of then modern gaming without buying a whole new PC.
@@supabass4003 this was during the recession back in 2008. When your gpu died you used whatever you had. And technically we were outside... Living in an RV for a while
It's great to see you talking about the games themselves a bit more! I really enjoy Expendable, but it really doesn't feel that great on PC because of the controls. It handles a lot better on the Dreamcast which is where I mostly played it and, like Incoming, it still looks pretty close to the PC version. I'll have to see if I have it on GOG and do the install/copy-folder method to my '98 box and see how it looks on the CRT monitor.
I was about to type this same comment, but searched and found yours. ;-) The Dreamcast version does have way better controls, and with modern emulation it can be upscaled to look good as well.
As everyone mentions, the 5000 series sucked back in the day for their intended purpose. But they are definitely one of the best alternatives for high end Windows 98 gaming. Budget and performancewise if you are not looking for period correct stuff. I do actually prefer the 5200/5500 PCI versions that Phil used to recommend because they are really versatile and fit in many different projects (and they have a 128bit memory interface). What I do not understand is people saying that 6000 series are a better choice... they should try it with some more games. For very late Windows 98 games it might be fine but for older stuff the compatibility is way worse and they give a lot of trouble with drivers. I would rather save it for a dual boot 98/XP project instead
Never used a Geforce FX before. My first Geforce card was a 6200 which replaced my broken Radeon 7500LE. That was a huge upgrade and the little 6200 lasted until about 2008 I think, when I replaced it with a second hand 7950gx2.
I have an Fx 5700 I bought couple years ago. Good thing about Fx 5700 is that it’s made on a newer node than the Fx 5800. Runs cooler and thus smaller cooler for good performance. I wish I could find more of it. I’d buy them instantly. I hope I am not hurting my chances by writing here 🤣🤦♂️
Holy crap, I was wondering why my 9x machines looked like static interference when shutting down. Signal looks so much crisper now! Auto-adjust is a great tip.
3:11 I love the fact you used an AMD AM3 cooler for that socket 754 CPU! i'm currently building a retro PC based on a 754 Socket Foxconn motherboard and i'm planning to get a Wraith Prism for my CPU, also i have this AM3 Cooler as a backup option. In the GPU side, it's difficult to even try to get a FX 5500, here in latin america the market is flooded with only low-end AGP GPU (mostly ATi or FX 5200)
Great video as always! I really like the tips and tricks you sprinkled in. It's great how particular games become benchmark programs over time. I use Elvira and Dungeon Hack for Dos sound test, and Freespace 2 for win98 video testing. I had to pick up Screamer 4x4 last week as well!
I have a Leadtek Winfast Geforce FX 5600 Ultra 256MB VIVO (it captures video!), paired with Audigy 2 ZS and Nglid and an Athlon XP 2600+ with Nforce 2 Ultra, cant ask for more, its really great for 98SE. Good video
Wowza haven't seen Drakan in a long time, used to be one of my favorite games as a kid. Played it on my brothers PIII w/ MX440 Gateway along with Total Annihilation and a host of other games he had. That computer also emulated SNES, Genesis and GBA pretty well surprisingly 😁.
I was so lucky to get my 250Mhz core/128bit Aopen version when I did. Even with just over 5GB/sec memory bandwidth it is really good. The cooler is better on yours though...mine had an inadequate replacement which caused lockups, and when tested later on couldn't cool a GF4 MX 440-8x (and that card is as slow as the GF2 MX400). Edit: If you ever get the chance, compare the die of the FX 5700 to the LE - the package should be smaller and labelled as such.
Hey @PhilsComputerLab, I did some testing with a Pentium 4 machine running on an intel 865 chipset motherboard, I ran some benchmarks with a single stick of pc3200 400mhz 256mb ddr memory and with 2 sticks with a total of 512mb and there was a performance difference when running in dual channel mode, I know not all amd motherboards supported dual channel memory, but intel pentium4 era boards do. I also want to mention that tools like Hwinfo and cpu-z running on windows 98se will report the memory being in single channel mode even if the bios reports it as dual channel. You will still see a performance boost with dual channel memory mode.
I had a 5700 Ultra back in the day, which was really good performance. I remember I had that card when Half-Life 2 came out. It really blew me away in terms of how detailed the world was, and the 5700 Ultra handled it really well. I've still got my card, although I picked up an ATI 9700 Pro a couple of years ago when they could be found for a good price, so I usually go for that instead if I'm looking for an AGP card. Those MSATA SSDs are usually my go-to for retro computer storage, and I use those MSATA to IDE converter boards that have the 2.5" plastic cover. I even heat set some M3 nuts into the plastic enclosure so they mount nicely into a 3.5" adapter bracket. For the SSD itself, most of the cheap ones don't have any cache, so their performance is pretty terrible. You can get OK performance with the modules that use more than one NAND flash chip, but still not amazing. You can sometimes tell that the module has cache if there's two chips besides the NAND flash chips. One will be the controller and the other is the cache memory chip. Although it can be a bit difficult to tell if it's got a sticker over the chips.
FX5200 was my first card and actually didnt know the FX was just bad at dx9 but explains why trying to play halo back then was serious struggle yet gta3 ran halfway decent.
The problem with the 5700 is that for the demanding games you will have to play at low resolution and still have low FPS, and for the slightly older games you can go with a cheaper card. If you stick to DX7 games you don’t really need anything faster than a GeForce MX 460 worth around $10. And for DX8 the target was really 2000/XP, and in that case I can as well use a modern machine.
Just a general recommendation to people if they are using CRTs or playing old games that need a lower desktop color mode: use a utility called QRes to change the resolution/frequency/color bit-depth using the command line. You can add it to a .bat file and also have it change the settings back once you are finished with the game. Higher frequencies on CRTs might look blurrier which might be undesirable, so you can set it to some specific vertical Hz, and some games need 16-bit color or 256 colors, so this makes launching games more seamless. This utility seems to work well with my FX 5900 Ultra on Win98SE, but I had some issues using an ATI FireGL X3 (~X800) - it didn't want to change to 70Hz no matter what I did, but I think that's just a weird limitation of the card.
Thanks for the game deeper dive. It's funny because every time I see you use Expendable I think to myself that I would really like that game but I forget to grab it. Now that you went in depth I popped on Steam and it is on sale for less than a dollar. Perfect!
Thank you! I'm going to continue with this game format. The most recent video I produced (won't be out for weeks), I was actually looking forward to continuing with two games I started in another video. Finally, I'm actually playing games not just benchmarking the first scene 😂
I like cleaning old computer hardware I get before using them or putting them in storage. It strikes me as a good thing to do as dust can be so hazardous to your chest and can irritate your eyes too :) And I find it a great way to see how the hardware is health wise :) Who knows what's hiding under that dust? I'm yet to find a £50 yet but heres hoping lol :D
It's probably going to be more sought after in PCI form, than AGP. The FX 5600 was the fastest card from the FX series that was sold as a PCI card, but those are incredibly hard to find. I only ever saw one for sale, in years of searching, and regret not grabbing it when I had the chance. The FX 5700 LE is probably the second fastest in PCI. I know it's faster than a 5500, which is really not much more than a 5200 with mild clock bumps. I'm fairly certain that it doesn't beat the 5600, though.
I had this exact same card back in the day.. Played, ut, ut 2004, medal of honor, nfs underground1, dota1 and warcraft3, doom3, quake 3 and 4 and fear alot on it. This fx5700 le 256mb gave me good 3 to 4 years of great gaming pleasure.. Before it died. Thankyou geforce 5700Le.. The Le is weaker then the normal 5700.. Despite i was able to play F.E.A.R on it at low settings at 800x600..
I missed the “Can it run Crysis” question 😂. I have a Quadro FX1300 that is very close to the FX5700 you’re showcasing. The main difference it is a PCIe card. And liked the Expendable demonstration. Didn’t know thia tittle, will try it in the near future. Socket 754/939 with via chipset and ES1938 is the perfect DOS/Win98 Machine for me: perfect DOS sound support, and we can slow down the Athlon64 with CPUSPD. Have a nice weekend!
I have a Chaintech GeForceFX 5700 Ultra 128MB and never thought of using it for DOS games. I recently just refurbished it so it looks brand new and has new Capacitors so it runs like new. I bought it retail from then and never used it. It sat in its box for decades. The Capacitors were probably still good but I didn't want to chance it. Louis Rossman's old videos were of great help in learning how to replace the capacitors. My go to GPUs for that era are definitely the Radeon 9000 series with the Omega Drivers. I have a preference for the Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB which I paired with a Pentium IV 3.2C Northwood CPU (i875 chipset.. never VIA lol) and a Quantum Obsidian X-24 24MB (Dual Voodoo2 on a card using FastVoodoo 4.0 drivers with fix). Windows XP is the OS used. I can play OpenGL on the Voodoo2 SLI as intended (like Half Life) and then switch to DX9 for HL2. 1999-2004 was my most cherished era of PC Hardware and Gaming (College years and LAN parties). The ATi + 3Dfx combo for this specific era grants you the widest game library possible. Awesome video as always.
ALBATRON FX5700LEQ GeForce FX 5700LE 256MB 128-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card, I remember this card fondly, I bought it because it could overclock to the regular 5700 for alot cheaper, used it during Vanilla Wow, Half Life 2.
You are right! I tend to not overclock these old cards, slow is good in most cases, but you are right, I have read that the OC close to 400 MHz if you're lucky.
@@philscomputerlab yea I’m buying almost this exact system off of him so he was testing it for me making sure it all worked and I remember he did a very minor OC and it helped drastically in the 1600x1200 resolution and also helped it keep up with the 3400+ he said he only had one of those CPUs tho so he’s selling me a 3000+ and if I feel like I want a upgrade later I can swap it out
Running this video card under driver version 56.64, DirectX 9.0a, and nGlide version 1.05 you can play all of your Windows 98 games under DirectX, OpenGL, and Glide.
I have a FX 5700 VE. Very downclocked Version. But with PowerStrip it rund with 500/500 MHz. Huge and therefore quiet silly 256 MB VRAM. I put a cheap chinese Aftermarket cooler on it. Runs very silent. Back in the day these cards sucked. But now with a Tualatin it is a great pair. DX7 and 8 are perfect. I would say everything up to UT2004. Another plus: There is no extra molex Power connection required. For DX9 a 6600gt or 7600gs is my way to go with my Tualatins. Even Flatout 2 runs quiet good.
I was on a quest for an FX5900 for a "high end" type retro build. All the standard or Ultras were ludicrously priced, but I snagged a 5900XT pretty cheap. A little bit less memory bandwidth and 10MHz less on the core for like a quarter of the price? Sold!
If it makes you feel any better, an FX 5900 Ultra with an overpowered CPU like a Core2Duo still isn't fast enough for some late Win98 games (2000-2001) at high-ish resolutions. You need to either lose compatibility (like table fog) going with a Geforce 6000 series or use an ATI like an X800 which has its own problems in my experience with an ATI FireGL X3.
NVidia's FX series were quite tragic cards but still I have special passion for them. Especialy for Ultra models. I had even FX 5900ultra from ASUS. Real Rolls-Royce among other manufacturers. I am so sad I sold it. I bought ASUS FX5900(non-ultra) few weeks ago. Unfortunately it has Arctic Freezer cooler which is really good but I want this old goodies in original shape. Huh, much better than nothing. FX cards are very very rare today speaking about top models. The same deals whit 6XXX series ultra models.
3:52 Wow, DDR-400 CL3! I'm old enough to remember that, and then some... I'm running a system with DDR3-1600 CL9 and the latest RAM I've recently heard about is DDR5-6400 CL32! Memory latency has NOT improved over the years, it seems it has pretty much stayed the same (10ns give or take).
The 64 bit LE and SE cards never seemed to justify the saving over regular editions (for gaming at least). I'm still haunted by the 9800se I owned which refused to flash into an 8 pipeline pro without artifacts all over the place. I do miss the free performance tweaks from that era like the pencil trick to unlock cpu multiplier. No fancy cooling setups necessary just a pencil and some flashing tools was all you needed. You could get a high end pc for mid range money if luck was on your side - by unlocking the athlon 2500xp into a 3200xp and by flashing a 9800se into a 9800pro.
I had the Geforce FX 5600 XT AGP card. I don’t remember how it performed or what I replaced it with but I know I sold it on eBay Australia in 2021 for $20.
I got a FX 5900 xt in my win98 system alongside with an athlon XP 2400+ for me, the FX series is the way to go for 98, cause back in the days, my last 98 card was an FX before I switched to windows XP and a 6600GT 🤷🏻♂️
Oh! One detail you forgot with GLQuake, is to rename or delete the GL patch's "opengl32.dll" file. Otherwise the game complains about not finding a 3Dfx card.
Thank you very much for this good review. Thanks to you i'm having alot of fun with an fx 5700 for only 30 Euros. And i can say that it is alot better than the voodoo 3 3000. Beter screen quality and better performance in dos and windows 98. Before i had an fx 5200 but that's not comparable. In most of the games the fx 5700le performs smoother than the Radeon 9600 Pro because of the settings to finetune it. For example Gta3 runs smoother now.
I had one of this but the 5500 version, the cooler motor is so bad that melted and the fan got stuck, with the luck of the card being so bad/unused that it didn't crash at all on 2d, and just adding a massive aluminium block/cooler fanless did the trick when gaming. Remember Silent Hill 2 and other shader games not working at all and using a program to overcome that, you only lost a couple of water or silly effects. Next card I got was an ATI 1950XT and kept on the red side of things forever just because that bad experience with the geforces.
The FX5500 is faster if 128bit and clocked decently, a lot slower than a 128bit FX5700LE however, even with the 5500 having DDR472 vs DDR320 on the 5700LE.
@@dallesamllhals9161 for Socket 7 it's f*cking overkill still not as overkill as a RTX 3070 Ti in a Socket 8 Pentium Pro 200 system tho (yes that's real, someone actually tried that with a PCIe to PCI adapter and it worked)
@@philscomputerlab I didn't even saw them in stores back then. It's the 128MB Variant. There are spots on the back for more. It has RAM coolers! Now I need to find something to plug in to. Maybe I'll find my Athlon64 somewhere. It would be super sweet if that thing works. Needs a molex power cable though.
For modern LCD screens with only HDMI, a DVI to HDMI cable will work best. No need to mess with VGA and auto adjust. Any card with DVI will work because HDMI is an extension of the DVI standard.
I remember having this card in my pentium 4 HT (from a fx5200) I had no performance gain at all. Gladly I didn't bough the FX5700LE but I found it in a case that was on the street. I always called LE cards: "Low edition, haha"
You need to be careful using a dry brush on dusty card: static discharge can damage the card. It is better to wash the card using isopropyl alcohol: spry and toothbrush. Better than new!
the 900 texture and pixelfillrate tells is lowperforming but you get a quality picture (orgina has 1700/1700) - You should be able to play Unreal and Unreal Tournament or even lauch a game from 2004 -Ut2004 since i its lowest requirement are nvidia tnt2 but the cpu can/must be a duron 700 ( or p3 )-I assume the first shareware version has the lowest requirement version 1066? - 2225 is a differnt matter. A 550 K6 might be able with right config with out a heavey browser like ie5 which takes over the win9x windows
Awesome Phil,I used 17 nvidia 5700 ultras in my İnternet Cafe in Ankara,in Turkey.Thursday nights was reserved for the Police Girls playing counter strike 1.3 Awesome times mate.Still have two of them left mate if your interested I can send you one down under mate. .
I bought an FX5600XT 128bit card, quite like it, yea its ram is only 400mhz, but its 128bit and unlike the FX5200 it does support Z color compression so its memory goes further, also the FX 5600XT cards tend to be cheap right now and use the early drivers just fine.
I have a 5200 ultra and 5700le and the 5700le is faster and cooler running. I believe my version is 128-bit memory due to having no empty memory spots on the board. It runs perfectly stable in a 440bx with a p3 @ 133fsb
Lol my second video card it allowed me to play theif which my MX could not. It wasn't until I got a 6800 ultra is when I realized these older Nvidia cards sucked. The 800xt did good to I remember them being close.
Expendables desperately needs a Robotron 2084/Super Stardust twin-stick mod, and then it would be a blast. Anyway, sometimes with cheap graphics cards, I like to say it's only as bad as the game is new. Play an old enough game and any graphics card is good!* *except the Alliance AT3D
I ran into a bunch of FX5200 pci cards forever ago and almost tossed them - glad I didn’t, because they are AMAZING in windows 98 computers that don’t have AGP slots
I had several 5000 series cards. They were terrible. But actually pretty good on win98 machines. Greets from Portugal
Also greetings from Portugal😊
Portugal 🇵🇹
Got one FX 5900 XT for 10 euros or 5 not sure XD.
Portugal 🇵🇹
@@JoaoSamoucoI got an old PC with a S478 HT P4 3.0GHz, 2GB DDR 400, FX5900XT, SATA150 PCI card and the DVD/floppy drives for 20€, the good deals are out there, just need some searching and some luck 😁
Got a quadro fx 3000G that came in today for $50. Based on a fx 5900 ultra but with a load of extra connections. Its great you're giving old hardware more attention!
Nice!
LOL My first ever GPU was a gf fx5900, it was my 2007 xmas gift. Great card.
I had the FX 5900 ultra from 2003-2006 before I got an 8800 GTX ultra. Great memories from the FX, but it wasn't exactly a great card. The ATI 9800 annihilated it at the time. But the FX was fine for early World of Warcraft and Eve Online, which is what I mostly used it for. The 8800, on the other hand, lasted me 7 years of solid gaming, and I only upgraded because it finally died.
Where did you get one for $50?
@@ffwast Local marketplace.
Nice video. What is interesting about the 5700LE is that is uses the same core as the 5700 but downclocked at (usually) 250 mhz instead of the 425 mhz of the 5700. That’s why the GPU of the 5700LE can be easily clocked at 400-470 mhz, increasing it’s performance significantly.
True, but you need 128 bits version ;)
@@tidzej5400 yes, the 128-bit version is much faster than the 64-bit one.
@@3dfxvoodoocards6 nice channel you have, subscribed :D
@@tidzej5400 thank you :)
@@3dfxvoodoocards6wow your channel is just what i was looking for, SUBSCRIBED
I have several FX 5200s that I've kept because they were low-profile PCI cards that supported dual monitor with a high density breakout cable.
I've always run older 3D games (such as Unreal Tournament) and 2D stuff with them without too many limitations. To me, they never seemed to be obnoxiously slow until I started really discovering (and being able to afford) faster parts.
It's refreshing to see that there is still a perfectly adequate use for these cards and that their undesirablities make them cheaper options for retro computers.
Thank you Phil!
The FX5200 and FX5500 have always been a great go-to for budget 98 era retro gaming.
Great video, Phil. Keep them coming! 😁
This is one of the 'bad' GeForce 5700LE cards. There are actually many that had the full 128 bit memory bus, and those are miles better (and they overclock like crazy, since the core is heavily 'factory underclocked').
Really LE with 128 Bit bus? So just an under locked 5700? That would be awesome.
@@philscomputerlab Yep I have one of these in a Shuttle WinXP build. 128 Bit 256MB , and yes they do o/c very well . Oh and it cost all of about £5 or £6 .
@@philscomputerlab Oh yeah! I have 5700LE 128 bits. The chip is overclocked to 450 MHz, but the memory is slow, 250 (500) MHz in total
(
@@aspire1gig Aha they installed slower RAM. I'll have to my eyes peeled for another 5700 LE.
@@philscomputerlab well, yeah, the RAM is slower compared to that on a GeForce FX 5700Ultra (or better), however it's still pretty fast. Keep an eye out for those with 4ns memory, which will work at 250 (500) MHz out of the box for a total of 8 GB/s of memory bandwidth, and can usually be overclocked up to at least 225 (550) MHz, resulting in 8.8 GB/s of memory bandwidth. These cards will actually be faster than a GeForce 4 Ti 4200/4400, and they sometimes can be found for pretty cheap (at least in my neck of the woods).
It's nice that the GeforceFX series finally found something it is good at :)
"You can't be too picky" rings so true... the amount of high end 90s/early 00's gaming hardware I (and everyone else) threw away that people would actually want these days...
GeForce FX is my "one size fits all" retro GPU these days. My main build has a Quadro FX 1100, roughly equivalent to a GeForce FX 5700. Even these have almost disappeared from the affordable market (except the GeForce FX 5200, lol). But sometimes, a cheap non-5200 shows up on auction. The faster FX cards however run just about anything that you would need Windows 98 for, plus Glide wrapper support.
Yeah, just a couple years ago I got an FX 5500 basically for free, the 5900 series though...no such luck, even 5 years ago.
they need more watt than a no name 300 watt psu thats usually used in retro computers
Saxxon, you need supported drivers, why you still use Quadra fx in 2023, maya, autodesk ? Old projects ? Cad ?
@@lucasrem I didn't mean to say it is in my everyday computer, ahaha. Simply, it was the least expensive option for an FX card for my primary older PC setup. Many Quadro cards show up from bulk packaging on auction. And Nvidia drivers for this era are the same for Quadro and non-Quadro, thankfully.
yeah probably , i had a fx5500 256meg with a amd 64 3 gig semptron and it it got like 7 FPS in world of conflict and COH.... embarrasing it even got beaten by a dirt cheap ati 9250 SE in many games , for $120 AUD in 2005 what a pile of ...nice box art though and thats why people pick it
I like FX cards for Slot 1 builds - good feature set and the performance is more in line with the CPU's capabilities
for Pentium II it's way overkill, but for Coppermine PIII on slot 1, it's ok
Greetings to Phil from germany. I've left this entire generation out, jumped from a Gainward 4200 Ti GS to a WinFast 6800 GT. Unfortunately the card broke after a few weeks and I took an ATI Radeon X800XT.
You didn't miss much, many games ran fine with GeForce4 because games had DirectX 8 support.
What is your favorite driver for win98 Phil? I have any old BFG 6800, but its seems a bit unstable win98. Usually end up going back to my quadro fx2000 because of that. The 6800 works fine in XP.
GeForce 6000 to 9000 series all have a serious design defect where the GPU core's internal solder will eventually crack, which kills the card and it cannot be fixed. My poor 8800 GTS 640MB also died after a short life :(
@@kunka592Do you have some more info / sources about this?
I learned a lot from this video.I'm currently collecting parts to make a W98SE dedicated PC.The scene where you remove the heat sink push pin with the tip of a ballpoint pen was also a great experience for me.The information provided in the comments section was also helpful.
6:23 this tip legit made my vga lcd monitor perfect. thanks so much
Great to hear!
Hey Phil I just wanted to say thanks for your website! It has been a huge help for my retro builds!
Great to hear!
Some of the worst GPUs ever released are turning into retro gems!
Only because the prize cards from back then are too expensive now.
@@MrModaman but still. If you need DX9. A GTX 460 can be had for peanuts in XP. You're not going to play this the same way as you would've in 2004
@@MarcoGPUtuberis using GT 710/750ti a good idea for win xp era gaming?
I still have GeForce 6200 turbocache, dunno how good is that lol
@@bitelaserkhalif A 750 Ti is a great card IMO. But the most important thing is the price. A 710 if you can get it for free, sure, but if you have to pay, there are better cards.
3:51 when you come back to Taipei, i'll get you the wraith prism for that board.
56 FPS average being "not quite playable" in Quake? Back in MY day, we were lucky to see 30 FPS at 640x480!! 😆
You are right 👍
haha yeah i could play quake 1 in 1996 on my dx4100 486 with 16 ram and a 1 meg ISA trident 8900c and i sure wasnt complaining it was perfectly playable but probably 21 FPS max i didnt even notice it . red alert ran fine too i later found out its one of the slowest budget video cards there is but luckily then the CPU did most of the graphics work and that 486 was a beast in 94,95
I just bought this card! Was curious about the performance. Great video 😄
I remember back in the day we always kept a pci fx 5200 around as a spare. It was capable of playing painkiller and medal of honor airborne reasonably well with modest settings.
I had a FX 5800. It was not bad for what it was but man was it completely outclassed by the 6800 GT I replaced it with. I went though well over fifty (mostly AGP) fx 5200's because they were inexpensive drop in upgrades I could offer customers who wanted get into a bit of then modern gaming without buying a whole new PC.
I would rather go outside than use a FX5200!
@@supabass4003 this was during the recession back in 2008. When your gpu died you used whatever you had. And technically we were outside... Living in an RV for a while
It's great to see you talking about the games themselves a bit more! I really enjoy Expendable, but it really doesn't feel that great on PC because of the controls. It handles a lot better on the Dreamcast which is where I mostly played it and, like Incoming, it still looks pretty close to the PC version. I'll have to see if I have it on GOG and do the install/copy-folder method to my '98 box and see how it looks on the CRT monitor.
Yes the controls and getting a bit stale after a while. But amazing graphics for the time and sound also well done
I was about to type this same comment, but searched and found yours. ;-)
The Dreamcast version does have way better controls, and with modern emulation it can be upscaled to look good as well.
As everyone mentions, the 5000 series sucked back in the day for their intended purpose. But they are definitely one of the best alternatives for high end Windows 98 gaming. Budget and performancewise if you are not looking for period correct stuff. I do actually prefer the 5200/5500 PCI versions that Phil used to recommend because they are really versatile and fit in many different projects (and they have a 128bit memory interface). What I do not understand is people saying that 6000 series are a better choice... they should try it with some more games. For very late Windows 98 games it might be fine but for older stuff the compatibility is way worse and they give a lot of trouble with drivers. I would rather save it for a dual boot 98/XP project instead
6000 series is for sure NOT a better choice.
Amazing memories! I still got that Sound Blaster and it still works.
Never used a Geforce FX before.
My first Geforce card was a 6200 which replaced my broken Radeon 7500LE.
That was a huge upgrade and the little 6200 lasted until about 2008 I think, when I replaced it with a second hand 7950gx2.
I have an Fx 5700 I bought couple years ago. Good thing about Fx 5700 is that it’s made on a newer node than the Fx 5800. Runs cooler and thus smaller cooler for good performance. I wish I could find more of it. I’d buy them instantly. I hope I am not hurting my chances by writing here 🤣🤦♂️
Happy Friday Phil! Thank you for sharing on the 5700 LE. Might be cool to see you look at the ATI side with the SE cards for comparison.
Holy crap, I was wondering why my 9x machines looked like static interference when shutting down. Signal looks so much crisper now! Auto-adjust is a great tip.
Great to hear!
I saw Total Annihilation in the background there, paused. What a classic. Gonna replay that soon enough. 😊
That was my first GPU! If only I knew what I was buying back in the day, oh well 😊
3:11 I love the fact you used an AMD AM3 cooler for that socket 754 CPU! i'm currently building a retro PC based on a 754 Socket Foxconn motherboard and i'm planning to get a Wraith Prism for my CPU, also i have this AM3 Cooler as a backup option.
In the GPU side, it's difficult to even try to get a FX 5500, here in latin america the market is flooded with only low-end AGP GPU (mostly ATi or FX 5200)
Great video as always! I really like the tips and tricks you sprinkled in. It's great how particular games become benchmark programs over time. I use Elvira and Dungeon Hack for Dos sound test, and Freespace 2 for win98 video testing. I had to pick up Screamer 4x4 last week as well!
Thanks! Freespace and Freespace 2 are on my list to check out in the future :D Tachyon: The Fringe comes sooner though.
I recently managed to get my hand on a fx5950 ultra and im realy suprised at what it can do. Had alemost no problems whit the card.
I have a Leadtek Winfast Geforce FX 5600 Ultra 256MB VIVO (it captures video!), paired with Audigy 2 ZS and Nglid and an Athlon XP 2600+ with Nforce 2 Ultra, cant ask for more, its really great for 98SE. Good video
Hey your onboard audio is the last Nvidia sound chip.
I still have my DFI 5700LE. Making me want to dig it out and play some games.
I forgot about auto screen adjustment, thanks again Phil.
Always a good Friday when Phil uploads
I really love reviews
Wowza haven't seen Drakan in a long time, used to be one of my favorite games as a kid. Played it on my brothers PIII w/ MX440 Gateway along with Total Annihilation and a host of other games he had. That computer also emulated SNES, Genesis and GBA pretty well surprisingly 😁.
I was so lucky to get my 250Mhz core/128bit Aopen version when I did. Even with just over 5GB/sec memory bandwidth it is really good.
The cooler is better on yours though...mine had an inadequate replacement which caused lockups, and when tested later on couldn't cool a GF4 MX 440-8x (and that card is as slow as the GF2 MX400).
Edit: If you ever get the chance, compare the die of the FX 5700 to the LE - the package should be smaller and labelled as such.
Hey @PhilsComputerLab, I did some testing with a Pentium 4 machine running on an intel 865 chipset motherboard, I ran some benchmarks with a single stick of pc3200 400mhz 256mb ddr memory and with 2 sticks with a total of 512mb and there was a performance difference when running in dual channel mode, I know not all amd motherboards supported dual channel memory, but intel pentium4 era boards do. I also want to mention that tools like Hwinfo and cpu-z running on windows 98se will report the memory being in single channel mode even if the bios reports it as dual channel. You will still see a performance boost with dual channel memory mode.
You are right! Dual channel indeed gives you higher performance 👍
I had a 5700 Ultra back in the day, which was really good performance. I remember I had that card when Half-Life 2 came out. It really blew me away in terms of how detailed the world was, and the 5700 Ultra handled it really well. I've still got my card, although I picked up an ATI 9700 Pro a couple of years ago when they could be found for a good price, so I usually go for that instead if I'm looking for an AGP card.
Those MSATA SSDs are usually my go-to for retro computer storage, and I use those MSATA to IDE converter boards that have the 2.5" plastic cover. I even heat set some M3 nuts into the plastic enclosure so they mount nicely into a 3.5" adapter bracket. For the SSD itself, most of the cheap ones don't have any cache, so their performance is pretty terrible. You can get OK performance with the modules that use more than one NAND flash chip, but still not amazing. You can sometimes tell that the module has cache if there's two chips besides the NAND flash chips. One will be the controller and the other is the cache memory chip. Although it can be a bit difficult to tell if it's got a sticker over the chips.
FX5200 was my first card and actually didnt know the FX was just bad at dx9 but explains why trying to play halo back then was serious struggle yet gta3 ran halfway decent.
I used them and they seemed OK to me. But I didn't play Halo. I played GTA SA on Celeron 1200, and Pentium 4 machines.
I have one FX5900XT in my 98se dual p3 rig. Used driver 77 since I have never had an issue
Multi-color Bic pen??? Been a long time since I've seen one of those. Retro pens... who knew? Terrific video sir!
They sell them new here in Australia 😅
10:56 that's the one i suggested you in your previous " VIA Chipset: Lessons were learned" video
The problem with the 5700 is that for the demanding games you will have to play at low resolution and still have low FPS, and for the slightly older games you can go with a cheaper card. If you stick to DX7 games you don’t really need anything faster than a GeForce MX 460 worth around $10. And for DX8 the target was really 2000/XP, and in that case I can as well use a modern machine.
I think if you can get a MX 460 for $10 then that's a total bargain!
Just a general recommendation to people if they are using CRTs or playing old games that need a lower desktop color mode: use a utility called QRes to change the resolution/frequency/color bit-depth using the command line. You can add it to a .bat file and also have it change the settings back once you are finished with the game. Higher frequencies on CRTs might look blurrier which might be undesirable, so you can set it to some specific vertical Hz, and some games need 16-bit color or 256 colors, so this makes launching games more seamless. This utility seems to work well with my FX 5900 Ultra on Win98SE, but I had some issues using an ATI FireGL X3 (~X800) - it didn't want to change to 70Hz no matter what I did, but I think that's just a weird limitation of the card.
Thanks for the game deeper dive. It's funny because every time I see you use Expendable I think to myself that I would really like that game but I forget to grab it. Now that you went in depth I popped on Steam and it is on sale for less than a dollar. Perfect!
Thank you! I'm going to continue with this game format. The most recent video I produced (won't be out for weeks), I was actually looking forward to continuing with two games I started in another video. Finally, I'm actually playing games not just benchmarking the first scene 😂
I used to have this, it was a great overclocker! OC'd it too much so fixed it via putting in the freezer. Mine was a BFG one..
I like cleaning old computer hardware I get before using them or putting them in storage. It strikes me as a good thing to do as dust can be so hazardous to your chest and can irritate your eyes too :) And I find it a great way to see how the hardware is health wise :) Who knows what's hiding under that dust? I'm yet to find a £50 yet but heres hoping lol :D
I got one of that too in my stock. As i remember Gothic 1 still ran okay with it.
Played on this GPU at 1680x1050 in 2003, it was pretty big upgrade coming from a Riva TNT 2
7:40 i had tons of problems with my 1080p published gaming videos because of the bluriness of the distant stuff
not that the av1 codec is innocent
It's probably going to be more sought after in PCI form, than AGP. The FX 5600 was the fastest card from the FX series that was sold as a PCI card, but those are incredibly hard to find. I only ever saw one for sale, in years of searching, and regret not grabbing it when I had the chance. The FX 5700 LE is probably the second fastest in PCI. I know it's faster than a 5500, which is really not much more than a 5200 with mild clock bumps. I'm fairly certain that it doesn't beat the 5600, though.
I actually just ordered one of these but with the 128 bit VRAM bus to play around with overclocking.
Great find!
i have 5700 ultra in 1 of my machines. paired with x2 6400+. win 8.1
I had this exact same card back in the day.. Played, ut, ut 2004, medal of honor, nfs underground1, dota1 and warcraft3, doom3, quake 3 and 4 and fear alot on it.
This fx5700 le 256mb gave me good 3 to 4 years of great gaming pleasure.. Before it died.
Thankyou geforce 5700Le..
The Le is weaker then the normal 5700.. Despite i was able to play F.E.A.R on it at low settings at 800x600..
Thanks for another one Phil!
I missed the “Can it run Crysis” question 😂. I have a Quadro FX1300 that is very close to the FX5700 you’re showcasing. The main difference it is a PCIe card. And liked the Expendable demonstration. Didn’t know thia tittle, will try it in the near future. Socket 754/939 with via chipset and ES1938 is the perfect DOS/Win98 Machine for me: perfect DOS sound support, and we can slow down the Athlon64 with CPUSPD. Have a nice weekend!
I would love to see Radeon 9550 - my Win 98 and Win XP video card back then.
I have a Chaintech GeForceFX 5700 Ultra 128MB and never thought of using it for DOS games. I recently just refurbished it so it looks brand new and has new Capacitors so it runs like new. I bought it retail from then and never used it. It sat in its box for decades. The Capacitors were probably still good but I didn't want to chance it. Louis Rossman's old videos were of great help in learning how to replace the capacitors. My go to GPUs for that era are definitely the Radeon 9000 series with the Omega Drivers. I have a preference for the Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB which I paired with a Pentium IV 3.2C Northwood CPU (i875 chipset.. never VIA lol) and a Quantum Obsidian X-24 24MB (Dual Voodoo2 on a card using FastVoodoo 4.0 drivers with fix). Windows XP is the OS used. I can play OpenGL on the Voodoo2 SLI as intended (like Half Life) and then switch to DX9 for HL2. 1999-2004 was my most cherished era of PC Hardware and Gaming (College years and LAN parties). The ATi + 3Dfx combo for this specific era grants you the widest game library possible.
Awesome video as always.
Awesome! Also, you are to "blame" for my love of historical bad components that are very nice to use right now :)
Indeed!
16:10 - "Quake released in 1998"
No. Quake released on July 22nd 1996. GLQuake was released 5 months later on January 22nd 1997.
ALBATRON FX5700LEQ GeForce FX 5700LE 256MB 128-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card, I remember this card fondly, I bought it because it could overclock to the regular 5700 for alot cheaper, used it during Vanilla Wow, Half Life 2.
Also I heard from a friend these cards are severely underclocked meant to be more modest so you can do a small overclock and get tons more power
You are right! I tend to not overclock these old cards, slow is good in most cases, but you are right, I have read that the OC close to 400 MHz if you're lucky.
@@philscomputerlab yea I’m buying almost this exact system off of him so he was testing it for me making sure it all worked and I remember he did a very minor OC and it helped drastically in the 1600x1200 resolution and also helped it keep up with the 3400+ he said he only had one of those CPUs tho so he’s selling me a 3000+ and if I feel like I want a upgrade later I can swap it out
Running this video card under driver version 56.64, DirectX 9.0a, and nGlide version 1.05 you can play all of your Windows 98 games under DirectX, OpenGL, and Glide.
They're OK for MAME
I have a FX 5700 VE. Very downclocked Version. But with PowerStrip it rund with 500/500 MHz. Huge and therefore quiet silly 256 MB VRAM. I put a cheap chinese Aftermarket cooler on it. Runs very silent. Back in the day these cards sucked. But now with a Tualatin it is a great pair. DX7 and 8 are perfect. I would say everything up to UT2004. Another plus: There is no extra molex Power connection required. For DX9 a 6600gt or 7600gs is my way to go with my Tualatins. Even Flatout 2 runs quiet good.
I was on a quest for an FX5900 for a "high end" type retro build. All the standard or Ultras were ludicrously priced, but I snagged a 5900XT pretty cheap. A little bit less memory bandwidth and 10MHz less on the core for like a quarter of the price? Sold!
Well done, great card!
If it makes you feel any better, an FX 5900 Ultra with an overpowered CPU like a Core2Duo still isn't fast enough for some late Win98 games (2000-2001) at high-ish resolutions. You need to either lose compatibility (like table fog) going with a Geforce 6000 series or use an ATI like an X800 which has its own problems in my experience with an ATI FireGL X3.
@@kunka592 What sort of games do you refer to here?
@@kunka592 At that point I just use a different computer
I have a fx5700 VE, it has 128-bit memory interface, i think it was a bit of a sleeper card. not many people looked for it.
NVidia's FX series were quite tragic cards but still I have special passion for them. Especialy for Ultra models. I had even FX 5900ultra from ASUS. Real Rolls-Royce among other manufacturers. I am so sad I sold it. I bought ASUS FX5900(non-ultra) few weeks ago. Unfortunately it has Arctic Freezer cooler which is really good but I want this old goodies in original shape. Huh, much better than nothing. FX cards are very very rare today speaking about top models. The same deals whit 6XXX series ultra models.
3:52 Wow, DDR-400 CL3! I'm old enough to remember that, and then some... I'm running a system with DDR3-1600 CL9 and the latest RAM I've recently heard about is DDR5-6400 CL32! Memory latency has NOT improved over the years, it seems it has pretty much stayed the same (10ns give or take).
The 64 bit LE and SE cards never seemed to justify the saving over regular editions (for gaming at least). I'm still haunted by the 9800se I owned which refused to flash into an 8 pipeline pro without artifacts all over the place. I do miss the free performance tweaks from that era like the pencil trick to unlock cpu multiplier. No fancy cooling setups necessary just a pencil and some flashing tools was all you needed. You could get a high end pc for mid range money if luck was on your side - by unlocking the athlon 2500xp into a 3200xp and by flashing a 9800se into a 9800pro.
I had the Geforce FX 5600 XT AGP card. I don’t remember how it performed or what I replaced it with but I know I sold it on eBay Australia in 2021 for $20.
Ah, the irony of watching footage recorded from a 16:10 monitor on my 16:10 monitor with black bars at the top and bottom
16:10 FTW! U2412M* here 🙂
*YUP! Not a FAST gamer anymore(19 inches - 20+kg CRT-days)
2:34 Why didn't I think to use a pen? I would use tweezers or my fingers, but it never occurred to me that a pen is so much easier.
I would be mutch happyer to have this instead of MSI 420mx at that time. Payed 100€ without inflation for that cra..
I got a FX 5900 xt in my win98 system alongside with an athlon XP 2400+ for me, the FX series is the way to go for 98, cause back in the days, my last 98 card was an FX before I switched to windows XP and a 6600GT 🤷🏻♂️
Dood that is freaking awesome.
Oh! One detail you forgot with GLQuake, is to rename or delete the GL patch's "opengl32.dll" file. Otherwise the game complains about not finding a 3Dfx card.
But can it run Crysis....Go Phil, AGP more review.. you are best Phil...
Thank you very much for this good review.
Thanks to you i'm having alot of fun with an fx 5700 for only 30 Euros.
And i can say that it is alot better than the voodoo 3 3000.
Beter screen quality and better performance in dos and windows 98.
Before i had an fx 5200 but that's not comparable.
In most of the games the fx 5700le performs smoother than the Radeon 9600 Pro because of the settings to finetune it. For example Gta3 runs smoother now.
Have fun!
Interesting all of the three Quake run similarly, and Quake 3 runs quite good despite the narrow ram bandwidth.
I had one of this but the 5500 version, the cooler motor is so bad that melted and the fan got stuck, with the luck of the card being so bad/unused that it didn't crash at all on 2d, and just adding a massive aluminium block/cooler fanless did the trick when gaming.
Remember Silent Hill 2 and other shader games not working at all and using a program to overcome that, you only lost a couple of water or silly effects.
Next card I got was an ATI 1950XT and kept on the red side of things forever just because that bad experience with the geforces.
I wonder how this card compares to an FX5500? I have two of those in two builds, and they are quite capable as well.
The FX5500 is faster if 128bit and clocked decently, a lot slower than a 128bit FX5700LE however, even with the 5500 having DDR472 vs DDR320 on the 5700LE.
I use this card since years, dirt cheap and perfectly good performance!
Watching as I'm cleaning an ATI 128 pro card I got from a flea market for less than $2 :P hopefully it works.
mine is a xfx pci variant with a cooler thats like a work of art....ebay sellers are calling it a rare version?
Ever tried it on a Socket 7?
@@dallesamllhals9161 for Socket 7 it's f*cking overkill
still not as overkill as a RTX 3070 Ti in a Socket 8 Pentium Pro 200 system tho (yes that's real, someone actually tried that with a PCIe to PCI adapter and it worked)
Wow. I always thought you were like 20 or 25 judging by your voice in the earlier videos. Your voice sounds pretty young. xD
Young at heart :D
Just found a super rare Geforce 5700 Ultra from Gainward in the trash....I hope it still works.
Amazing 😍
@@philscomputerlab I didn't even saw them in stores back then. It's the 128MB Variant. There are spots on the back for more. It has RAM coolers! Now I need to find something to plug in to. Maybe I'll find my Athlon64 somewhere. It would be super sweet if that thing works. Needs a molex power cable though.
@@AmstradExin Welcome to Retro Gaming 😋
For modern LCD screens with only HDMI, a DVI to HDMI cable will work best. No need to mess with VGA and auto adjust. Any card with DVI will work because HDMI is an extension of the DVI standard.
On this monitor 1600x1200 only shows up through VGA. There are also benefits with DOS, but I agree, if you can use digital, go for it 😁
I think I have more FX cards than any other generation. FX 5700 Ultra, Quadro FX 3000, Quadro FX 1300 and a PCX 5750.
Amazing collection!
I remember having this card in my pentium 4 HT (from a fx5200) I had no performance gain at all.
Gladly I didn't bough the FX5700LE but I found it in a case that was on the street.
I always called LE cards: "Low edition, haha"
common reading mistake... Sound Blaster [Liv!], cause it is not marked as Life [Lajf] :))
maybe from like "Live that sound!" ... instead of "Life is sound."
You need to be careful using a dry brush on dusty card: static discharge can damage the card.
It is better to wash the card using isopropyl alcohol: spry and toothbrush.
Better than new!
I had one back in the day. I couldnt figure out why my little brothers geforce 4 was faster at the time. how clueless i was
the 900 texture and pixelfillrate tells is lowperforming but you get a quality picture (orgina has 1700/1700) - You should be able to play Unreal and Unreal Tournament or even lauch a game from 2004 -Ut2004 since i its lowest requirement are nvidia tnt2 but the cpu can/must be a duron 700 ( or p3 )-I assume the first shareware version has the lowest requirement version 1066? - 2225 is a differnt matter. A 550 K6 might be able with right config with out a heavey browser like ie5 which takes over the win9x windows
Awesome Phil,I used 17 nvidia 5700 ultras in my İnternet Cafe in Ankara,in Turkey.Thursday nights was reserved for the Police Girls playing counter strike 1.3 Awesome times mate.Still have two of them left mate if your interested I can send you one down under mate. .
Oh that is wonderful, thank you for sharing. Greetings to Turkey 🙂
One to me please
I bought an FX5600XT 128bit card, quite like it, yea its ram is only 400mhz, but its 128bit and unlike the FX5200 it does support Z color compression so its memory goes further, also the FX 5600XT cards tend to be cheap right now and use the early drivers just fine.
I have a 5200 ultra and 5700le and the 5700le is faster and cooler running. I believe my version is 128-bit memory due to having no empty memory spots on the board. It runs perfectly stable in a 440bx with a p3 @ 133fsb
Lol my second video card it allowed me to play theif which my MX could not. It wasn't until I got a 6800 ultra is when I realized these older Nvidia cards sucked. The 800xt did good to I remember them being close.
Expendables desperately needs a Robotron 2084/Super Stardust twin-stick mod, and then it would be a blast.
Anyway, sometimes with cheap graphics cards, I like to say it's only as bad as the game is new. Play an old enough game and any graphics card is good!*
*except the Alliance AT3D
I ran into a bunch of FX5200 pci cards forever ago and almost tossed them - glad I didn’t, because they are AMAZING in windows 98 computers that don’t have AGP slots