Just got (cheap) my first fake card, so time has come to create new category on site. Fakes usually uses simple trick of modding card id and name in bios, so drivers reports older card as new model. This could lead to unexpected behaviour due drivers using tricks for entirely different chip architecture. From new owners point of view this could be disaster, but for collectors are these cards interesting pieces of shady history.

Old charts made on "little bit" outdated Flash technology has been upgraded to PHP versions. These are loading data directly from cards articles, so they are always updated. Also added more charts, so you can now see

• Number of transistors
• Fillrate
• Texel rate
• Triangle rate
• Shaders power
• Power consumption
• Price
• Memory bandwidth
• Core clocks

Now is also possible to search for any card by its name, just use text search in your browser.

Charts in benchmarks section been updated with 100+ more cards and color bars.

Just updated charts with benchmarks....added 42 new results.

Nothing to do, a lot of free time. No job available in my area, so started new site mostly for czech hardware collectors. Because theres a lot of them, but many don't have any site or its really outdated. Its based on same engine as this site, so advanced search would be possible. Only exception is dual language text with Czech and English languages. It's in starting phase, so far only one CPU collector is working on it with me, but got some more promises from other collectors. So i hope, there will be also home computers, accessories and other hardware later. You can check progress at  http://old-computers.cz


Btw: due increasing spammers activies is disabled autopublishing of comments under articles. They will be visible only after mine confirmation. So don't worry about glitches in Matrix, your comment will appear, just little bit later.

Finally beated mine laziness and added very popular button between many site owners. Paypal donate button spawned on left side under main menu. So if you like site and want to support me, you can now do it by any amount you like. Money will be spend on domain and server hosting fees. So far these are paid by me and also by advertisments revenues.

Server hosting costs me now about 13.5 euro - thats about $15 per year. Domain fee (for adress vgamuseum.info) is $13.17 per year. So, if i get around $29 from donations, i will disable showing advertisments for that year. Another option is better server hosting. So far im using cheaper NoLimit webhosting, but theres also optional NoLimit Extra hosting for almost $59 (54 euro) per year. You can visit parameters of hosting on this link. If you like to have faster site, you can donate for this optional speed improvements.

Another item id' like to see on site is Compare for K2 plugin from Styleware. I already payed them 20 euro for that great search plugin on site (see collections and advanced search - they both using styleware search plugin). So if you like to have compare options for each card on site, you can donate 20 euro and i will buy and install this plugin. Compare is taking data from additional info table in every article, so things like bus, year, fillrate, texel rate, core and memory speeds can be compared between as many cards as you like. You can see demo of this feature on Styleware site. Feel free to inform me about other plugins you like to see on site....Site works on Joomla with K2 plugin, so anything compactible with these can be used. Sadly plugin can't work with articles without filled values - these are not always known, so only option is to find some programmer with a lot of free time, to do custom compare....

Another usefull thing to buy from donations could be universal programmer. Some guys ask me sometimes about bios images from specific cards. I have 2 boxes of bios and core chips from nonworking cards in mine collection. But no device to read data from bios chips. But i have no use for that bios files, so no reason for me to spend money and time on device, which i dont need. I could backup all these bios chips and put files on site, but will not spend money on that device. So you can donate for buying universal programmer TL866CS. Price is around $42. Buyed it already. You may notice some updates to few nonpc cards - added there bios downloads.

I enabled option for sending info with donations, so feel free to send me message on what i should spend your donation. Can also publish your name or company name/link in some kind of donor list, if youre interested. Feel free also sending me your ideas, how to spend donations (comments under article should be working or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

As you might noticed, i started new project called CPU tree. Its same as VGA tree, but aimed on microprocessors. Some people asked years ago about this and i answered them, that they must do it, not me. Well years passed, i lost mine job and im from start of year still unemployed and also bored. So i tell myself that someone should do it. This time i called for help at CPU World forums - http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25419 , because im not CPU collector and theres a lot more of CPU history. You can join project too, if you like. By doin whole tree, or just pointing on missing CPU's or informations. Feel free to use cpu world forum or comments under CPU tree (im watching both).

I spended last month by creating charts. They require flash and are filled by data from database of cards. Sadly i'm unable (my knowledge of php is under absolute zero) to do proper php script for doin it automaticaly. So im exporting manually data for charts from Mysql database. This is reason, why it won't be updated much frequently. Charts have it's own category in main menu and so far you can find there graphs sorted by number of transistors, pixel and texel fillrate, price, memory bandwidth and frequency. Can do also other like core frequency or shader rate (won't be big) if youre interested. All numbers are from reference cards, overclocked or underclocked versions are not included. 

Many of you maybe already noticed, that we missing good graphics card info software. There are only few ones and almost all of them are not usefull for people with retro cards. Lets see what we have....

HWinfo - http://www.hwinfo.com - its free, but shows only basic info and usefull only for modern cards.

GPU-Z - http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ - well known free software used everywhere. Sadly it works only on Win XP SP3 and never OS, requires installed card drivers to show all info and its useless for anything older than year 2000. Author won't support older cards in future. It will be pointless anyway, because most of these cards won't have drivers for these modern OS.

PowerStrip 2.78 - http://entechtaiwan.com/util/ps2.shtm - very old shareware, that is supported only in Win9x/2000. New version drops support for old cards. It was most common software used for overclocking less known cards. But many cards missing info and clocks are not always right.

Aida64 - http://www.aida64.com - being still developed shareware info tool. Today its best available software showing not only info about your cards, but also DirectX functions and OpenGL extensions. Another great thing is that its still working in Windows 98. Sadly also this sofware isn't perfect, because it still have sometimes blank info pages at some old cards. And thats why i writed this short article.

I was doing recently small tests of 1st generation 3D cards (43 of them) in mine collection compared with some other mostly OEM chips. So i also saved and updated reports from these cards on site. Not all cards were supported by Aida so i sended one report to Aida developers to see their reaction. They thanked for report and said, that support of pre GPU (=anything older than Geforce 256) cards is mostly accidental and they are not planning to extend it for any old not supported cards. This means that we probably never see any software capable of showing clocks and info about old cards in our collections and retro PC. Aida was mine last hope, but its lost now. Chances for finding someone new doing info software are next to none. 

Here is mine email and reply i got.

Hi Vlask,


Thank you for submitting your reports to us.  Quite frankly, the GPU page
was originally designed to show information on GPUs, just as the name of the
page suggests.  We never intended to add legacy video chips on that page,
although to some degree we've added a few of those a few years ago, just for
completeness, but stopped at a certain point and instead focused on new
chips.  And I'm afraid we have no plans to expand the list of supported
legacy non-GPU video chips, or legacy video chips in general.

BTW, when it comes ATI/AMD video chips, AIDA64 should support all of them
starting from the Rage128 line.  So anything preceding that line will not be
supported.


Best Regards,
Tamas Miklos

FinalWire Ltd.
http://www.aida64.com
 

-----Original Message-----
AIDA64 Extreme 5.20.3407 Beta (c) 1995-2015 FinalWire Ltd.

Report file submit on 8th April 2015, 13:59

Full Name: Vlask
E-mail Address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Computer Name: V6F3S8
User Name: .

CPU Type: Intel Pentium IIIE, 1000 MHz (7.5 x 133)  [Coppermine]
Motherboard Name: Gigabyte GA-6OXET(-C)
Motherboard Chipset: Intel Solano i815EP
Video Adapter: ATI Xpert 98 AGP2X Video Adapter  [1002 4742] [1002 0084]
CPUID CPU Name: 
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 98 SE 4.10.4.10.2222A (32-bit)
PCI Devices: 8086-1130 8086-1131 8086-244E 8086-2440 8086-244B 8086-2442
8086-2443 8086-2444 1002-4742 10EC-8139
USB Devices: 

Award BIOS Type: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Award BIOS Message: Intel 815 AGPSet BIOS for 6OXET F7

DMI MB Manufacturer: Giga-Byte Technology Co., LTD
DMI MB Product: i815-ITE8712
DMI MB Version: 1.x
DMI SYS Manufacturer: 
DMI SYS Product: 
DMI SYS Version: 
DMI BIOS Version: 6.00 PG

[[[ Comment ]]]

Missing all info about card - ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP 2x 8MB SDR clocked to
74,8/99,8 MHz according to Powerstrip. Reply if you're interested in sending
reports of other retro cards missing info in Aida. From recently tested
cards you also missing info (blank screen GPU) about Cirrus Logic 5465
(Laguna 3D), Chromatic Mpact2, 3Dlabs Permedia 2V, Permedia 1, ATI RAGE
II+DVD, Rage LT PRO, Number Nine Revolution 3D, Revolution IV, SiS 305.

Just updated graphs you can find in benchmarks menu. They're based on Flash. For these without flash are in benchmarks article almost all images of graphs and you can also download them from attachments under each graph article. New are PC Player Benchmarks not previously released (had too few numbers). 

I wanted to use same plugin for making graphs from card database parameters like Fillrate, Texelrate - from everything with numbers, but need help with Php coding. Have to find 1st someone able make me i hope small php script for transfering data to simple format used by graph plugin. If you think that you can help, then see this thread describing mine problem also with suggested solution by K2 developer.

Graphs are based on Flashchart plugin. Sample codes can be found on this adress. You can This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..