Bad day, so I'm building a computer.

digitalwanderer

digitalwanderer

wandering
Legend
My son's best friend asked me if I could soup up his PC a bit and I said sure, up until his Mom dropped it off and I found out it was a 486 w/16Mb! :oops:

I felt bad for the little guy, so I'm whipping him up a bit better one. I still got my son's old PIII800@880 w/512Mb that I'd been planning to make a retro box out of for the kitchen, but I figure an 8 year old would get a hell of a lot more out of it.

I ripped a 40Gb HD from my son's new rig, (he still has an 80Gb that's half empty), and I pulled my old V5 5500 from my cabinet. I hate parting with the card, but I figure it's more of a loaner until I can find him something a bit more up to date.

The thing is being stubborn about having its HD rebuilt, but I think I'm past the worst of it....anyone know what the current best V5 drivers are for XP?
 
Heh, yeah the 3dfx driver scene is crazy.

I'm using some drivers called "AmigaMerlin" for a Banshee and a Voodoo3. They work really well.
 
Yeah, I just found the Amegamerlin 3.1's and think those are what I'll use...I think I liked them last time I played with the card. The name rings a bell and the reviews on 'em look excellent.

They got a set to play Doom3 with! :oops:
 
Let us know what the lil guy thinks of his shiny "new" PC, digi! :)

As for games for him to play, what about Doom Collector's Edition along with the Doomsday source port? :D Awesome visuals! Should also run fast on the card in okayish resolutions, not that I think the kid'll bitch about it even if the game has to run at 640. :)

HMMMM... 640 with 4xAA would probably look really nice since there's so many alpha textures used in the Doom games, all the monsters, decorations, some walls etc...!
 
OMG, just for giggles I loaded up RTCW and it's running great at 800x600 high details! :oops:

Holy spit, this thing might actually game!
 
My P3 700 with an 8500 is plenty for RTCW. It's basically Q3, so anything above 500MHz should do fine.
 
I didn't think the V5 could handle it, but I'm getting 50fps with low-dips of only 30fps.

I can put some games on this sucker for him, this is great! :D
 
sucker :p

Kids hmm.. lets ask him to soup it up so I get a new computer

But it is better than leaving the parts sitting in a box being useless.
 
Sxotty said:
sucker :p

Kids hmm.. lets ask him to soup it up so I get a new computer
Click to expand...
Yeah, but it's a GOOD THING(tm) anyways...I think kids need computers and I'm sure it ain't gonna hurt him. ;)

But it is better than leaving the parts sitting in a box being useless.
Click to expand...
Way true that, nothing is sadder to me than unused technology....I'd much rather someone be getting something out of it.

Loading it up now, probably go and install it either this afternoon or tomorrow.
 
Saem said:
Did the V5500 ever get working Win2k/XP drivers?
Click to expand...
Unofficially, yes...and they work pretty amazingly well! :oops:

Just got ST:EF up and running well too...but it did NOT like NFSU. :(

OpenGL seems good, the d3d ain't as strong....but it runs Spiderman2. ;)
 
Oh so both chips end up being used rather than the problem of not being able to view them as one or whatever?
 
Digitalwanderer, RTCW is rated "M", or "suitable for persons 15 or over" ;)
are you sure the 8 year old kid won't have nightmares playing it?

I'm happy for the kid. Is his mother good looking? ;)

I also had my old PC lying unused, I sold it for €150 (just the central unit, without monitor, keyboard etc..) to a neighbour family.
They first asked me to update their old 486, 16MB, Win95 so that they could benefit from broadband, but as that would have been almost impossible, I offered them my old PII300MHz, 160MB main memory, 16MB nVidia TNT1, Win98SE, 13GB HD.

I put Midtown Madness, Rollcage and VRally on it. I hadn't played MM for years on that old rig, but I had a memory it looked much more better and ran at a higher framerate than it did :? Rolcage did look quite good even by today's standards!

I maybe would have given it for free, if they had a handsome 20+ year old son or if the husband was even remotely attractive.... ;)
 
Saem said:
Check with the boys mom otherwise your ass could be grass.
Click to expand...
Oh, I will....it's just a whole lot easier to delete games than it is to install 'em. ;)

Think UT is family safe enough? DeusEx runs well on it too.....
 
How about a car game, a flight sim, an rts, the sims (God forbid. I will have to kill you, out of love for the human race, if you convert another person, I hope you understand). Sim City is a good call, some of those Lego games could be very cool.
 
and dont forget to give him VirtuaGirl. every 8 year old boy needs VirtuaGirl on their PC.
 
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