AGP video card: BFG Tech Geforce 7300gt AGP

does anyone know what the bus voltage specs are? all it would say is
that it fits in a AGP 2.0/3.0 or universal bus slot. no mention if its
3.0 or 5.0 voltage.

I'd ask BFG Tech, but they seem to have gone belly up.
--
Dilbert Firestorm

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dilbert firestorm wrote:
does anyone know what the bus voltage specs are? all it would say is
that it fits in a AGP 2.0/3.0 or universal bus slot. no mention if its
3.0 or 5.0 voltage.

I'd ask BFG Tech, but they seem to have gone belly up.

And the canonical site for "mix n' match AGP" isn't
going to have every card on it. But it is an excellent
primer on how to be successful at buying cards.

http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html

The voltages are 3.3V, 1.5V, 0.8V, with the signal amplitude
of the last one coming from a 1.5V supply. So there are only
two power sources, 3.3V and 1.5V. And three amplitudes
of signals, 3.3V, 1.5V, and 0.8V. These are practical implementations,
rather than theoretical ones. One combination was never made.
The lower the bus amplitude, the faster they try to run it.

Supply Bus amplitude
3.3V 3.3V
1.5V 1.5V
1.5V 0.8V (8X speeds 2133MB/sec)

Keys on the motherboard, prevent the wrong cards from plugging
in. There are lots of motherboards that are "1.5V only". And
there are video cards that are universal.

The 7300GT would be a bridged card, using a PCI Express GPU
and the NVidia HSI chip. (ATI also made a bridge chip
for their fleet, and it was called Rialto. They use pink
insulation material, making it easy to spot the
presence of a Rialto.) Both chips are out of production,
making it hard to produce bridged AGP cards any more.
There are still a few "native" AGP GPU chips, but probably
a bit on the gutless side, and not likely to have Win8 or
Win10 drivers.

BFG went out of business years ago, and part of the legacy,
was selling off batches of their warranty replacement cards.
The card in my current computer (rather old), was obtained
for $65 from a batch of those. Those are brand new cards
at clearance prices. BFG had some sort of lifetime warranty,
so had to keep a stock of cards, just in case.

So really, in terms of what to expect from 7300GT, we need
two things:

1) Picture to verify HSI is present.
2) Playtool table entry with an HSI on it. As any
other card will have whatever spec the HSI has.

In this picture, you can see the HSI under the lower
heatsink. Being a bridge chip, it sits in the signal
flow, between the AGP slot on the bottom edge of
the card, and the PCI Express GPU above it.

http://proline.pl/pic/galaxy-7300gt-256-ag_0.jpg

That card is keyed universal, and has an Aux power
connector on the end (which happens to be a Molex
flavor, rather than a PCI Express 2x3 or something).

Now, a 6600 would use HSI, and yet it is rated
this way in the Playtool table:

NVIDIA GeForce 6600 Universal 1.5V AGP 3.0 Card

So if we believed Playtool, the card should have only
a 1.5V slot on it, like this example.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...2009-01-27.jpg

Yet I can find other cards, with both slots cut, implying
they want to see the video card exposed to motherboards
that only have 3.3V. That doesn't seem likely somehow.

The Wiki article doesn't hint at capability. I don't
think I've ever seen a decent "history" for HSI,
and don't know if they made more than one version
or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_Interconnect

So, taken at face value, I would pair the 7300GT with
a 1.5V only motherboard. As my best guess. I wouldn't
plug that 7300GT into my 440BX motherboard for example,
as it is a 3.3V only motherboard. And I don't trust
that they've cut the second slot in it. YMMV of course.

I have taken cards which have the 3.3V slot cut, and
plugged them into my year 2000 or so 440BX AGP slot,
and the BIOS only "beeped" and the screen didn't light up.
That was probably the bus regulator conking out (overload),
which was a problem back then. Using a linear regulator
to run a six amp load or so. Later motherboards fixed that,
and the manufacturers figured out what range of currents
needed to be supported.

In conclusion, I would buy the 7300GT. Make sure it
has drivers for your OS. And I wouldn't place a high
priority on sticking it on really old motherboards
(like my 440BX based board). Try pairing it with
a more modern 1.5V-only motherboard.

What would normally happen, is a card like the
7300GT has the TYPEDET# signal on it, grounded
(logic zero). That says "I prefer 1.5V rail". If
the motherboard is universal, the motherboard
delivers 1.5V as instructed. If the motherboard
is not universal, it might be 3.3V only (and the
keying system is supposed to prevent illegal combos).
The motherboard can be a more modern 1.5V-only, in
which case it makes 1.5V anyway (it doesn't
need to check TYPEDET# in that case). So given a
universal motherboard (no keys sticking up),
the 7300GT TYPEDET# signal says "gimme 1.5V".
If the motherboard is 1.5V only, the state of
TYPEDET# is moot.

This is going mostly from memory - it's been a while
since an AGP question came up.

HTH,
Paul

NOTE: Not an OS issue. Only a hardware issue. Post incorrectly
submitted to unrelated newsgroups. I omitted the OS newsgroup in my
reply.

Original newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, comp.os.os2.misc
Newsgroups in reply: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt

dilbert firestorm wrote:

does anyone know what the bus voltage specs are? all it would say is
that it fits in a AGP 2.0/3.0 or universal bus slot. no mention if its
3.0 or 5.0 voltage.

I'd ask BFG Tech, but they seem to have gone belly up.

http://www.cnet.com/products/bfg-gef...x-512mb/specs/

That says the card supports 8X.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Graphics_Port

That says the 8X cards required an AGP 3.0 which added 0.8V support but
still supported the 4X mode which is at 1.5V. If you scroll down to the
"Compatibility" section, you will see a diagram of the different slot
configurations. The cards are keyed to the proper slot. That means you
cannot put an older 3.3V card into a 1.5V slot. Hopefully your slot is
keyed (has male protrusions that fit into the card's female keys) and is
not an AGP universal slot with no keying.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511nhg%2BiR3L.jpg

That shows the BFG card has 2 female keys. It will fit into the older
3.3V slot or the newer 1.5V. Basically, BFG as many others make AGP
cards that are universal by having slots for both keyings. The critical
factor is the *motherboard* supports 8X.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=BFGR73512GT

That says "Available AGP 2.0 slot or better". That's a motherboard
requirement.

http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html

"If a video card has the 3.3 volt slot, then it can use 3.3 volt
signaling. AGP 2.0 added the 1.5 volt slot on cards which could use 1.5
volt signaling. If the card has both slots then it can use both
signaling voltages."

You have a 2-slot keyed AGP video card. You never mentioned the
motherboard model and brand so it's up to you to find out which AGP
modes the motherboard supports. If this video card is slid into a mobo
that has only the 1.5 key in its slot, than 4X is the higher mode that
the video card will support. You need a mobo with either a 2-key slot
or a universal (no key) slot. It's been too long to be sure but I don't
recall seeing a mobo with a universal slot; however, such a mobo would
have to support both 1.5V and 3.3V signalling. There's a mobo types
table in the last article.

Also, be sure when inserting an AGP card that you push it fully into the
slot. I had a friend that worked on a video problem for over a month.
I looked at it, pulled out the card, and when I re-inserted I pushed
past a 2nd indent and the video worked.

Paul wrote:
In conclusion, I would buy the 7300GT. Make sure it
has drivers for your OS.

Seems SNAP only support up to the 6600 series. Of course it should run
in VESA mode.
Dave

On 7/9/2015 5:13 PM, VanguardLH wrote:

NOTE: Not an OS issue. Only a hardware issue. Post incorrectly
submitted to unrelated newsgroups. I omitted the OS newsgroup in my
reply.

Original newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, comp.os.os2.misc
Newsgroups in reply: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt

fyi, it was posted to the OS/2 misc because OS2 group does not have a
hardware group.

thanx for the links. its very informative.


You have a 2-slot keyed AGP video card. You never mentioned the
motherboard model and brand so it's up to you to find out which AGP
modes the motherboard supports. If this video card is slid into a mobo
that has only the 1.5 key in its slot, than 4X is the higher mode that
the video card will support. You need a mobo with either a 2-key slot
or a universal (no key) slot. It's been too long to be sure but I don't
recall seeing a mobo with a universal slot; however, such a mobo would
have to support both 1.5V and 3.3V signalling. There's a mobo types
table in the last article.

Also, be sure when inserting an AGP card that you push it fully into the
slot. I had a friend that worked on a video problem for over a month.
I looked at it, pulled out the card, and when I re-inserted I pushed
past a 2nd indent and the video worked.


See the Pentium 4 mother board thread. its explained there.

the video card is the reason why I'm looking for a compatible P4 AGP
motherboard. It doesn't work on my current DFI P3-1ghz mobo.

actually, I did not chose this board, my previous P3 board died and the
DFI was the replacement put in by the PC repair shop.

I was having a bit of trouble getting the right search terms googling
for the mobo on google shop and amazon. I was getting some hits, but
not for the right AGP board.
--
Dilbert Firestorm

remove *byteme* to email me

On Thu, 9 Jul 2015 20:32:35 -0500, dilbert firestorm
wrote:

actually, I did not chose this board, my previous P3 board died and the
DFI was the replacement put in by the PC repair shop.

My god, that's an old one...DFI. Used to a premier quality board in
586 days and such.

The early ATI series Radeon 80xx 90xx AGP were excellent for that
board, keeping their slot and voltage placements (as much as possible)
backwards compliant.

On Sat, 11 Jul 2015 01:20:06 -0400, Flasherly
wrote:

The early ATI series Radeon 80xx 90xx AGP

Wait... My first was a 7000 series. Did, had 'em all at one
different points.