Just read in some thread a sceptical post by patience about existence of rare ATI cards.

Well, for a few years i collected a pictures of strange videocards so I definitely can tell you that ATI and NVidia have plenty of interesting cards (even FX 5800 Ultra is quite rare as only a few thousands were made - that's nothing for worldwide market:)). But pictures are boring so i switched to actual cards :)

Here is a photo of my ATI prototype card:

http://itc.ua/img/testlab/2003/aticompetition1.jpg

And a few links to other photos of the item:
http://itc.ua/img/testlab/2003/aticompetition2.jpg - back side
http://itc.ua/img/testlab/2003/aticompetition3.jpg - sticker
http://itc.ua/img/testlab/2003/aticompetition4.jpg - GPU
http://itc.ua/img/testlab/2003/aticompetition5.jpg - Testing (notice monitor connection!)

This is one of 20 produced AGP cards with ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 chip which were used for internal testing of this notebook-oriented GPU. It has 64 Mb of DDR memory: one more weird thing - I've never seen 4.5 ns BGA chips from Samsung! Clocks are 250/400 MHz for this unit and 220/360 for second card. It have 2 DVI connectors (one in very strange place!) and one unidentified connector...

I won this card year ago in ATI/DriverHeaven Extreme Overclocking Competition (just was lucky enough to get Pentium 4 Extreme Edition in October 2003 - first in the world amongst xtreme OCing people). The second similar card owned by my pal Laikrodiz: he won it in the same contest by showing people his mutilated Frankenstein Radeon 9500 NP. Actually his R9500 deserved prize: we resoldered 2.5 ns memory from FX 5600 Ultra, replaced half of capacitors, did 4 voltmods, added dedicated watercooling system, spent enough time to find the right BIOS not mentioning some everyday mods like unlocking 8 pipilenes... Card overclocked like hell, giving over 24600 points in 3DMark 2001... Still a second place in the world ranking for R300-based cards :)

So just wanted to show this unique piece of non-3dfx hardware :)

Can you give us more info on rare cards form Ati and Nvidia. Another rare card is that dual r350 board from Sapphire.

I love it! Too cool!

@ALT-F13,
Beautiful Card! ;D

Regards,
Oscar

What is the good pupose of that DVI connector near the VESA connector, this is the most strangest VGA card I've ever seen.

It is just a test card. Completely useless for normal use, but usefull for testing.

Thanks everybody. Yep definitely a gem of my collection, though not 3dfx-branded...

@3Dfx_tweaker
I'll try to gather my pictures and comments in one place on my site ModLabs.net (not-3dfx related, its a biggest russian casemodding/Xtreme OC resource). Maybe it'll be a article about some rare hardware... Just plz be patient because i'm very busy now with current tasks. But i will do that, i promise.

Dual R350 card from Sapphire is currently owned by my friend, THE collector of videocards - Andrew Worobiew from iXBT.com (he owns just loads of different 3D cards). You might remember his recent round-up for 101 videocard 1999-2004: i saw recently a link on one of 3dfx fan forums. I'll post link here, hope this article has english version.

Regarding "useless card". It is pretty normal in all terms except look: detects by drivers as Mobility Radeon 9000, works great in 2D and 3D. Overclocks good. Laikrodiz done a 3DMark 2k1 world record for Mobility 9000 on this card, about 9600 points...
Xtreme OCing and 3DMark benching is my main hobby thats why i return to this often in my posts;) Gonna get more than TM30 on V5 5500 but need a decent Athlon XP rig for that. And i believe voltmodded/waterchilled V5 5500 should go much over 210-220 MHz...

Obi-Wan_Kenobi
There a two normal DVI connectors (includind top-mounted one) and one weird - dunno for what it is used. I believe this should connect to notebook TFT panel or such...

Your friend is a very lucky guy!!!!!
I thought it was difficult to purchase such cards in Russia. I meant useless in sence of using it mobile  ;).
But there was lately one partiular card that looked amazingly strange, I believe it was posted here.

@3Dfx_tweaker
Well, actually to _buy_ here something unusual you should be freaking lucky ;) In average even V3 PCI costs over $30 and is hard to find still...

Both these pseudo-mobile cards were won by me and Laikrodiz in a contest held by ATI directly, not bought.

I also have an engeneering sample of reference Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition (funny it has 525/1150 clocks instead of normal 525/1125) and reference NVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra but actually except some stickers and BIOS they are just average cards so nothing so special. I use first one as my main card now, voltmodded and watercooled it does 675/1250 MHz. Gonna mount my phase-change cooling on it and see how far it will go with FX-55 (last time i worked with card i had only FX-53@3GHz and unlucky ASUS A8V Deluxe sample)...

Andrew Worobiew is a video hardware editor for 8 years so his collection is mostly the reviewing samples from vendors. I never asked how many cards he have exactly but the whole wall in the room is decorated by bare cards (no boxes!) side-to-side. I'll post a pic tomorrow - sry now I reply laying in bed with Pocket PC + GPRS, so speed is really low and i'm to lazy to find it :)... That dual R350 was a present to him from Sapphire representative.

What "amazingly strange" card are you talking about?

I received your PM hope you don't mind i'll reply here ;) When I'll have free time we'll do a research for voltmodding at least for Voodoo 2 and Voodoo 5 5500. I'll publish guides and give links in this forum as soon as it will be completed but can't promise anything right now regarding terms.

Also I checked V5 5500 for RAM chips. Those Hyindai 6 ns are really weak, i believe i'll replace it by something more OCing-friendly... Just don't want to mutilate the only V5 5500 card i have _at the moment_, as soon as i will find one more, this will go to the lab :) After re-soldering BGA memory chips with old-fashioned electric oven and broken hairdryer (it do xtreme heat instead of normal) it should be an easy task...

As for rare NVidia cards, THE most interesting ones were produced by Canopus Japan. They were almost the same what Quantum3D is for 3dfx :) Not in terms of close relations but in card production. Japanese made unique PCBs for each NV chip until GeForce FX 5800 - i never saw any Canopus-branded FX cards unfortunately.
How do you like i.e. GeForce 256 with additional power connector? http://www.hardwarehistory.com/images/oldhard/video/spectra7400.jpg (378 KB) (Pic not mine:))

Any Canopus boards after Riva TNT is very hard to find outside Japan, unfortunately :(

And as i promised - pics of Andrew Worobiew collection:
http://ixbt.com/video2/images/over2k4/collage1.jpg
http://ixbt.com/video2/images/over2k4/collage2.jpg
http://ixbt.com/video2/images/over2k4/collage3.jpg

i also got some cards, not really rare but unusual...

http://vbs1.xn--mareilehppner-pmb.de/pics/quadro4nvs400/2.jpg

Quandro 4 NVS? Definitely nice!

wrote on 17.11.04 at 12:56:55:

As for rare NVidia cards, THE most interesting ones were produced by Canopus Japan. They were almost the same what Quantum3D is for 3dfx :) Not in terms of close relations but in card production. Japanese made unique PCBs for each NV chip until GeForce FX 5800 - i never saw any Canopus-branded FX cards unfortunately. How do you like i.e. GeForce 256 with additional power connector? http://www.hardwarehistory.com/images/oldhard/video/spectra7400.jpg (378 KB) (Pic not mine:)) Any Canopus boards after Riva TNT is very hard to find outside Japan, unfortunately :( And as i promised - pics of Andrew Worobiew collection: http://ixbt.com/video2/images/over2k4/collage1.jpg http://ixbt.com/video2/images/over2k4/collage2.jpg http://ixbt.com/video2/images/over2k4/collage3.jpg

:o :o :o :o :o

WADDAAAAAAAAAAHELL!

*can't say anything*

:o :o :o

that's just... deadly...

wrote on 17.11.04 at 12:56:55:

As for rare NVidia cards, THE most interesting ones were produced by Canopus Japan. They were almost the same what Quantum3D is for 3dfx :) Not in terms of close relations but in card production. Japanese made unique PCBs for each NV chip until GeForce FX 5800 - i never saw any Canopus-branded FX cards unfortunately. How do you like i.e. GeForce 256 with additional power connector? http://www.hardwarehistory.com/images/oldhard/video/spectra7400.jpg (378 KB) (Pic not mine:)) Any Canopus boards after Riva TNT is very hard to find outside Japan, unfortunately :( And as i promised - pics of Andrew Worobiew collection: http://ixbt.com/video2/images/over2k4/collage1.jpg http://ixbt.com/video2/images/over2k4/collage2.jpg http://ixbt.com/video2/images/over2k4/collage3.jpg

Hmm the 3 Pics are not showing up :( Can someone host them?

wrote on 17.11.04 at 13:12:38:

i also got some cards, not really rare but unusual... http://vbs1.xn--mareilehppner-pmb.de/pics/quadro4nvs400/2.jpg

I suppose that this card uses 3dfx SLI technology ?

possible... but this card is not used to be for 3D.... you can connect 4 monitors on it... each GPU  handles 2 monitores...

i saw 100 pieces  ATI  ES

there  are rare  X600 R90000

Wel that´s a cool thread.

I´ll loveto see these amazingly rare cards.

wrote on 20.02.07 at 08:40:38:

i saw 100 pieces  ATI  ES there  are rare  X600 R90000

heh it's free to dream ofcourse. ::)

Nice card

2x DVI
one direct one with silicon image chip
and one DFP
and TV



but how dig this thread out?

@ ALT-F13

To continue this thread is a nice idea, but it should of been placed in the This and That area, since it isn't really that 3dfx based :)

So to continue this topic go to the ATi Discussion Thread I have made here:
http://www.falconfly-central.de/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=offtopic;action=display;num=1164418789;start=150#150

therefore it is locked from here on :)