Refurbing a 2003 Radeon 9700 Pro Gaming PC | Get into Retro PC Gaming 

Hi Matt, Neil here! Great video... Thanks for bringing back some life to this build, that's great to see.. I couldn't stop smiling while watching this! Oh man did it bring back some memories seeing many of them old games on there! I'm really glad you are able to get some enjoyment out of it still and the beast lives on! It was UT Instagib I played, mainly CTF and I went by the name Transparent.

I really wanna see Oldblivion (I think that’s what it’s called) which made the game run on a Pentium M + X300 Laptop I grew up using. I completely agree about PC part pricing on the retro side. The main cheap way to get into it is just trying to find a prebuilt on Marketplace. The bootfair shave dried up, eBay is full of scalpers (my £50 S423 Board is now £150+) Absolutely fantastic watch, I’d personally love to have a showdown between this and my retro Pentium 4 PC 👀

7:00 By the way, 9700 and 9500 cards have a massive failure rate due to the cooler contacting the metal shim surrounding the GPU die, rather than the die itself. You might want to take the card out, hold it against a bright background, and just check if you can see daylight between the shim and the heatsink. If you can't, and the heatsink contacts the shim, your card will kill itself with enough use. I've personally bought and returned many broken Hercules 3D models also, so they've got the same problem the reference cards have. The fixes are removing the shim, or getting something like a Zalman VF700, or a heatsink from a 9800-series card, both of which protrude below the shim to make complete contact.

Well done learning to solder. My toughest hardware challenge was figuring out the jumper pins on an old eMachine I found without a manual. It's so satisfying when you solve something like that.

Actually scored a Radeon 9700 Pro in an ebay auction for $120AUD (about $85USD) with original box! I know I lucked out there. Matched it with a Athlon XP 2800+ with socket A MB for $30 I bought 6 months earlier. Already had a case and RAM, so pieced together a naughties era PC for myself. Even managed an 128GB SSD with adaptor for loading speed and dual boot 98SE / XP. The thing screams compared to what I had back then. It sits pride of place next to my modern Ryzen 9 machine. Both my teenage kids fight over it to play Quake 2, Unreal Tournament 2003, Half-Life 2, Wing Commander 4 and a bunch of other Star Wars games.

I recently built in this exact case, but with black metal, and no side window case mod. Picked up an old junker PC for the PSU and case in order to flip some spare parts. Really made me realise just how little cases have changed.

I am currently slowly aquiring the parts to build a late 2000s beast build with a Q6600 and 8800 GTX. It should be able to run anything from the 2000s very well and its limit would probably be Crysis, where it should get roughly 30 to 40 fps at medium. This era of components is actually rather cheap imo. I am reusing some parts that i had lying around like a PSU and a DVD drive. I am able to get ddr3 or ddr2 ram for like 5 quid. And i am probably going to fit it in a newish case and make it micro-atx to save on space. I paid 20 quid for the CPU and GPU combined and I worked out it will be roughly 60-70 for the rest of the components depending on whether i go for am SSD. I can't decide what OS to go with tbh. The 8800 GTX was I believe the first card to support DX10 and Vista is the earliest OS to support DX10. But then I might go for something even later becasue I wouldnt mind access to Steam as i dont have many physical games anymore. I could always dual-boot but idk.

I was sad to hear this would be the last video in this style, I would binge these forever! I’m sure there are other interesting cheaper/free hobbies that you could share in the future though, excited to see what’s next 👀👀

I have a P4 that I have owned since 2006. MB is a DFI Lanparty Pro 875. CPU is 3.2 GHz Prescott and AMD Radeon HD3650 AGP, all inside a Cooler Master Mesh case. I have owned a similar Northwood powered PC prior to the DFI, it ran XP flawlessly for some years. That machine got me hooked on playing Diablo 2 and attended so many LANs. Thanks for the reminisce and keep up the good work.

Arguably the sata controler would save cables, since sata cables are so much easier to work with than ide ribbons

There's also a D3 "hack", I believe it stores it's main game files in compressed files. Extract these and the game runs fastger as it isn't extracting these files real-time during gameplay

Came to check this video after you commented about it. Great content! Subbed!

Great thorough rebuild - really enjoyed watching :) I was a big fan of the Pentium 4 back in the day, despite all the concerns around them running hot, and still am today (my current Windows98 build is running a 3Ghz Pentium 4 and a Radeon 9800 Pro, both with mild overclocks, so in a similar ballpark). For a bit of comparison if you're interested, its 3dMark 2000 score is 16537, 3dMark 2001SE is 16895.

Love this type of video and the final product is so nostalgic. 100% agree on the insane prices of parts these days…went from something fun to tinker with to a significant investment over the course of a year or two. I guess lots of people got nostalgic too during lockdown and everyone wanted to relive their glory days all over again or something making the shortage. 😂

The scene for PC games is getting really expensive these days, but I wanted to get a video out for #GPUJune2 2022. My question to you is this: who among you would be willing to donate hardware to the community, to encourage more people to join this great hobby?

I love the northwood p4. I actually bought a dell with 3.06 northwood, the first hyperthreaded CPU and a 9700 pro because I couldn’t get ahold of them from any of my suppliers yet cus they were just released. I built a new machine around those two parts. I’ve recently started buying all the parts to recreate that machine. I’ve bought the motherboard I wanted so bad back then, a socket 478 Soyo Dragon Ultra. I’ve gotta go through all my old parts but I think I still have that dell 9700 pro.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one mate, nice to see some old hardware up and running! I had a Geforce FX 5600 back in the day and always coveted the 9700 Pro.

You might want to mention about jumpers on the HD. A lot of people will build to see there HD isnt being read. If there on an mobo it wont detect it unless the correct jumper is in place, its on the back. Its got little pins. if its set to 3 or 6 gps an old motherboard wont see it. you have to set the pin to 1.5

This looks like an awesome PC for running older software, such as those late 90s to early 2000s games that you mentioned previously. Very powerful for the era of the PC, I must say - our old Windows 95 era PC (which was later upgraded to ME) was much less powerful than this. Also, even with the 120GB IDE hard drive, I reckon you could dual boot Windows ME with Windows XP, for the best of both worlds - though admittedly, performance in XP would likely be worse, and games made that require XP wouldn't run too well either. Lastly, I loved the fact that it came with multiple DVD/CD drives, a floppy drive, and other I/O expansions - I'd have personally kept those in, even if you would never need to use 3 optical drives at the same time. Maybe with an additional, larger capacity, IDE hard drive (or SATA if the motherboard supports SATA), and upgrading the 10/100 Ethernet card to a Gigabit Ethernet card, you might just have yourself a nice media server PC too. Thanks to Budget Builds Official for kinking me over to this video.

Sleeving the cabling was the right move. Pentium 4's pack the heat, and it's smart to get some airflow going. Also, ME isn't a bad idea if you're targeting 98 era games, but I think there is an unofficial service pack 3 for 98 that you might want to try too. Cool build. Enjoyed the video.

I love these types of videos from you, dude. I understand less than 10% of the tech talk but I love them nonetheless. Also couldn't help but be distracted by the fab shirts and kaijus on display. Top stuff!

I can’t believe that you have a Braincoats sticker on your scanner of all places, Matty. Got a targeted ad for them in like…2013 back when they were doing Gaslight Anthem and Alkaline Trio covers. A very weird blast from the past (also great video, of course!)

I like the red interior lol. Retro PC gaming is definitely something I can see myself getting into eventually. I have never been much of a PC gamer, but the angle of older PCs is oddly more interesting to me. I like the compartmentalization of having machines that are just for gaming, and I feel like it's hard to separate myself and get into it in any modern OS outside of like card games or board game-type games. Retro machines seem like a fun way to have a machine that is literally just for games running a comfy older OS. I understand why you don't fully recommend it; but I still find it interesting. Also, I really enjoyed the way you filmed this one! I missed this when it came out, but I'm glad I checked your channel to check if I missed anything.

I'm here because of Budget Builds - despite being an enthusiast for this sort of video, and cobbling stuff together myself, I hadn't bumped into your stuff before. The market has gone nuts, I was fortunate to get into my particular niche (PPC Macs) before Covid nearly tripled the prices of these old beasts of forgotten architectures. Once the GPU prices started to spike with Crypto profitability, it seems everything followed. The modern stuff is dropping in price, but all of the retro goodies are staying very, very high (I chase late AGP cards, early modern era PCI-e flagships). I'm rather sad that this is sort of an epitaph on your retrobuilding - but I will certainly enjoy your back catalog. Thanks

I miss unreal tournament. My school did a charity week every year just before summer . It was a week of talent shows cake stalls all over the place and no work . One of the events they did was at break time they turned the computer labs into a lan cafe and load unreal tournament and half life multiplayer you pay £2 and you get a 90min of play session against kids in your own school

I loved the 9700. Morrowind was amazing!

Hey mate I had a Powercolor 9700PRO AIW back in 2003, it was the bees knees. I had my Xbox hooked up to it and used to play Xbox Live on one monitor and browsed the internets and chat on the other - it so awesome. Mine ended up failing though, R300 was the best! Also regarding Doom 3, I recall playing it at 1024x768 with mediumish settings at 30fps+. I think Morrowind would be a better fit for this PC.

Does anybody know what this case is called?

Would Crysis run on WinME with KernelEx? Anyone ever try that? I ask cuz I've run "unsupported" games on Win98SE with Unofficial Service Pack 3 and KernelEx enabled. However none of my retro PC's are nearly powerful enough to try Crysis myself. Regarding the cost of the hobby, yes, I started my first retro PC in 2019 and I spent A LOT of money for the very specific parts I wanted - and those prices have just continued to increase since. I recently met a woman who said they'd purchased a house from a now-deceased hoarder who literally had the place full of computers from the 90's through early 00's. Said he collected, repaired, and sold them back then. She was looking for a way to dump the whole lot into eWaste! I gave her my number and begged her to call me instead. Unfortunately I've yet to hear from her so this is my plea to the universe... please lady, call me!! I'd be happy to share with the community!

I like this video 😉Did graphics cards get outdated that quickly back then? High-end level card from 2002 was already struggling to deliver constant 60fps in 2003 games, leave alone 2004 games like DOOM3, Far Cry or Half-Life 2. Btw, doesn't compatibility mode help with Win98 games on XP?

Oh god, I feel so old. "Retro" used to mean a 486 and a Soundblaster16 to run DOS games natively, not a DX9 GPU with fully programmable shaders running on a WindowsNT derivate xD

Had the same 9700 pro in a box for years dunno if it was working still. During a move something fell into the box of stuff in like 2016 so it broke off a vram chip and upon testing it was certainly dead at that point, pretty much decorative as a bare pcb now in my apartment. Hercules 3d prophet 9700 pro i believe it's called. This generation of cards were prone too die due too the shim around the gpu die being slightly higher then it should so you should remove it really together with vram chips running quite hot but they have heatsinks on this model of the card. Too get the shim off, basically use a boxcutter/snap off blade knife (Used a generic cheap one here too remove the shim on the dead 9700 pro i got.) or a sharp thin X-Acto knife & carefully go around the edge of the shim slowly pushing in under it between the gpu & shim & slowly forcing it upwards as you'll be cutting the glue/tape which is like 3 - 4mm wide use a shorter blade if possible & make sure too not push inwards with too much force towards the gpu die like i did with this dead card, i mean it popped off but i also destroyed a small capacitor on here on the gpu die. The corners should be easiest too push in at as the glue/tape isn't around there, careful so you don't destroy one of the capacitors around the gpu die though i pretty much tore one off as the blade pushed straight through the glue suddenly trying it here on the dead 9700 pro i got. Might take a few minutes but it should eventually pop off fine even 20 years later think philscomputerlab did remove the shim on a working 9700 pro a few years ago in the video called " How ATI upset Nvidia with the Radeon 9700 Pro " at 7:30 or at least shows the problem there these cards have. I myself started from the bottom left on the agp slot cutting that length only while forcing it upwards, i can post an image too your twitter of the result here if you need a general look of the glue/tape. *nevermind the twitter as it doesnt seem too exist anymore. I'll post it in the discord instead.*

Hey guys, retro gaming on OG hardware can still be cheap. The hint I can give you is :"don't buy what want, but buy what's on the market". In my area slot 1 boards are getting *really* expensive (50 quid and more for reliant, but no-fuzz-boards.) Pentium 4, strangely did the same price-hike. Athlon xp combos went from 10 bucks to 25ish in the last two years, but still better than p4. But what is really really cheap ATM in my area are core2 systems, core2 duo are a little cheaper. Go buy a nice c2d bundle, build a great system and enjoy it. And the other end of this price-wave are Pentium 1 systems, which parts you can get for about 30 bucks (CPU ram Mainboard and sometimes GPU). Even standard 486 and 386 systems are priced better than p4 systems ATM Go and explore more an new old systems you never had, follow your urge of nostalgia in a couple of years.

I had no clue the retro pc market was getting out of hand with prices.

grea video but if you want to get into this hoppy for cheap market place is alos very good! got 4 stacker boxes of socket5-lga775 motherboards for 50 quid just got to wait a while for somthing to turn up!

I had that exact case all the way back then, think it was 25 quid from ebuyer with a PSU. Only had it for a year before upgrading to a Cooler master ATCS 201B.

Why does a hooby NEEDS to be cheap in order to be fun? I bought my first PC in 1997 when I was 10 years old. Just saving up ALL my money for 2 years. It's laughable compared to now, having a well payed full time job...

I was about to say I'm surprised not to see more "rounded" cables in retro machines, but there is one @ 8:06, lol. Although back in the day, we often had to "round" our own, and I have yet to see that.

That silver aesthetic is very underrated

Lol my first gaming pc I bought for myself in 2003 was an asus motherboard, Athlon 3000xp, 2 gb ram, and a Radeon 9600 pro. I was so happy to have it!!!

Pro tip for Oblivion, you'd get more mileage by installing the Oldblivion drivers.

My w98 pc sports an amd athlon 2600xp, 512mb ddr 400, geforce 6600gt, 3dfx voodoo 2 sli, creative labs sound blaster awe64

Love Episode I Racer!!

High end PC of that era.Not many people could afford such components at the time.512 Mb of Ram was also high end in 2002. and early 2003.

This case can mod as modern spec

Siiiick!

You need to put yourself on camera more often, Matty. Because you’re looking like an absolute snack in this video. I’m so jealous of that hair. I love this this so much! The amount of detail you went into in this video is really impressive. It was really fun seeing this beauty come together and how all those games ran on it. Excellent work, my friend!

It's harder and harder to find old PCs, especially ones that aren't considered vintage. Second hand stores don't take them anymore and that was my number one place to grab old desktops

I would just keep windows 98 se with patches instead of windows me

Look at that pile of early 2000s trash! i love it and had the same case for my first gaming pc build. I bought it specifically to play Half Life 2

I think more videos where you're on camera would be great, sadly no dancing part in it like the last video but overall this was a good old thirst trap Jar Jar mouse out of ten, the red menace did well too

Retro PC gaming is becoming more viable than current day PC gaming, that is for certain.

Such an epic card

Ah doom 3, i remember the mags back in the day showing early screenshots with Carmack and co saying you would need a GeForce 3 to run it well, boy was he way off. Doom 3, Farcry with its Graphical updates and HL2 were the sign that my similar spec'd PC, albeit with a 9800 Pro, were at the end of their days (not really but not performing as well as I wanted) so it as time for an upgrade and a full switch to XP (was really not a fan of pre SP1 XP, for all the complaints about ME, or even Vista 32bit, pre SP1 XP was much much worse in my opinion with it making ME flakiness seem rock solid). On the plus side, my old 9800 Pro and 1GB CL2 DDR 400 RAM from that PC are now in my Shuttle XPC retro PC, along with a P4 3.2GHZ 1MB and Windows 98SE/ME/Win732Bit (Win7 mainly for transferring stuff as its the latest OS that it supports), so they may have been long since replaced in my main PC but they still pull their weight near 20 years later.

I obtained the ATI 9700 PRO, just after it was released, for a ludicruous low price. I was offered a 2nd hand, relatively new 9500 for about a 100, maybe a 120 euros. which was a fair price at the time. Lo and behold, when removing it from the anti-static sleeve, it turned out to be the 9700PRO! Which was offered new for €450-500,- Imagine my joy when Far Cry was released and I could actually run this game.

I actually have that case with my xeon x5475

Would have loved to see half life 2 on this pc

Holy shit! He had the original receipt?!

The Red menace 👍🏻👍🏻

Keep your eyes peeled and you might find something cheap

can it run half life 2?

i died when you said that this PC runs Windows ME.

Well, I played Oblivion with ATI 9250 and Athlon 64 3200+. Somehow. 🙂

Why Windows Me, when Windows XP was already perfect for such PCs?

I bet it runs redfaction 1

I actually have a laptop like this, has a desktop pentium 4 and 9700 mobility with 128mb of vram. I have two funny enough.

If you would have used a AMD athlon 3000+ series, you would have got higher frams!

kernelex

Why do you paint your nails ? FFS, nice video toughe.

Are you really playing some of those shooters with a controller??

That P4 CPU is just insulting to the mighty 9700pro. It deserves just the best that was available in 2002, which is the Pentium 4 HT 3.06 GHz.

XP FAR BETTER ALL GAMES WOULD WORK

Stop any hate? Windows ME is a good operating system!............ Sorry, can't help myself....ME was utter garbage dude! You want to try "Rollcage" on it btw.... :)

That cpu really holds back that Radeon card.

ᎮᏒᎧᎷᎧᏕᎷ 🎊

Painted fingernails???

painted nails wtf

I bet the case came form Maplins

wow that case is a trip. i had one of those around 2007ish. my uncle gave it to me. it blew my 18 year old mind lol