You will probably have problems with GeForce 2s in Super 7 boards. I always have. In fact, I've seen that same problem with D3D. I suggest getting a PCI video card or, for AGP, a Voodoo 3/4/5.

Testing direct3d however using the geforce2 results in an instant return to the desktop. Might go for a complete reformat to try again.

Personally, I'd look for a different video card. All the early Geforce cards (and I think the TNT2's as well) are notoriously troublesome with the Aladdin V chipset. People have gotten them to work after trying various different chipset driver versions, but I'd be inclined just to avoid the headaches entirely. Voodoo cards are good, and I've seen quite a few reports of success with older Radeon and Rage cards as well.

On a related note, where'd you find the K6-3+, if you don't mind my asking? I have most of the parts to build a similar system, but all the 3+ chips on eBay... well, the sellers are generally rather proud of them, we'll put it that way.

I run a system almost identical to this, and I've had no trouble whatsoever, using Windows 98. Same board, almost same processor, same graphics and sound cards .

I guess it's more accurate to say "no trouble running the things I want to run, and excluding problems caused by needless fiddling with hardware and settings". I managed to mess up the graphics drivers once so had to reformat [this seemed to be a windows problem imho], and never successfully got Stonekeeper or Ultima series to play properly [but the system wasn't bulilt for them anyway, and for all I know they were playing fine I just didn't like them]. But with blizzard [diablo2 just about] and id games [doom to q3 just about], Avp, Vinyl, Ultimate Pinball, Redline Racer, Apache Longbow [swapping in a Voodoo 1] it's been great.

For reasons not relevant here, I now have a G200+Voodoo1 in this machine. Fingers crossed it will not need reformatting when I return tothe V2's+GF2.

I'm not entirely sure what the deal is, but VIA MVP3 and ALI Alladin 5 do not like very many AGP cards. It comes down to a combination of things really.

• The chipsets are poorly designed and poorly validated with poor AGP implementations.
• The motherboards are cheap and have signal integrity / power regulation issues. The drivers are buggy for the chipsets.
• The graphics cards may not be built to proper quality levels, making issues even worse. See blurry output for hints of this.
• The BIOSs of the mobos don't set chipset registers correctly sometimes.
• The GPU drivers don't take into account all of the above and instead assume everything works to spec. Bad for GeForce chips cuz they use all AGP features. Later drivers may be worse because sometimes the drivers did work around issues but later that was forgotten.
• The Voodoo cards only use AGP as a 66 MHz PCI bus. Keep It Simple, Stupid!

I have the very same mobo IIRC , with a K6-II and an AGP voodoo3... never had a prob, and runs even old DOS stuff

Can you provide me with the driver versions + bios settings that you use to run this hardware combo?

yes when I get back to the k6... but keep in mind, the AGP voodoo3 is AGP only in name, it uses none of the AGP features AFAIK... drivers/bios are the latest official ones from the gigabyte site IIRC

After a fresh windows install, all is well. The geforce 2 ultra works like a charm. Used a much older detonator driver 40.xx. the last one I used was from 2005. Somewhere in the 89.xx range. I"ll do some more testing today to confirm all is well.

From what research I've done on the matter, people seem to have the best luck with ALi drivers from 1.6X up to 1.83 (after which there was nothing new added for SS7 boards), and specifically the 1.66 may be worth looking into first. There are quite a few different versions available [url-http://down.qqread.com/sort/1056_1.htm]here[/url], the page is in Chinese, but there's just enough English words to figure out what's what.

As for the video drivers, it's been my experience in general that you'll get better results by going with versions appropriate to the era of card. Try the 12.41, and no newer than the 22.40. After that, stuff got optimized for the GF4 cards, and performance on older ones dropped off quite a bit.

Back in the day I ran an early thunderbird system with a geforce2 pro. Always kept my drivers up to date back in the day, but I cannot for the life of my remember having any severe performance troubles as I updated over the years. Although I must say by the time the geforce 4 series hit the market my geforce 2 died, leaving me with no other choice but to upgrade to a ti 4400. After running some random direct3d apps I have seen no problems whatsoever. Im using the 1.82 version of the ALI AGP driver an the 40.xx series nvidia drivers. I'll try some older driver versions just for compeltion sake once I have the time.

Even early Athlon mobos had better AGP compatibility than Super 7.

I'm planning on getting a SS7 mobo later on, and I think I have decided that I want to get an EPOX MVP3-G2 or G5. A few members on the forum have them and they seem to work okay. It would be interesting to see some numbers about both of them.

prophase_j wrote:

I'm planning on getting a SS7 mobo later on, and I think I have decided that I want to get an EPOX MVP3-G2 or G5. A few members on the forum have them and they seem to work okay. It would be interesting to see some numbers about both of them.

Those boards are hight recommended
Have thrown GF2, GF3, V3 & GF 256 cards at both my G2 and G5 boards without any probs...rock solid but don't expect any stellar gdx performance..even with a K6-III+ cpu

A couple years ago I tested UT99 on both a PIII-450 and a K6-III+ 600. Used a Voodoo5 5500. The PIII was clearly faster. That day basically eliminated my fascination with K6 processors.

yeah but, if your gonna stick with a socket 7 cpu i'm betting the fastest k6 even OCed to 600 if possible will be faster than the Pentium 1 that is in assuming it isn't a custom build like you guys have. and what i'm meaning is your wanting to play with a socket 7. i had an older socket 7 tower it was wierd on was in T shape should kept it until i found a replacement mobo and stuck a k5 in it. it was nice custom paint job black with white racing strips and a ford metallic blue at the base where it T'ed off.

Why stick with Socket 7? There's no reason to other than happy memories.

Old DOS games need slower hardware. Later DOS games are fine on Slot 1, Slot A, Socket A, Socket 370, Socket 423, Socket 478, etc within reason.

K6s were the poor man's CPU. No reason to gimp yourself anymore or deal with the shitty motherboards that it was used on.

Yeah, the K6-III is beat for its time period by the PIIIs released during the same time, and only had a four month window before the Athlon arrived, which became the CPU performance king.

Attached is what I have so far of the pc timeline I've been piecing together.

that's a nice timeline you've made.

It's from scouring the net. It helps put things into perspective for me. I figure for some things it's going to take running down to the library and looking through old pc mags.