Welcome aboard. Great build! never even heard about quikmenu before but looks interesting for sure!

I think a single Voodoo 2 12mb would be more then plentiful for the specs of the system. Wouldn't bother with a Voodoo 3. What windows 98 games are you using it for? Maybe Even a Voodoo 1 would suffice?!

Recently I've been thinking of building a S7 rig which I told myself I wouldn't do in the past. Prices of the 233MMX isn't bad but not great when you can get a P3-S 1.4GHz for the same amount 🙁 Then I have to decide videocard. I have a few in my stack but dunno which is better or not for old dos game compatibility.

Nice build!

Welcome!
I am very impressed with that rig you have, and I appreciate the post. Not only were you showing it off, but you were also explaining how to get it done.

How is the V330 handling the 2d? And I'm sure the Voodoo 2 sli configuration is overkill, but if you have it, why not build it? 😀 (I myself have a Voodoo 1 in one of my 486s for no good reason.)

I love the soundcard setup too (doesn't get a whole lot better than that), did you have to custom design the audio cable?

RogueTrip2012 wrote:

Welcome aboard. Great build! never even heard about quikmenu before but looks interesting for sure!

I think a single Voodoo 2 12mb would be more then plentiful for the specs of the system. Wouldn't bother with a Voodoo 3. What windows 98 games are you using it for? Maybe Even a Voodoo 1 would suffice?!

Yeah I got to agree. Both the Riva 128 and Voodoo 2 sli in there are just being held back by that Pentium 1 way too much. Just not really a proper match. You'd have been better off with a single Voodoo 2 or a Voodoo 1 making things look simple and clean. Or, if your board can take it, a K6-2 or K6-3 to at least put those cards horsepower to use better if you're going to pack the system full.

If the board cant take a higher processor, you could always hunt down a Epox Super Socket 7 board and swap out. To some visually it all may look cool cramming all that in there, but its a terrible waste with no finesse when you literally know the cpu isn't even remotely up to snuff with everything else gpu wise in the box.

If that system had a processor that was able to tap into that SLi power though, it would be awesome, no ifs ands or buts about it. As is right now though, you are only getting a fraction of that power as far as Windows gaming goes. As a Dos box, its solid though. For Dos glide titles, you dont really need anything more then a single Voodoo 2.

Looks good. Voodoo2 SLI will be quite bottlenecked by a P233 though. I think a Voodoo1 would be more period-appropriate. 😁

I agree with swayee. Voodoo 1 would probably match the p233 era more but I also don't blame the OP, if you have the space for it, why not use it (if not only for the cool looking SLI 😉

I think you have a great build. I'm actually going for something very similar but I will try and do it in a desktop (flat) case. I have one already picked out and thanks to you (as i've never heard of QuikMenu) will most likely use it same way you are.

Awesome job! Looks very sharp!

nemesis wrote:

(I myself have a Voodoo 1 in one of my 486s for no good reason.)

LMAO, my first smile in the morning 😁

And a warm welcome to Vogons, and I love your love for your ultimate non-super 7 rig!

I agree with the SLI being overkill, but it does allow for higher resolutions, which may be what he intended. Or perhaps it was more for having SLI?
Anyway, I like it! I like your whole rig 😁

Your post was fun to read and you obviously spend a lot of care in writing it, cheers!
You should keep your rig as it is and if you want more horsepower, simply consider building another 😉

And from reading your post, I can tell you know what you're doing when it comes to hardware ;D

Found this post while browsing the k6+ forums. May come in handy for you in case you want to up the cpu.
http://k6plus.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&fil … iewtopic&t=1758

Thank you all for the compliments on the build ! 😀

On the 3DFX setup: I agree with you guys that it's overkill (by far). Although I didn't perform any benchmarks with a single Voodoo2 card, for example GLQuake peforms really well at 1024x768 in 3DFX mode now! On the RIVA128 it runs like crap. I run mostly old 3DFX games like MDK, GTA, Shadow Warrior (only about 10 games anyway). Besides that it's also just nice to have a SLI config ofcourse - I never had so many slots filled 😉 Does DOS actually support SLI?
I thought about replacing the GPU setup with a Voodoo3 2000 to swap 3 cards for just 1 card and dropping the loopback cable to maybe improve 2D display quality.
The mobo has a CPU speed limit of 233Mhz 🙁 I'm afraid that if I decide to upgrade to a SS7 board (and thus losing the 430TX chipset), it might cause compatibility issues with some DOS games. The system is mostly used for DOS games anyway, so I think it's not really worth such an upgrade and time investment.

For those interested in QuikMenu: this has always been my favourite VGA shell for DOS. It has quite some customization options, some handy utilities like logging names and durations of executed programs and uses only a few KB memory during program executions. Looks really clean too.

@RogueTrip2012: I've tried a bunch of videocards in order to find one that performs well in 2D (some S3 and ATI too). I found that the Nvidia RIVA128 delivers the best compatibility and 2D performance. Also, a P233 MMX should be fast enough for any DOS game, if that is just what you are planning to do with it.
In my experience anything newer than a Pentium CPU will limit DOS compatibility, for example: I used to get Runtime 200 errors on a P2 CPU with some games (although it seems possible to patch these errors now with a util).

@nemesis: About the audio cable: I actually managed to find it in a national store for a few bucks, luckily because custom designing is not my thing 😉 2D performance of the RIVA128 is great! Sharp display too.

ProfessorProfessorson wrote:

Found this post while browsing the k6+ forums. May come in handy for you in case you want to up the cpu.
http://k6plus.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&fil … iewtopic&t=1758

Hmm.. now that's interesting. I might look into that 😀 Nice find, cheers!

EDIT: On second thought: no I'm not gonna try this 😀 I noticed the mobo does officially support the K6 300Mhz, but needs overclocking to use any faster CPU. I prefer stability over speed on that matter, so I decided to leave it as it is.

mOBSCENE wrote:

Does DOS actually support SLI?
I thought about replacing the GPU setup with a Voodoo3 2000 to swap 3 cards for just 1 card and dropping the loopback cable to maybe improve 2D display quality.

Off the top of my head, no I dont think the Dos Glide titles can utilize Sli. Actually I think most of the Dos titles that can even use Glide came out before the Voodoo 2 did, though I could be wrong. Also, and I have to say its been years since I did this, but for some odd reason I'm thinking that I had to disable one gpu on a Voodoo 5 to get Glide to work ok on Carmageddon and Blood, etc.

I was having a discussion about this kinda stuff with a friend awhile back, and that topic came up in it. Seems like back when I got my first Voodoo 5, back in 2002, and I was trying to run any of the Dos titles that used Glide, in a Windows 98 environment, that I had to use a utility to shut off one of the gpus to get them to run correct.

Back then I never ran those titles in pure Dos, and have never bothered to try to run them on a Voodoo 5 again after that, so don't accept that as 100 percent gospel. Back then in 2002 I was still getting a grasp on stuff as far as the Voodoo 5 was concerned, so i am sure mistakes were made on my part.

A Pentium MMX can't feed the V2's enough data in SLi to keep up with them, so you're basically wasting a V2 that could be used in another system that will utilize it better. Unless playing in 1024x768 is that important to you, I'd cut back to a single V2 in that system. A Banshee, Rush or original Voodoo would be even better suited to it. Your framerates shouldn't change at all and you'll save a lot of energy not powering so many video cards.

Very interesting system. In some aspects quite similar to mine, but in others completely different. I guess I'll present my P233 So7 rig aswell.

I like seeing P55C systems with different concepts and how they're built, since Pentium1 MMX systems are one of my main interests when it comes to retro PCs.

Glad to see other people using 98lite (pro). I bought it when it was new and I kept using Win98 on my main system even when XP was released (I then switched to 2k) and today I continue using 98lite for my retro systems.

The 233MMX surely can't put the SLI cards to good use, but I believe that using a Voodoo1 would result in a slight FPS drop in addition to losing higher resolutions and compatibility with some later games that require more VRAM than the V1 can provide.

I have a couple of questions/suggestions:
Have you come across any DOS based 3DFX games that support a resolution higher than 640x480 and thus utilize the Voodoo2 or even the V²SLI?

Could you run a couple of benchmarks? I'm thinking SpeedSys, 3DBench, PCPBench and Quake1 Timedemo for DOS and Final Reality, 3DMark99(max) and Quake2/3 for Win98 to get an impression of the overall performance. I'd really appreciate it 😀

Did you encounter any problems with QuikMenu? Does it use any memory at all? I've been using GSMenu for a while, but some applications wouldn't really work with it. But it didn't stay in memory, which is something that I prefer, as I try to maximize the available conventional memory.

Did you encounter any problems with QuikMenu? Does it use any memory at all? I've been using GSMenu for a while, but some applications wouldn't really work with it. But it didn't stay in memory, which is something that I prefer, as I try to maximize the available conventional memory.

I used QuikMenu on my original DOS PC back in the 90's and I run it on my 486 now.

It's an excellent menu system. Very light memory footprint. I never had problems using it to launch real or protected mode games, with only 8MB of RAM.

I'd say stick with the SLI. Having 1024x768 is a good benefit 😉

About the K6-300, I think your mobo supports all 8 Super 7 multi's, so using a K6-2 (which for all practical purposes is identical to the 2.2v K6) shouldn't be much of a problem. Only thing is to find out which jumpers represent which bus multipliers, which is an easy task since you know the other 4 😉

Mystery wrote:

I guess I'll present my P233 So7 rig aswell.

You should ! I'm interested 😀

Mystery wrote:

Have you come across any DOS based 3DFX games that support a resolution higher than 640x480 and thus utilize the Voodoo2 or even the V²SLI?

The only DOS 3DFX game I can think of is GTA -> 800x600, but that's also supported by a single V2, right?

Mystery wrote:

Could you run a couple of benchmarks?

Sure thing! Here are some results. I cannot really compare them to anything (except CPU benchmark in SpeedSys).

3DBench2: 176,2
PCPBench: 27,3

Quake "timedemo demo1" (second run):
360x240x16: 969 frames, 24,3 sec, 39,9 FPS
640x480x16: 969 frames, 56,1 sec, 17,3 FPS
1024x768x16: 969 frames, 17,1 sec, 56,8 FPS (Win98, 3DFX:P)

SpeedSys:

Reality (No Sound):

1Benchmark results:
2Radial blur,             5N,  19.35, rips,  2.676, Rmark
3Chaos zoomer,            5N,  35.11, rips,  1.706, Rmark
425 Pixel,                5N,  77.87, kpps,  2.489, Rmark
5Robots,                  5N,  26.21, rips,  6.790, Rmark
6Fillrate,                5N,  18.04, MPps,  3.904, Rmark
7City scene,              5N,  34.62, rips,  8.591, Rmark
8Video card bus transfer, 5N,  51.84, MBps,  1.650, Rmark
9Direct3D bus transfer,   5N,  23.96, MBps,  2.048, Rmark
10-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
11Visual appearance,           100.00, percent
12-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
13Overall 3D,                   2.847, Rmark
14Overall 2D,                   2.191, Rmark
15Overall bus rate,             1.770, Rmark
16-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
17OVERALL SCORE,                2.488, Rmark
18-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

And here's the 3DMark99 MAX results. First picture using nVidia card, second 3DFX.

Could you provide some comparison material from your P233? What do these results tell me about the efficiency of the V2 SLI setup? If you'd like to know some more results, just ask 😀 Are Quake2/3 able to use 3DFX?

Mystery wrote:

QuikMenu, does it use any memory at all?

As DonutKing already noted, it indeed has a light memory footprint. According to the manual it uses between 2 and 6K of RAM. For me it's 3K (using 4DOS shell).

Yes single V2 cards support 800x600 and the 1024 resolution is made available by the additional memory the SLI solution provides.

Thank you very much for providing the benchmark results. I'll provide some fresh results from my system soon. I forsee lower GPU and higher CPU scores due to different components 😀

Quake2 and Quake3 are absolutely able to work with the 3DFX cards as are games with the Unreal engine. Of course, the newer the game, the lower the performance will get. Quake3 is barely playable on my system. Unreal and UT99 are somwat okay, while later games such as DeusEx won't really work.
An interesting test would be Daikatana. It pushes the Quake2 engine really far and it's completely unplayable with a voodoo1 card (1fps, literally).

Would you mind running 3DMark99max with the Voodoo2 again in 640 and 1024 and postig the results? (no need for screenshots, just the 3dmark result and cpu score will suffice). The first would provide a better comparison to the Voodoo1 and the latter would show if the high resolution can make an impact at these low CPU speeds.
If the results are basically the same, the SLI setup provides you with 1024x768 in 3D without any performance loss, because the CPU can still not keep up.

Mystery wrote:

Yes single V2 cards support 800x600 and the 1024 resolution is made available by the additional memory the SLI solution provides […]
Show full quote

Yes single V2 cards support 800x600 and the 1024 resolution is made available by the additional memory the SLI solution provides.

Thank you very much for providing the benchmark results. I'll provide some fresh results from my system soon. I forsee lower GPU and higher CPU scores due to different components 😀

Quake2 and Quake3 are absolutely able to work with the 3DFX cards as are games with the Unreal engine. Of course, the newer the game, the lower the performance will get. Quake3 is barely playable on my system. Unreal and UT99 are somwat okay, while later games such as DeusEx won't really work.
An interesting test would be Daikatana. It pushes the Quake2 engine really far and it's completely unplayable with a voodoo1 card (1fps, literally).

Would you mind running 3DMark99max with the Voodoo2 again in 640 and 1024 and postig the results? (no need for screenshots, just the 3dmark result and cpu score will suffice). The first would provide a better comparison to the Voodoo1 and the latter would show if the high resolution can make an impact at these low CPU speeds.
If the results are basically the same, the SLI setup provides you with 1024x768 in 3D without any performance loss, because the CPU can still not keep up.

The Metabyte Wicked3D Voodoo2 card could do something like 1024x672 with a single V2 using it's freaky Re2Flex drivers and up to 1024x1024 in SLi. I'm not sure if those drivers will work with any V2, though, and also not sure where you would find a monitor that supports those resolutions. You could also create custom resolutions from 320x200 up to the maximums stated above in 1 pixel increments and screen refreshes in 1hz increments from 56-160hz. It was the ultimate, tunable Voodoo2 card. Good luck finding one, though. Metabyte also made the WickedVision 3D glasses that worked with these cards.

Info here:

http://www.mindflux.com.au/products/wicked3d/ … 2.html#overview

Quickmenu III is awesome. I've been using it as my DOSBox GUI for years. Even before DOSbox, I used to use it on my old DOS machines.

I had a thread about it posted years ago.