That is an awesome build. 😁 I have a dual P3 box somewhere myself, though I remember it ran a lot of games like crap (probably has something to do with the VIA chipset. 🤣)

That's pretty sweet. You could perhaps swap the Voodoo 3 for a Voodoo 5, that should give a good speed boost!

F2bnp wrote:

That's pretty sweet. You could perhaps swap the Voodoo 3 for a Voodoo 5, that should give a good speed boost!

^^^ THIS ^^^

That or a Geforce 3 TI-500.

But as a "server" you got it made.

Fan-fucking-tastic! It's begging for a V5 you know. Dual CPUs and dual GPUs- 2 turnin' and 2 burnin'

For maximum compatibility, you should go with a V3 3000 or 3500 in the AGP slot and for everything else a GeForce4MX in a PCI slot should work. I've seen various reports about V5 having issues with some motherboards and with some Glide games, so a V3 3000 or 3500 would probably be the most compatible from both a hardware and a software perspective though it will be slower and you'll be limited to 16 bit color. If your motherboard and the Glide games you intend to play can handle a V5 then go for it, but research first because V5's are expensive now and you don't want to buy one and have it not work in your dream Glide machine.

I'm impressed with that build. The few Intel chips that I truly love from that era were mostly Tualatin chips, and I have a Dualatin system myself.

I agree with sliderider on the V5 issues, though those are amazing cards. I've had worse luck with 3dfx than I've had with even ATi so I'm probably a little biased from that.

Have you tried any overclocking? and how does that Tyan motherboard stack up against similar dual tually boards that you have used (if any others)?

nemesis wrote:

I'm impressed with that build. The few Intel chips that I truly love from that era were mostly Tualatin chips, and I have a Dualatin system myself.

I agree with sliderider on the V5 issues, though those are amazing cards. I've had worse luck with 3dfx than I've had with even ATi so I'm probably a little biased from that.

Have you tried any overclocking? and how does that Tyan motherboard stack up against similar dual tually boards that you have used (if any others)?

Tyan and Supermicro are TRUE BLUE server/workstation motherboard manufacturers. They are always going to be made as close to perfect as possible. Their clients are big business so sadly, overclocking is something they will not do. HOWEVER, these boards are usually the fastest performing and most reliable boards you can buy.

That being said, these boards have the lowest chance of something being incompatible. If there is a bug, its most likely beyond their control. for example. Via chipsets in the late P3 era had SHITTY agp performance and compatibility errors.

It is my opinion that if you are building a gaming machine, you will want a 440 chipset for anything below 1ghz. and if you are going to tualatins, get a "proper" server chipset. Look for the serverworks HE series. The HE-SL has dual channel pc-133 and dual tualatin support as well as some boards accepting TWO GB dimms. It also sports a TRIPLE pci bus.

I had one of these boards, and I wanted to put three mac pci voodoo 5's in it but the sheer cost deterred me. Its still a dream I have.

Tyan and Supermicro are TRUE BLUE server/workstation motherboard manufacturers. They are always going to be made as close to pe […]
Show full quote

Tyan and Supermicro are TRUE BLUE server/workstation motherboard manufacturers. They are always going to be made as close to perfect as possible. Their clients are big business so sadly, overclocking is something they will not do. HOWEVER, these boards are usually the fastest performing and most reliable boards you can buy.

That being said, these boards have the lowest chance of something being incompatible. If there is a bug, its most likely beyond their control. for example. Via chipsets in the late P3 era had SHITTY agp performance and compatibility errors.

It is my opinion that if you are building a gaming machine, you will want a 440 chipset for anything below 1ghz. and if you are going to tualatins, get a "proper" server chipset. Look for the serverworks HE series. The HE-SL has dual channel pc-133 and dual tualatin support as well as some boards accepting TWO GB dimms. It also sports a TRIPLE pci bus.

I had one of these boards, and I wanted to put three mac pci voodoo 5's in it but the sheer cost deterred me. Its still a dream I have.

I mostly agree with your statements. This Tyan board might just as well be the most solid and reliable mainboard I have ever worked with. It can even put newer ones to shame - its ROCK solid. The downside, just as you said, is the absence of any overclocking whatsoever.

I knew this beforehand, and it was a conscious decision on my part. I have a Gigabyte GA-6VTXD also on hand, and it has overclocking features, but I just didn't like my system as much when running this board. It felt a little sluggish - and the BIOS, POST and beeps where not to my liking 😵 And I usually like Gigabyte products. So in the end I stuck with the Tiger 230T.

Sliderider mentioned using a voodoo3 3000 - and ideally I would. I just have to find one for dirt cheap, considering I have the 2000 version. Paying a lot extra just doesn't make sense.

What you both said about the Tyan motherboards makes sense. I've always heard good about them but never had the chance to set up a real server with one.
The overclocking question was out of curiousity, and I don't necessarily consider that to be a negative. I myself like to overclock and thus I stuck with boards like the DX 34RU from Aopen (my dual CPU build) and a Gigabyte GA-6OXET-C (single CPU build) for ultimate overclocking, when it comes to Socket 370.

Myabe someday I'll be lucky enough to get a board like that to add to the collection and test my last Tualatin 1.4-S CPUs in it.

hell, i've overclocked EVERY system I've owned until my most recent one.

My first computer I built was a pentium 75. I ran it at 133. 2nd was a 450mhz p2. I ran that at 600mhz. 3rd was a 1800+ (1.5ghz) I had it at ~2ghz. 4th was a 2.8 p4, and that ran at 3.5 (holy hell that thing was HOT) 4&1/2th was a 3.2 p4 and I hit that thing at 4ghz. but usually 3.8. 5th was a pair of 3.8ghz p4 xeons. these were magical in an asus NCT-D board. they posted at 5.7ghz. but were only stable at 5.1 (270x19) I miss this system.

After that I went socket F and the overclocking options disappeared. And I don't miss it. I run dual quads, I have SO much cpu horse power, I don't need to do it. I do however run my 667 ram at 800mhz. and I would select 1033 if It would work.

In my opinion, its not worth the effort to overclock. ITS FUN AS HELL. but on new systems or the "legacy" equipment we run with. There is no real benefits. Sure I can make a period specific pentium 233 and overclock it like I would if it was 1995. But you would be better off if you got the next generation cpu and pretended it was 1995. Take a 333 P2 and play games designed for a 233 on it. thats what My voodoo 1 system is based on. My voodoo 2's are on a slot A @ 1ghz. "period specific" would be a super & board or a late P2. I have a V3, but I don't use it for games. My voodoo 5 rests in a dual 2800+ athlon setup.

you get the idea. Rather than overclock things, I just use next gen processors.

Tualatin chipsets ALL SUCK. Even the boards made by INTEL did not use their own chipsets in servers! If you want the cream of the crop for tualatins, look for one of these boards:

no agp, but 6 dimms:

Intel SDS2
Tyan S2688

with agp:
Supermicro P3TDE6-G

Holy grail, if you dont mind tualatins in slot adapters:
Tyan S1867DLUAN http://www.tyan.com/archive/products/html/thunder2500.html

zeus3dfx wrote:

I mostly agree with your statements. This Tyan board might just as well be the most solid and reliable mainboard I have ever wor […]
Show full quote

Tyan and Supermicro are TRUE BLUE server/workstation motherboard manufacturers. They are always going to be made as close to pe […]
Show full quote

Tyan and Supermicro are TRUE BLUE server/workstation motherboard manufacturers. They are always going to be made as close to perfect as possible. Their clients are big business so sadly, overclocking is something they will not do. HOWEVER, these boards are usually the fastest performing and most reliable boards you can buy.

That being said, these boards have the lowest chance of something being incompatible. If there is a bug, its most likely beyond their control. for example. Via chipsets in the late P3 era had SHITTY agp performance and compatibility errors.

It is my opinion that if you are building a gaming machine, you will want a 440 chipset for anything below 1ghz. and if you are going to tualatins, get a "proper" server chipset. Look for the serverworks HE series. The HE-SL has dual channel pc-133 and dual tualatin support as well as some boards accepting TWO GB dimms. It also sports a TRIPLE pci bus.

I had one of these boards, and I wanted to put three mac pci voodoo 5's in it but the sheer cost deterred me. Its still a dream I have.

I mostly agree with your statements. This Tyan board might just as well be the most solid and reliable mainboard I have ever worked with. It can even put newer ones to shame - its ROCK solid. The downside, just as you said, is the absence of any overclocking whatsoever.

I knew this beforehand, and it was a conscious decision on my part. I have a Gigabyte GA-6VTXD also on hand, and it has overclocking features, but I just didn't like my system as much when running this board. It felt a little sluggish - and the BIOS, POST and beeps where not to my liking 😵 And I usually like Gigabyte products. So in the end I stuck with the Tiger 230T.

Sliderider mentioned using a voodoo3 3000 - and ideally I would. I just have to find one for dirt cheap, considering I have the 2000 version. Paying a lot extra just doesn't make sense.

AGP ones you can usually get for $10-$20, it's the PCI ones that you pay through the nose for most of the time. A good one to get is a V3 1000 like the ones that came with HP's and Gateways. They are on the larger circuit board and have no heatsink on them, but if you mount a nice heatsink/fan on it with some double sided thermal tape and run a pigtail off of a power supply connector to power it, you can overclock them all the way to 3500 speeds IF the memory chips can handle it. You have to check the speed rating on them first. According to Dodge Garage, 3dfx did a lot of strange things like sometimes putting really fast RAM chips on slow video cards. If they are rated 6ns they are good for up to 166mhz, and 5.5ns is good for 183. I've got 2 with 5.5ns chips on them. Don't get the little one with only 8mb of RAM. The 8mb really slows it down because it can't hold many textures. It will have to do some swapping which slows it down. One of the texture units is turned off by a registry entry, but turning it back on doesn't really make a noticeable difference, so it's the RAM size that is the more limiting factor.

🤣 nice early Q3 screenshot for a wallpaper. It's so early it's when they had an actual particle system (removed around March 1999) 😜

Thanks, it's hard enough finding good looking wallpapers - let alone anything with a retro theme to it. I still have so much software I want to install and play around with. This system is going to eat through my Christmas holidays - my girlfriend is probably going to start complaining.

But hey - old machinery is interesting. I have a LAN party scheduled in couple of days to kick things off. A bunch of friends are getting together for some multiplayer gaming, hockey on tv and pizza 😎

Guess who's lugging along the retro rig for UT fun.. Oh and I haven't mentioned it, but my favourite part of the system are those Nexus fans. I absolutely love them and how quiet they are.