VOGONS


First post, by leonardo

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Nickname: Methuselah

  • Case: Hyundai HD-P5233M
  • Power supply: Q-Technology QT-02300 300W
  • Motherboard: ASUS TX97-XE
  • Processor: AMD K6-III+ 450 MHz (@6x75MHz)
  • Memory: 256 MB PC100 SD-RAM (@75 MHz)
  • Video card(s): 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 PCI (16 MB SG-RAM)
  • Monitor(s): Hyundai DeluxScan 15G 15" CRT
  • Sound card(s): Turtle Beach Montego A3DXstream, AOpen FX-16
  • Storage: Seagate U9 10 GB primary HDD and dual Seagate U Series X 20 GB HDDs
  • Removable(s): Sony 1.44 MB 3.5" + Epson 1.2 MB 5.25" FDDs and Mitsumi CR-48XETE CD-RW
  • Connectivity: 3Com Fast Etherlink XL PCI 100 Mbit
  • HIDs: Keytronic DIN keyboard and Logitech M-S34 (two-button, ol' ballsy)

Brief description
This is a heavily modified system and my oldest still in active use. I believe it started out as a Pentium 233 MHz MMX with 32 megs of EDO RAM and an ATi Rage II. Now the only original parts include the case and the motherboard. The system runs a highly optimised Windows 95 OSR2 installation (see guide and tweaks).

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Photo gallery
See new post for more pics, have modified the configuration since the original posting!

Build log / hardware & software updates

Update on Sep 16, 2013.

Tested with 3DMark2000. System scored 1360 points. (1024x768x16)

Update on Aug 18, 2013.

Swapped Realtek NE2000 compatible 10 Mbit ISA NIC to a 3Com Fast EtherLink XL PCI

Update on Aug 8, 2021.

Replaced the rattling fan on the CPU heatsink with the Noctua on the Voodoo 3 and applied a new larger 60x60 fan on the V3 instead.
Overclocked the system by raising the front side bus from 66 MHz to 75 MHz!

Update on Sep 24, 2021.

Replaced malfunctioning Teac CD-W524E with Mitsumi CR-48XETE CD-RW

Last edited by leonardo on 2021-10-10, 14:46. Edited 10 times in total.

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 1 of 6, by keropi

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very nice!!!

regarding the keyboard, every time I see a pic of this IBM model I die a little inside... my ps1/pro had this keyboard and back then I binned it because of the noise it made... /ultra-facepalm

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 2 of 6, by leonardo

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keropi wrote:

very nice!!!

regarding the keyboard, every time I see a pic of this IBM model I die a little inside... my ps1/pro had this keyboard and back then I binned it because of the noise it made... /ultra-facepalm

There's a lot of hardware that I have a similar feeling towards. I even had the original IBM PS/2 with peripherals and everything. Fully functional. Being young and foolish I sold it on the flea market. 🤐

Oh my poor 386... what I wouldn't give to have you back.

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 4 of 6, by leonardo

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Inspired by speeddemon's recent Socket7 build, I decided to see if I could push my set up even further still!

First order of business was to deal with the fan noise, so I decided place a larger fan on the Voodoo3:

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After this I checked the RAM to see if I could consider bumping the front side bus speed from the officially supported 66 MHz clock to a higher rate and sure enough, found that when swapping out the EDO memory I had overindulged on the SD-RAM specs: 😀

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Here we have the patient with it's belly showing:

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I've joined the club of people who have these seriously large and powerful Noctua CPU coolers. 😎

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In the follow-up I will post my findings overclocking as well as performance tweaks enabled by your K6-II/K6-III operating parameters outside of multiplier and front side bus!

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 5 of 6, by leonardo

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Tweaks, Overclocking and Benchmark post

A Brief History

Upgrading the CPUs on a Socket 7 system was given an interesting twist after AMD introduced the K6-II / K6-III (desktop) and the K6-II+ and K6-III+ (mobile) CPUs. The CPUs were socket compatible with many systems that could officially only support Pentium and K6/Cyrix CPUs up to 233 MHz.

Sometimes manufacturers would add support for these CPUs with an official BIOS update, but many times an updated BIOS was introduced by enthusiasts. One location for such BIOS-files is The Unofficial AMD K6-2+ / K6-III+ page.

Many of the later K6-series CPUs were intended to run on newer so-called "Super Socket 7"-boards that supported a front-side-bus speed of 100 MHz. The CPU I bought to upgrade my system, for example, would utilise a 4x multiplier together with a 100 MHz front-side bus to reach its intended speed of 400 MHz. However, AMD cleverly included a work-around for users of older Socket 7 motherboards: if the motherboard was set to use the 2x CPU multiplier, the CPU would interpret that internally as 6x! This allowed the use of these faster CPUs on motherboards that maybe lacked the necessary multiplier or FSB settings.

My motherboard (the ASUS TX97-XE) is one that officially only supports a 66 MHz front-side bus speed and does not include a 6x CPU multiplier setting. It also needed an unofficial BIOS update to support the AMD K6-III+ 400 MHz CPU I'm using now.

Overclocking on the TX97-XE

The K6-III+ mobile CPU is a special kind of animal. It uses a lower voltage than regular desktop CPUs (at the time). In fact, the specified 1.6V cannot by supplied by the TX97-XE motherboard I use in my configuration. The lowest supported voltage is 1.8V:

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However, a minor bump in the operating voltage is not necessarily an issue as long as the CPU is properly cooled and overvolting is often used when overclocking to ensure stable operation of the CPU. Hence, I was actually already set up to attempt an overclock by raising the front side bus from the officially supported maximum of 66 MHz to 75 MHz. speeddemon has his FSB set to 83 MHz, but besides being quite a substantial overclock, it's also one that I couldn't find any documentation for. Instead the 75 MHz FSB was clearly outlined in the ASUS manual for the TX97-XE:

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Results

Methodology
I'm going to be using 3DMark2000 scores as a way to see if video performance is affected by the overclocking or the tweaks.
Note: All results are with the updated BIOS.
Note: All results are with 16-bit color depth because the Voodoo3 does not support 32-bit 3D-rendering.
Note: 3DNow! is enabled for all tests.

Besides applying the overclock, I'm going to be utilising Central Tweaking Unit by Rob Muller. This handy utility allows the enabling of some performance enhancing features (namely write allocation and write combining) that are unknown by the BIOS and thus likely disabled.


First test is just a refresher with only the updated BIOS and the certified clock speed. No further performance enhancements.

AMD K6-III+ @ 400 MHz (6x66): 1280 points


After successfully applying the 50 MHz CPU overclock, I decided to also attempt optimization with CTU.
I applied write combining to the first reported framebuffer/video memory range based on what I read in William Jones' guide where he states that:

The 2nd MTRR1 row can be used if you have two graphics cards to enable Write Combining on that card also...

I used the memory addresses visible in Device Manager as basis for the settings in CTU, which confusingly gave me 32 MB worth of VRAM:

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This led to a substantial improvement in performance with and without overclocking:
AMD K6-III+ @ 400 MHz (6x66), 1x32MB range write-combining: 1392 points
AMD K6-III+ @ 450 MHz (6x75), 1x32MB range write-combining: 1441 points

In fact, it seems the optimization by enabling write-combining brought a bigger jump in performance than the overclock! However, it bugs me that 1) there are two memory regions designated on the Resources-tab in Device Manager and 2) the indicated ranges are 32 MB each, even though my Voodoo3 only has 16 megabytes of VRAM. My conclusion from this was that the Voodoo3 must be allocating system RAM for textures when it runs out of local video memory. Indeed 3DMark2000 even runs Texture-rendering speed tests up to 64 MB.


Following my intuition, I decided to perform two more benchmarks. In the first one, I enabled write-combining for each of the reported 32 MB memory ranges allocated to the Voodoo3 according to Device Manager:

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I knew all of it would not be video memory and thus did not expect to get the result I got:
AMD K6-III+ @ 450 MHz (6x75), 2x32MB range write-combining: 1564 points

Because the performance was improved, it must mean the second memory range also includes local video memory on the V3. However, this would imply that I was incorrectly applying write-combining to quite a lot of system RAM (see the Wikipedia article on why this is undesirable).


In my second experiment, I made the assumption that both memory ranges would start with local VRAM, but that the remainder of the range was just system RAM allocated for textures (sort of like AGP aperture). If I was right, I could enable write-combining for only the first 8 MB of each memory range (totalling the 16MB on the Voodoo3) and still achieve the same performance as when I had write-combining turned on for the full 64 megabytes of allocated memory:

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...and the results are in(!):
AMD K6-III+ @ 450 MHz (6x75), 2x8MB range write-combining: 1556 points

The difference between this and the previous results are within margin of error, which in my opinion indicates I have the right conclusion. This is further confirmed by the fact that I got a lower score when I only enabled write-combining for the first memory range, even though I had designated a complete 32MB range then. 😎


Conclusion:
For optimum results on your K6-II/K6-III based system, you should enable write combining so that both video memory ranges are included, but so that the two ranges together add up to the total amount of local video memory on your card.*
* At least in the case of a 3Dfx Voodoo 3 PCI

Last edited by leonardo on 2021-10-10, 15:26. Edited 3 times in total.

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 6 of 6, by speeddemon

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leonardo wrote on 2021-08-10, 20:42:

For optimum results on your K6-II/K6-III based system, you should enable write combining so that both video memory ranges are included, but so that the two ranges together add up to the total amount of local video memory on your card.

Thanks for sharing! I'll try this on my system that's a twin to yours and post the results I get.

PC#1: K6-3+ 500 / Asus TX97-X / Voodoo3 / Orpheus + PCMIDI + WP32 / Win98
PC#2: P4 HT 670 / Asus P5P800 / FX5950U + V2 SLI / Audigy 2ZS + Vortex2 + X2GS / Win98
PC#3: i7-3770K / Asus P8Z77-V Pro / TITAN X / X-Fi / WinXP
PC#4: i9-9900K / Gigabyte Z390M / GTX 1070 / X-Fi Ti HD + SC-88 / Win10