FGB wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

Hanging note bug. You'll note it with Hexen, Doom, and many other games which combine MIDI and PCM audio out. It's present in the majority of Creative SB16/AWE cards, although AWE64 is not affected.

That is not true at all. Define "majority" before making such claims!
Almost ANY AWE32 cards of the models CT3900 and CT3980 with DSP V4.13 have the "type 2" of the hanging notes bug which means IN REALITY you can play hours and hours without any hanging note. These cards are virtually bug free. Also the majority of the CT2760 series are not affected by the bug, the DSP4.11 models seem to be more prone to it. SB32 model CT3760 has DSP 4.16 like the AWE64 series and is free from this bug.

DSP versions <=4.05 and 4.16 are completely free of both type 1 and type 2 hanging note bugs. How noticeable type 1 bugs are will be variable depending on the type of gaming going on and the sensitivity of the user's ear.

I try not to push my own views on this as sound is so subjective. The best option is to experiment which is why I asked what cards the OP has kicking around.

It's worth noting that music using the EMU8k chip is not affected by hanging note, as the MPU interface is emulated and does not use the Creative DSP the same way.

FGB wrote:

oerk wrote:

Jupiter-18 wrote:

Would I still be able to use the sound from the awe32 and dreamblaster if I assigned midi to a different port or card?

Yes, you can even use a dirt cheap Soundblaster clone card, but it takes some shuffling around of ports/IRQs/DMA.

No, oerk is wrong. One can't have the AWE32 sound with any SoundBlaster clone card.

I think he meant as a carrier card for MIDI. Ideally, if you use a second card for MIDI, it should have a waveblaster header for mounting the Dreamblaster DB as well. Alternately, you can use a clone card and install a CT1920 Goldfinch device for EMU8k music.

Oh Yeah.... Have forgotten all about the goldfinch. Might be a good solution, getting an Vibra + Goldfinch + Dreamblaster-S1/X1.

So what does everyone think about choice of chipset?

VIA or ALI?

gdjacobs wrote:

FGB wrote:

No, oerk is wrong. One can't have the AWE32 sound with any SoundBlaster clone card.

I think he meant as a carrier card for MIDI. Ideally, if you use a second card for MIDI, it should have a waveblaster header for mounting the Dreamblaster DB as well. Alternately, you can use a clone card and install a CT1920 Goldfinch device for EMU8k music.

Yep, that's what I meant.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

So what does everyone think about choice of chipset?

VIA or ALI?

I like both of and they both have some good chipsets, the only gripes I have always ends up with the build quality of the boards or the lack of fsb and multiplier selection. Performance wise they are solid even though there are some differences I feel that all things considered they are equal. Now days one doesn't have the option to be picky about SS7 boards as they are getting to be hard to find except for the lower end oem boards.

I kept using the V3, so didn't run into AGP issues. Got to try out some other cards one day to see what they are like.

i went mvp3 back then, i didn't like the ride

Ok, here are my replies to all the comments so far:
I am going with the Gigabyte GA-5AX Motherboard so that I can manipulate the clock like in PhilsComputerLab's 4-in-1 MS-DOS/Windows gaming PC.

For GPU, I will pair the Voodoo 2 SLI with either the Nvidia TNT2-Ultra or the ATi Rage Fury Maxx. Need to see benchmarks of both to choose which one.

For the sound card, I have a few options. I could go with the AWE32 + Dreamblaster X1 + some cheap card for midi if necessary, AWE64 Gold + SB Pro, or a SB16 + Dreamblaster X1 + Ultrasound ACE.
Lastly, OS? 98 seems like the best option. Is ME as bad as they say?

As already said if I had to build a ss7 system for myself, I would not use the dual Rage 128 Pro card if it will perform probably (but I got no benchmark results to be sure) not much faster of the much cheaper single Rage 128 Pro when I suspect also that even this one would still be limited by the cpu.
Anyway, for the os I tried both and to my eyes are ok even if ME would probably be a bit more demanding on cpu/ram maybe but it has native usb and a more "modern" looking style.

Ok. What is the upper OS limit for a K6-III+?

Practically, just win98

I only tried 9x and ME on the K62+ 500 and it seems "enough". But I don't know if others tried also NT or 2000 os onto it and how it would performs.

Back in 2004 I tried XP SP1 on a K6-2 450 it worked rather well, but SP2 made it cry like a 5 year old girl being hit by mike tyson

If you want a solid AGP card that will be cheap and wont be a bottle neck, nor be bottle necked by the k6 I would recommend the Geforce 2 MX cards. Low power, and you know what you are getting. Finding an well priced TNT2 Ultra can be a pain and the Rage Furry Maxx by all accounts is not that good, and is expensive.

Jupiter-18 wrote:

For the sound card, I have a few options. I could go with the AWE32 + Dreamblaster X1 + some cheap card for midi if necessary, AWE64 Gold + SB Pro, or a SB16 + Dreamblaster X1 + Ultrasound ACE.
Lastly, OS? 98 seems like the best option. Is ME as bad as they say?

I think the SB16 + Dreamblaster + GUS-ACE are the best for you, if you are going to play games as old as 1991 and up to 1999.
For the OS, then try both Windows versions. Personally I like Win98se better than ME. Personal choices differ though.
I would strongly recommend that you dualboot with MS-Dos-6.22 if you go for a GUS-ACE.
There are Win95 drivers for GUS, yet a GUS are really a Dos soundcard.

I plan on using this to play games from 1980 to 2000. Which DOS version should I grab for that?
For soundcards, would the SB16 + dreamblasterX1 + Ultrasound ACE cover those years?

back in 2012 i use to have have a SS7 DFI motherboard with a 500MHz K6-2, 384MB of RAM, 30GB HDD, I don't recall what I had for an AGP Card, but I had windows xp Pro SP3 on it and it ran fine if you know how to tweak it.
Turn off system restore
Turn off a few of the visuals & graphics stuff
Keep virus protection off especially security essentials
Turn off printing services and indexing
keep HDD defragged (if your HDD is taking a crap then its going to be harder running xp)
Max out RAM
Replace media player with vlc if your playing mp3's (Media player uses more RAM then vlc)
Replace IE8 in favor of Firefox (Firefox runs the best in my opinion, latest one fixed a lot of bugs as of 2016)

Keep in mind that youtube is out of the question with this cpu but lite website browsing will be fine.

Ive used this setup for unreal tournament lan games (low settings of course), I really wish I still had this PC 😢

IMO the FIC 2013.

Internet browsing is not really a concern of mine. This will be primarily game-oriented, perhaps with some video editing and music making.

What do people think of the S3 Savage 4 or Savage 2000?