Skyscraper wrote:

I have also seen that ABIT KR7A-RAID for 38 euro on Ebay, it looks like it has some bad caps. "K-systems" (Ebay shop in Bulgari […]
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Carlos S. M. wrote:

I found an Abit KW7 recently on ebay, but is 81 €... also found an NF7 for 89 € ahtough i found an ABIT KR7A-RAID for 38 € […]
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kanecvr wrote:

back on topic - I highly recommend the A7V880 (despite my general dislike for Asus mainboards). It's a great motherboard and should be relatively easy to find. The Abit KT880 is better but they are notoriously hard to come by since people who bought Abit usually went for nforce 2 boards...

Performance-wise the KT880 has slightly lower memory performance (1-5%) but overall higher CPU scores. AGP performance is about the same on both chipsets.

I found an Abit KW7 recently on ebay, but is 81 €... also found an NF7 for 89 € ahtough i found an ABIT KR7A-RAID for 38 €

I'm currently stuck with 4 MSI Socket A mobos and 1 ASUS mobo

Just wondering, can i contribute in some CPU benchmarks, i would try 3DMark, but i don't have a Radeon x1950 AGP

I have also seen that ABIT KR7A-RAID for 38 euro on Ebay, it looks like it has some bad caps. "K-systems" (Ebay shop in Bulgaria) has an Asus A7V880 motherboard for about the same price but that board has both bad caps and a beat up DB-25 LPT port.

I kind of stumbled on a KT880 motherboard while looking for something else so I luckily don't have to search for decaying (but still expensive) carcasesses on Ebay.

The X1950 Pro is probably not going to be the only video card used for the CPU scaling benchmarking as I ran in to too much issues. As the X1950 Pro is a video card sunaiac owns it will probably be used to compare Socket A to Slot A unless sunaiac owns some other rather fast AGP card, preferable DX9 but perhaps even a Geforce 4 Ti would be adequate.

The Geforce 6800GT/Ultra seems like a good DX9 card to use for the CPU scaling tests as the AGP version do not use one of those craptastic PCI-E - AGP bridges. It should also run on most motherboards so it could be used for chipset performance comparisons aswell.

I can buy other cards if needed.
But we could also consider doing tests on slower platforms with one video card, fast platforms with another, and just have some "middle" platforms done with both.
Something like 500->1000 MHz with GF4 MX 460, 1000->top MHz with 6800, and 900 --> 1200 with both.
Or whatever cards are easy, compatibility-wise.
My 1950 pro is in a FX55, and my K7 1000 has a MX 460 actually 😁 (and those are my fastest AGP cards, in addition to a firegl 8800)

sunaiac wrote:

I can buy other cards if needed. But we could also consider doing tests on slower platforms with one video card, fast platforms […]
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I can buy other cards if needed.
But we could also consider doing tests on slower platforms with one video card, fast platforms with another, and just have some "middle" platforms done with both.
Something like 500->1000 MHz with GF4 MX 460, 1000->top MHz with 6800, and 900 --> 1200 with both.
Or whatever cards are easy, compatibility-wise.
My 1950 pro is in a FX55, and my K7 1000 has a MX 460 actually 😁 (and those are my fastest AGP cards, in addition to a firegl 8800)

Yea I think we will end up using more than a single video card model.

Believe it or not but I might actullay have a FireGL 8800 card, I'm not totally sure I own a working Gforce 4 MX 460 though but I will check in some easy accessible boxes. 😁

Skyscraper wrote:

sunaiac wrote:

I can buy other cards if needed. But we could also consider doing tests on slower platforms with one video card, fast platforms […]
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I can buy other cards if needed.
But we could also consider doing tests on slower platforms with one video card, fast platforms with another, and just have some "middle" platforms done with both.
Something like 500->1000 MHz with GF4 MX 460, 1000->top MHz with 6800, and 900 --> 1200 with both.
Or whatever cards are easy, compatibility-wise.
My 1950 pro is in a FX55, and my K7 1000 has a MX 460 actually 😁 (and those are my fastest AGP cards, in addition to a firegl 8800)

Yea I think we will end up using more than a single video card model.

Believe it or not but I might actullay have a FireGL 8800 card, I'm not totally sure I own a working Gforce 4 MX 460 though. 😁

I have an MX 460 sitting on a Pentium 4 system, i can take out the card and use it for benches, i have also more cards:

nVidia cards
TNT2 M64 (multiple cards)
TNT2
Geforce 2 MX 200
Geforce 2 MX 400 (multiple cards)
Geforce 4 MX 4000
Geforce 4 MX 440 (multiple cards)
Geforce 4 MX 460
Geforce 4 Ti 4200-8x
Geforce 4 Ti 4600
Geforce FX 5500 (multiple cards)
Geforce FX 5600 XT
Geforce FX 5600 SE
Geforce FX 5700 LE
Geforce 6200 AGP DDR2 64 bit (2 cards)
ATI cards:
Rage 128 Pro
Radeon 7500
Radeon 8500 LE
Radeon 9000 (2 cards)
Radeon 9200/9200 SE
Radeon 9250 64 bit (multiple cards)
Radeon 9250 128 bit
Radeon 9550
Radeon 9600
Radeon HD 3450 AGP (2 cards)
Radeon HD 4650 AGP

Getting soon:
Geforce 3 (original)
probably another HD 3450 AGP or 3650

Btw. i got more Socket A stuff, an old Duron 850 and an ASUS A7V-VM HP OEM board, is based on the VIA KT133 + 686A, also, it has a similar vertical mounted VRM like the ASUS A7V, i'm wondering about it's performance, features and if it's BIOS can be modded, turning on the mobo shows the typical HP Splash screen. Oddly, is called ASUS A7V-VM when the motherboard lacks the onboard video, the V sufix after the A7V would mean onboard video, but seems it was ethier no implemented or there are a KM133 variant using the same PCB since there are soldering pads for an VGA port

Carlos S. M. wrote:

nVidia cards TNT2 M64 (multiple cards) TNT2 Geforce 2 MX 200 Geforce 2 MX 400 (multiple cards) Geforce 4 MX 4000 Geforce 4 MX 44 […]
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nVidia cards
TNT2 M64 (multiple cards)
TNT2
Geforce 2 MX 200
Geforce 2 MX 400 (multiple cards)
Geforce 4 MX 4000
Geforce 4 MX 440 (multiple cards)
Geforce 4 MX 460
Geforce 4 Ti 4200-8x
Geforce 4 Ti 4600
Geforce FX 5500 (multiple cards)
Geforce FX 5600 XT
Geforce FX 5600 SE
Geforce FX 5700 LE
Geforce 6200 AGP DDR2 64 bit (2 cards)
ATI cards:
Rage 128 Pro
Radeon 7500
Radeon 8500 LE
Radeon 9000 (2 cards)
Radeon 9200/9200 SE
Radeon 9250 64 bit (multiple cards)
Radeon 9250 128 bit
Radeon 9550
Radeon 9600
Radeon HD 3450 AGP (2 cards)
Radeon HD 4650 AGP

Getting soon:
Geforce 3 (original)
probably another HD 3450 AGP or 3650

Out of that list I find the Geforce Ti 4x00 the best cards to use when testing Athlon 500 to Athlon 1400 MHz, we just need to help sunaiac find a really cheap but working one on Ebay*. 😀

For testing Athlon ~1200 to Athlon XP 3200+ I still think a Geforce 6800GT/Ultra 256 MB card is needed or the video card will heavily bottleneck the benchmarks results in games such as FEAR and Doom 3.

*This is a good Ebay store which sells Geforce4 ti4200 128MB cards for a fair price with cheap shipping http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Medion-Nvidia-GeFor … -EAAOSwjDZYf0F7 The store also has the 64MB version but they are only 3 euro less so I find the 128MB version a better deal.

This evening I had planned to see what the ASRock VIA KM266 (=KT266A) chipset motherboard could do but I got a package from Russia so I needed to see that the content of the box was in working order. The package did not look as bad as the packages coming out of the Ukraine lately but it wasn't exactly pretty either and the moderboard was wrapped in something that looked like the "medical shoe covers" you see at hospitals (If you read this Alexander perhaps you could tell us about the "shoe covers" anti static properties? 😁 )

In any case the motherboard in the box was well protected from outside interference and seemed to have avoided getting caught in the customs net when arriving in Sweden after the not so long journey from Moscow. As the motherboard wasn't recently tested by the seller and it did set me back 66 euro with shipping it needed to be tested ASAP.

This IS the motherboared I will use in my "Ultimate year 2000 build". The Abit KG7 RAID! I already own an Abit KG7 but when I saw this motherboard on Ebay I could not resist. The KG7 is perfect for the Y2K build, even if this motherboard is from year 2001 the chipset was released in October year 2000 and that is what matters in my view.

The AMD Corona EVT8 AMD 760 motherboard that you actually could get hold of in Europe late year 2000 is not easy to track down and the other Y2K models of AMD 760 motherboards like the Asus K7M266 (which I own) and the MSI K7 Master did not appear in Europe until early 2001 so I might aswell go with the Abit KG7 RAID.

The Abit KG7 RAID

Did the motherboard work? Yes it seems to work perfectly fine!

An issue I have had with my old Abit KG7 motherboard is that it sucks when it comes to overclocking the FSB. These motherboards are supposed to be able to run 166+ MHz FSB but my KG7 would fail to load Windows XP at any FSB higher than 140 MHz. It could be the BIOS version, the HDD or perhaps the motherboard diddn't like the memory I used but I would have thought that at least 150 MHz was a sure thing.

With the Abit KG7 RAID I set 150 MHz FSB with my Athlon 1200(133) the first time I entered the BIOS and used that setting when installing Windows XP, no issues at all! 😀

I did a quick 3dmark 2001 test run with the Abit KG7 RAID, my Athlon 1200 and a Geforce 3 card just to see that the motherboard works.

The Geforce 3 is a substitute for my Geforce 2 Ultra* which is in a box somewhere but will be in the Y2K build.

*In fact an Elsa Gloria III Quadro2 Pro but only the BIOS differs otherwise the card is using the Geforce 2 Ultra reference design.

Edit

166 MHz FSB seems to work fine 😀

/Edit

Interesting:

The KT7-Raid fails already at 112MHz. 😵
The KT7A-Raid does 133MHz, but fails at 166MHz or not?!
The KG7-Raid does 166MHz 😀

Edit:

Looking at the board's layout, the floppy port at KG7 is even worse compared to the KT7... 😊

Skyscraper wrote:

Out of that list I find the Geforce Ti 4x00 the best cards to use when testing Athlon 500 to Athlon 1400 MHz, we just need to help sunaiac find a really cheap but working one on Ebay*. 😀

For testing Athlon ~1200 to Athlon XP 3200+ I still think a Geforce 6800GT/Ultra 256 MB card is needed or the video card will heavily bottleneck the benchmarks results in games such as FEAR and Doom 3.

*This is a good Ebay store which sells Geforce4 ti4200 128MB cards for a fair price with cheap shipping http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Medion-Nvidia-GeFor … -EAAOSwjDZYf0F7 The store also has the 64MB version but they are only 3 euro less so I find the 128MB version a better deal.

I have the same exact Geforce 4 Ti 4200, the Medion one

About faster cards, i had a Geforce 7600 GT which worked without issues on my Socket A machine, i'm considering getting another 7600 GT or a 7800 if i can

7600 GT is comparable to a 6800 Ultra if i remember

On those Medion Geforce 4 cards keep an eye out for that single brown KZG cap bulging out.

Carlos S. M. wrote:

I have the same exact Geforce 4 Ti 4200, the Medion one […]
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Skyscraper wrote:

Out of that list I find the Geforce Ti 4x00 the best cards to use when testing Athlon 500 to Athlon 1400 MHz, we just need to help sunaiac find a really cheap but working one on Ebay*. 😀

For testing Athlon ~1200 to Athlon XP 3200+ I still think a Geforce 6800GT/Ultra 256 MB card is needed or the video card will heavily bottleneck the benchmarks results in games such as FEAR and Doom 3.

*This is a good Ebay store which sells Geforce4 ti4200 128MB cards for a fair price with cheap shipping http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Medion-Nvidia-GeFor … -EAAOSwjDZYf0F7 The store also has the 64MB version but they are only 3 euro less so I find the 128MB version a better deal.

I have the same exact Geforce 4 Ti 4200, the Medion one

About faster cards, i had a Geforce 7600 GT which worked without issues on my Socket A machine, i'm considering getting another 7600 GT or a 7800 if i can

7600 GT is comparable to a 6800 Ultra if i remember

The issue with those cards is that they are PCI-E cards converted to AGP with a PCI-E to AGP bridge. I have found that these cards won't work with many older socket A motherboards while the native AGP version of the Geforce 6800 GT/Ultra works flawlessly.

The PCI-E --> AGP briged Radeon cards seems to work somewhat better but at least both my X850XT and X1950 Pro still suffer from strange incompatbilties with both VIA KT600 and AMD 760 chipset motherboards and probably with other chipsets aswell.

It's definitly worth picking up a native AGP Geforce 6800GT/Ultra 256MB card if one can find a working one for less than 30 euro shipped. Don't get the later versions of the Geforce 6800 AGP with PCI-E to AGP bridge, these are not worth paying those kind of money for as one might just aswell get a cheap 7600GS/GT and get the same kind of performance.

Skyscraper wrote:

The issue with those cards is that they are PCI-E cards converted to AGP with a PCI-E to AGP bridge. I have found that these car […]
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Carlos S. M. wrote:

I have the same exact Geforce 4 Ti 4200, the Medion one […]
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Skyscraper wrote:

Out of that list I find the Geforce Ti 4x00 the best cards to use when testing Athlon 500 to Athlon 1400 MHz, we just need to help sunaiac find a really cheap but working one on Ebay*. 😀

For testing Athlon ~1200 to Athlon XP 3200+ I still think a Geforce 6800GT/Ultra 256 MB card is needed or the video card will heavily bottleneck the benchmarks results in games such as FEAR and Doom 3.

*This is a good Ebay store which sells Geforce4 ti4200 128MB cards for a fair price with cheap shipping http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Medion-Nvidia-GeFor … -EAAOSwjDZYf0F7 The store also has the 64MB version but they are only 3 euro less so I find the 128MB version a better deal.

I have the same exact Geforce 4 Ti 4200, the Medion one

About faster cards, i had a Geforce 7600 GT which worked without issues on my Socket A machine, i'm considering getting another 7600 GT or a 7800 if i can

7600 GT is comparable to a 6800 Ultra if i remember

The issue with those cards is that they are PCI-E cards converted to AGP with a PCI-E to AGP bridge. I have found that these cards won't work with many older socket A motherboards while the native AGP version of the Geforce 6800 GT/Ultra works flawlessly.

The PCI-E --> AGP briged Radeon cards seems to work somewhat better but at least both my X850XT and X1950 Pro still suffer from strange incompatbilties with both VIA KT600 and AMD 760 chipset motherboards and probably with other chipsets aswell.

It's definitly worth picking up a native AGP Geforce 6800GT/Ultra 256MB card if one can find a working one for less than 30 euro shipped. Dont get the later versions of the Geforce 6800 AGP with PCI-E to AGP bridge, these are not worth paying those kind of money for as one might just aswell get a cheap 7600GS/GT and get the same kind of performance.

Sadly, i can't find any 6800 locally and only a few, but ether very expensive 6800 GT AGP or PCI-E cards on ebay also no mentioning a bid i can't catch in time

In the other hand, i found a Radeon x1950 Pro AGP which is much cheaper near me: http://www.ebay.es/itm/Tarjeta-Grafica-AGP-Cl … 0MAAOSwFe5Xxr86

I could try my HD 4650, but idk if the card will have issues on socket A since i never tried the card on anything different than Pentium 4 and Athlon 64

22 euro is a good price for an X1950 Pro AGP card if the shipping is cheap and it's a card well worth having! 😀

It's perfect for really fast late AGP systems! 😀

So what do I buy ?? 😀
Ti 4200, x800xt, FX 5900 ?

Skyscraper wrote:

22 euro is a good price for an X1950 Pro AGP card if the shipping is cheap and it's a card well worth having! 😀

It's perfect for really fast late AGP systems! 😀

15 € shipping for me, so 22 + 15 = 37 € shipped for me

sunaiac wrote:

So what do I buy ?? 😀
Ti 4200, x800xt, FX 5900 ?

Getting a Ti 4200 128MB is probably the best option as that is a very very useful card to have.

The FX5900 s also worth having but perhaps a bit overkill for benching the slower slot/socket A CPUs and a bit too slow for the fastest, at least in DX9 games. That said I would not trade my Asus Geforce FX5900 Ultra in my Tualatin build for any other card when it comes to DX7 and DX8 gaming 😁.

sunaiac wrote:

So what do I buy ?? 😀
Ti 4200, x800xt, FX 5900 ?

i think the Ti 4200 would be ideal for slower K7 CPUs, although is good for fast K7 as well, the Ti 4200 can even still outperform many later cards like most Geforce FX cards
idk about the FX 5900
X800 XT would be an option for faster CPUs

Asus v9280 128mb ordered for 19.1€ including shipping.
Ram should arrive soon. I guess I will be up and running next week 😀

More K7 CPUs for the collection, got these for 5 € shipped, but i bought this mainly because of the Athlon 900

Athlon XP 2000+ AX2000DMT3C Palomino
Athlon 900 A0900AMT3B Thunderbird

Hello, I would like to build a high performance win98 machine for 1600x1200 100Hz gaming, if I can dig up one of those 35W 266FSB mobile bartons. For graphics I'll go with FX5950 Ultra or maybe 6600GT or 6800GT, they're all AGP8X I think. I also need enough PCI slots for Aureal Vortex 2 and gigabit network adapter if one is not built into the mobo. I'd like to run the CPU at no higher than 2ghz because of NFS Porsche bug, and undervolt it as low as it would go while still running stable. Which motherboard would be the best fit for this?

God Of Gaming wrote:

Hello, I would like to build a high performance win98 machine for 1600x1200 100Hz gaming, if I can dig up one of those 35W 266FSB mobile bartons. For graphics I'll go with FX5950 Ultra or maybe 6600GT or 6800GT, they're all AGP8X I think. I also need enough PCI slots for Aureal Vortex 2 and gigabit network adapter if one is not built into the mobo. I'd like to run the CPU at no higher than 2ghz because of NFS Porsche bug, and undervolt it as low as it would go while still running stable. Which motherboard would be the best fit for this?

I have no idea if it's possible to control the XP-M CPU multiplier from within Windows 9x but if so any VIA chipset motherboard with or without multiplier control should work as long as it's able to POST and BOOT Windows with the XP-M.

If it's not possible to control the multiplier from within Windows 9x then you need a motherboard which both is able to run the XP-M and support multiplier control from the BIOS otherwise you could be stuck at 5x133 MHz.

i got two old PCs which one of these came with an ECS K7S5A and an Duron 1000, it have the HDD, videocard and RAM missing. I plugged the computer and got it turning on and POST sucessfully (after adding RAM and a videocard to test it), but the mobo needs a recap, the ECS K7S5A is based around the SiS 735 chipset and supports both PC100/133 and DDR200/266, Universal AGP 4x slot, ATA-100, USB 1.1, 5 PCI slots and 1 AMR slot, board has only 1 20 pin power as power source

the Duron 1000 is a Morgan core which is derivated from Palomino, although it still uses ceramic PGA instead of organic PGA in Palomino, the Duron model is DHD1000AMT1B

do someone have plans to try SiS chipset based Socket A systems? this is my first SiS based chipset Socket A mobo i get in my hands

Carlos S. M. wrote:

do someone have plans to try SiS chipset based Socket A systems? this is my first SiS based chipset Socket A mobo i get in my hands

No but I own one of those SIS motherboards, I will try it out later. 😀

I think I need to get a better VIA KT266A motherboard than the ASrock K7VM2 (KM266 = KT266A + onboard video).

The board did work but it seemed to have some compatibility issues with running a Geforce4 Ti 4200 with a fast CPU, flashing the latest BIOS did not help.

This is how 3dmark 2001 looked, it runs all the way through and I get decent scores but when using a Barton @ 12.5x133 the video outputs is... interesting. This GF4 Ti 4200 from the big German part lot seems fine otherwise, it runs 3dmark 2000 without issues even with the Barton and games works but after the first test in 3dmark 2001 the screen gets very colourful. 😀 I cant be bothered with testing other drivers until I have tested the video card in another motherboard. I hope I find another KT266A motherboard in one of my many motherboard boxes or I will have to spend some money buying one. If I remember correctly I used one for testing alot of AGP cards some years ago, its probably in a case somewhere...