Sweet, thank you for the information.

Probably reached 173MHz FSB stable, still testing it on Farcry...will post in an hour or 2.

Yup, played FarCry, 2 levels, no problems...stable like hell. 175 seems to be rather VERY agressive on the RAM modules. I"m going to send one of my vp6 to my colleague to solder the caps I bought, this should tremendously improve performance (at least stability). I tried 176 with my super-duper Tonicom PC166 modules and made a screenshot, which I´ll post later. BTW
Retro, you´re doing some good stuff with all the HW, I recommend you buy these, they perfrom quite well as a testing tool:

They have 6ns chips, but run only at CAS3.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Tonicom-SIM-BGA-PC-166-12 … =item5ad44cb955

Shodan486 wrote:

BTW Retro, you´re doing some good stuff with all the HW, I recommend you buy these, they perfrom quite well as a testing tool:

They have 6ns chips, but run only at CAS3.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Tonicom-SIM-BGA-PC-166-12 … =item5ad44cb955

I didn't know that PC-166 SDRAM existed! I found this on wikipedia -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_dyna … _called_DDR1.29

It says, on the 6th line down -

"Typical DDR SDRAM clock rates are 133, 166 and 200 MHz (7.5, 6, and 5 ns/cycle), generally described as DDR-266, DDR-333 and DDR-400 (3.75, 3, and 2.5 ns per beat). Corresponding 184-pin DIMMS are known as PC-2100, PC-2700 and PC-3200."

So, PC-166 SDRAM is really called PC-2700. I wonder if these PC-2700 (184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMM) sticks can be used in a KT133A chipset based board? Interesting...

It's not the same thing at all. The ns rating is simply a mesure of the clock speed. DDR333 aka PC 2700 is really running at the 166mhz bus speed, just like the PC133.

For future reference:
PC66, PC100, PC133 < All SDR
PC2100, PC 2700, PC 3200 <-- All DDR

Form the wiki:

"Some minor changes to the SDR interface timing were made in hindsight, and the supply voltage was reduced from 3.3 to 2.5 V. As a result, DDR SDRAM is not backwards compatible with SDR SDRAM

Prophase's correct - we're talking SDR SDRAM, not DDR SDRAM - Single Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory - against the Dual Data Rate SDRAM.

To fill in the gap Prophase' left, when somebody refers to, let's say DDR DIMM running at 166MHz, you have to multiply it by 2 because of the DDR technology, which allows to transfer data on both the rising and falling edges of the clock signal - thus the effective clock is 333MHz, but the real physical clock is those 166MHz.

Also, DDR doubles the minimum read or write unit; every access refers to at least two consecutive words - DDR2 can 4, DDR3 can 8.

A bit offtopic, I'm sure you have some P4 board at your stockpile, put a Celeron in it and run Everest - you'll see the base clock is 100MHz. Don't be afraid, it's not the actual speed. Intel used a QDR bus for this CPU, meanin Quadrupled Data Rate, so the real clock is 400MHz.

sorry, made a mistake - it is Double Data Rate.

Ok guys, I'm joining the fun and games. 😁

Got an Epox 8KTA3+ Pro from ebay. It looks like new, no visibly damaged caps, and the previous owner installed a nice heatsink on the northbridge.
Tested with a Thunderbird 1400, everything OK.
Unfortunately I don't have any fancy mobile Athlons, so my old Thoroughbred 1700+ will have to do. A little wire mod was necessary to unlock the low multipliers (5.0-12.5) on this CPU.

I'm testing stability with a Geforce 4 Ti. Right now it breezes through 3DMark 2001 SE at 150x10 MHz. Looks promising so far... 😉

5u3 wrote:

Unfortunately I don't have any fancy mobile Athlons, so my old Thoroughbred 1700+ will have to do.

If you want to get a mobile Barton XP-M CPU, this seller has lots of new 2400+'s for sale -

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=190344318454

The price is $20, which includes a sale discount plus international delivery. I bought one several weeks ago (no sale discount at that time!), and the seller ships the (visibly new looking) CPU inside a little "tupperware style" container, ensuring that the CPU cannot be squashed during international transit.

5u3 wrote:

Ok guys, I'm joining the fun and games. :happyhappy: […]
Show full quote

Ok guys, I'm joining the fun and games. 😁

Got an Epox 8KTA3+ Pro from ebay. It looks like new, no visibly damaged caps, and the previous owner installed a nice heatsink on the northbridge.
Tested with a Thunderbird 1400, everything OK.
Unfortunately I don't have any fancy mobile Athlons, so my old Thoroughbred 1700+ will have to do. A little wire mod was necessary to unlock the low multipliers (5.0-12.5) on this CPU.

I'm testing stability with a Geforce 4 Ti. Right now it breezes through 3DMark 2001 SE at 150x10 MHz. Looks promising so far... 😉

Cool, welcome back to the 8kta3 world 😁

Currently using a t-bred 2400+ in mine 133mhz fsb, 2000mhz

5u3 wrote:

I'm testing stability with a Geforce 4 Ti. Right now it breezes through 3DMark 2001 SE at 150x10 MHz. Looks promising so far... 😉

That's sick. What kinda ram you doing that with? Tonicom, Crucial? So curious.

I have joined the evil KT133a empire too. I have aquired a QDI Kinetiz 7A. I am not sure I like to keep that rig though. I am comparing my current fast retro-rocket with the QDI and am not really convinced. Here are my thoughts:

The KT266a would be a truely legendary chipset, still capable of AGP 2x. The support for XP-M in Bios is much better on many boards. The only but hefty drawback I see to the KT133a is the lack of an ISA port. (agreed?)

Using all known means, the KT133a can only be throttled in hardware to 500 MHz. Still too fast for many early win95 and Dos games. Hence the machine cannot be the "one size fits all" solution. One will need a slower DOS companion. So why not forego the SB16/Wavetable ISA solution for a SBlive! and be on the PCI side? With a KT266a you could still use a V5 5500 at 2000MHz CPU.

But when I get this far in my contemplations, my current fast retro rig seems a rather logical alternative. Dump the noisy V5 5500. Dump the KT266a. I am using a KT600 with many advantages, like FSB200, USB2.0, SATA and some more. Instead of using a loud and glorious V5 5500, I am using a silent GF6800. Where is the advantage? First, the GF6800 still allows the older win98 drivers with 8bit graphics support. A glide wrapper will be very fast, even if FSAA is enabled. 4:3 on widescreen is possible, even with a wrapper. You can now actually lower Vcore to 1.45V for that mobile XP - which makes the thing almost silent alltogether.

What is the drawback of this approach? What am I missing?

ux-3 wrote:

The KT266a would be a truely legendary chipset, still capable of AGP 2x. The support for XP-M in Bios is much better on many boards. The only but hefty drawback I see to the KT133a is the lack of an ISA port. (agreed?)

The ISA slot is what makes this motherboard fall in to a class all it's own. You can also argue the 2x/4x AGP slot, but then your open to alternatives like KT266 and KT333, and also Intel BX, 815 and 820. Simply put, legacy sound and graphics cards are this platform's niche.

ux-3 wrote:

But when I get this far in my contemplations, my current fast retro rig seems a rather logical alternative. Dump the noisy V5 5500. Dump the KT266a. I am using a KT600 with many advantages, like FSB200, USB2.0, SATA and some more. Instead of using a loud and glorious V5 5500, I am using a silent GF6800. Where is the advantage? First, the GF6800 still allows the older win98 drivers with 8bit graphics support. A glide wrapper will be very fast, even if FSAA is enabled. 4:3 on widescreen is possible, even with a wrapper. You can now actually lower Vcore to 1.45V for that mobile XP - which makes the thing almost silent alltogether.

Anything along those lines will be very effective if your application runs in windows and can tolerate your processor speeds. After KT333 DDMA is no long supported, so now digital sound in *real* DOS no longer works. Once you leave the requirements of legacy sound and video hardware, the upper limit for this class of hardware is Going to be NForce2, KT800 and 600. At that rate you could also go with Intel 865 matched up with a beefy processor and dual channel ram. Dual boot that thing and you can handle quite a few modern titles with XP and current drivers.

And at that point you should ponder just what the hell you are doing and why you don't just use modern hardware? The infinite upgrade bug strikes again. "Just a little faster now!" 😁

I was using an Athlon 64 X2 with a Radeon X850 XT on XP for awhile with some older games. Nothing quite like 120 fps @ 120 Hz on a CRT with 4X MSAA. I'll say that ultra buttery smoothness really defuses the love of slow "classic" hardware! I was doing that with Need for Speed III with the zeckensack Glide emulator. And it even ran Star Trek Dominion Wars, and this blew my mind because that game works on 1 out of 10 video cards.

You have to avoid the DX10 cards though because they dropped 16-bit color dithering and as a result you get really awful color banding, especially in darker games.

Boy, this is even more fun than 8 years ago... 😉
Thanks for the tips on getting a mobile Athlon, but it seems my current TBred is better than I thought: I've reached the 2 GHz barrier! 😁

The CPU seems to be one of those magic 1700+ JIUHB steppings (no time right now to look under the heat sink). It runs stable at 160x12.5=2 GHz with default voltage (1.6V).
The RAM consists of two 256MB PC133-2-2-2 modules. The chips and modules have been manufactured by Siemens/Infineon, they were slightly more expensive than standard modules when I bought them (because of the 2-2-2 timings), but they were not marketed as "overclocker" modules.

I'm running this from an Enermax EG365P-VE PSU, which appears to have a hard time keeping the voltages within specs. One phenomenon I always get with these PSUs, is that the 3.3V and 12V rails always climb up, while the 5V rail plummets down under heavy loads. Years ago I modified a EG365P to keep the 5V rail up, but now I can't find this unit anywhere.
The CPU voltage regulators get really hot at high speeds (hotter than the CPU and Northbridge heatsinks).

Of course I've been trying to get the FSB past 166 MHz, but things get unstable very fast, even at low multipliers. Raising the voltages did nothing but increase heat output, and slowing down the RAM timings didn't help either. Eventually I gave up trying, because I don't see much point in increasing the FSB even further (PCI/AGP clocks are already at 40/80 MHz).

Here are some benchmark results I got while testing stability (default settings):

3DMark 99 Max: 13499 3DMarks, CPU: 32820
3DMark 2000: 11455 3DMarks
3DMark 2001 SE: 9151 3DMarks

These are rather preliminary, as I don't have a clean Windows installation at the moment (I simply cloned the harddrive from my K6 machine and re-installed drivers).

Regarding the 5v rail problem, what software did you use (or hardware ? ) to detect the values. I'm having the same problems on my current machine (see signature), BUT - everest shows its approx. 4.83v at idle and 4.61v when running the stress test; on the other hand, VIA HW monitor is within the 5% tolerance to all the rails. I have no means to detect these value from any measuring gadget 🙁.

Don't be worried of the PCI/AGP frequency - I'm running it 43/86 MHz 😀 - Just cool every little tiny chip which may overheat at some extreme conditions, like the ICS chip (think it's printed on it) near the DIMM slots to the right.

prophase_j wrote:

Simply put, legacy sound and graphics cards are this platform's niche.

I am aware of this, but the CPU just can not be made to match the required retro-ness. 500 MHz is rock bottom. So in a way, you can't really take full advantage of that ISA and AGP 2x. Take ISA away, and the KT133a becomes a poor choice.

prophase_j wrote:

Once you leave the requirements of legacy sound and video hardware, the upper limit for this class of hardware is Going to be NForce2, KT800 and 600. At that rate you could also go with Intel 865 matched up with a beefy processor and dual channel ram.

My wife runs an 865 with a C2D 4300. I still have the Gainward Bliss 7800GS+ for it. But for office, a passive GF2 suffices.

swaaye wrote:

And at that point you should ponder just what the hell you are doing and why you don't just use modern hardware? The infinite upgrade bug strikes again. "Just a little faster now!" 😁

Thats not exactly the case here. We are talking about the same CPU on either KT133a, KT266a or KT600. This is not a matter of a speed increase. In fact, my KT600 allows as much throttling as my KT133a, but in a more convenient way.
What am I doing? I need a fast Win98 machine for titles that just won't run on XP. Ideally, this machine should cover late DOS games as well. But for this task, the Athlon is simply too fast, even at 5x100 MHz. And it is also too fast (even on KT133a) for some Win9x titles. So you just can't get it all in one box. If you drop the Dos/throttle requirement, you are free to choose among the later Athlon chipsets.

swaaye wrote:

And it even ran Star Trek Dominion Wars, and this blew my mind because that game works on 1 out of 10 video cards.

Yes, that game is another bugger! So far, I can only run it on my voodoo3 (haven't tried the V5 5500). It refuses my GF9800 and my GF6.

5u3 wrote:

[Lots of cool stuff plus] It [1700+] runs stable at 160x12.5=2 GHz with default voltage (1.6V)

Congratulations! 😀 It looks like you won a board with good condition caps. 😀 Hehe, you outbid me on that one! 😮

ATM, I'm messing about with a "lowly" EP-8KTA3 board. It's not a "+" board, or a Pro board, just a plan vanilla board. Unfortunately, the caps are in bad shape. All of them have a dirty look to their tops, and many are bulged. I really want to begin my first recapping project, but I'll have to wait several months to get the equipment, because of the cost involved.

The aforementioned 8KTA3 board has a problem, and it may be caps related. Basically, I can't use a GF3 or a GF4 in it. I switch on power, and the mobo keeps going through the boot up / reboot process, before stopping with the onboard mobo LED error code showing 25. Unfortunately, error code 25 simply means "reserved". I never see any BIOS POST info on the monitor. I tried a basic PCI gfx card and that was OK. I also tried a lowly AGP TNT2 card, and that was OK. Also, an AGP ATI 7500 worked.

There is one interesting thing I noticed about the AGP slot. When I inserted the GF3 and GF4 cards, the AGP little plastic "back heel clip thing" would not allow me to push the back of the card all the way down in to the back part of the slot. Eventually, I had to snap this little "back heel clip thing" off. Then, the GF3 and GF4 cards could be fully pushed down in to the AGP slot. (But I still get no POST.)

Shodan486 wrote:

Regarding the 5v rail problem, what software did you use (or hardware ? ) to detect the values. I'm having the same problems on my current machine (see signature), BUT - everest shows its approx. 4.83v at idle and 4.61v when running the stress test; on the other hand, VIA HW monitor is within the 5% tolerance to all the rails. I have no means to detect these value from any measuring gadget.

I compared the BIOS readings with measurements from my cheap multimeter. While I don't believe them to be really accurate, both show the same tendency. These boards seem to demand a lot from the PSU's 5V rail.

retro games 100 wrote:

Congratulations! 😀 It looks like you won a board with good condition caps. 😀 Hehe, you outbid me on that one! 😮

Sorry about that... 😊
But with offers like that one, it's impossible not to compete against fellow VOGONers. 😉

retro games 100 wrote:

The aforementioned 8KTA3 board has a problem, and it may be caps related. Basically, I can't use a GF3 or a GF4 in it. I switch on power, and the mobo keeps going through the boot up / reboot process, before stopping with the onboard mobo LED error code showing 25.

Yes, most probably that's caused by the bad caps. There is one near the AGP socket (EC34), this one is always busted on boards that have been used for a while.

Finally I found something this board can't do: Boot with a Radeon 9800 Pro. It gets stuck with BIOS code 26H ("reserved", of course 🙄). One thing is funny, when I don't connect anything to the card's molex power connector, the card displays a nice warning message, reminding me to plug in the power. Maybe the PSU is too weak after all.

5u3 wrote:

Sorry about that... 😊
But with offers like that one, it's impossible not to compete against fellow VOGONers. 😉

No problem! 😀

5u3 wrote:

Finally I found something this board can't do: Boot with a Radeon 9800 Pro. It gets stuck with BIOS code 26H ("reserved", of course 🙄). One thing is funny, when I don't connect anything to the card's molex power connector, the card displays a nice warning message, reminding me to plug in the power. Maybe the PSU is too weak after all.

I reckon if you power the Radeon 9800 with a second "dedicated" PSU, you will be OK.