From what I've read, with minimal effort you can get all but one glide game to work with the V2 (dreams to reality, which apparently sucked). The V2 is a vastly superior choice if you only want to own one 3dfx card.

As for memory, you can cache the full 256MB with a K6-2, but that chip appears to be a K6 233 mhz chip (which IIRC cannot cache all 256mb of ram). You're limited to 64MB of cacheable ram on the 430TX chipset in all cases except the K6-2 and K6-3 chips which have their own integrated tag ram. You might be able to stick a K6-2 or K6-3 in that board, but you'll need to make sure that it can supply the lower voltage they run at, as well as the higher amperage they draw.

Thanks... I just did a bit of research on this board as well as another socket 7 I own.. As you said, this one is a 430TX and the other board (which I believe is a PC-Chips... blah.) is a 430FX. Both of which are limited to 64mb cache-able.

The 430FX board is going to house a Cyrix M II-333GP (unfortunately the 83mhz variety).. but I got the parts for free so I'll see how that goes when I get to it.

I do have some super socket 7 parts (CPUs: K6-2 550, K6-2 400, and a K6-3 450) with two of the motherboards being Aladdin-V chipsets and the other being a SiS variant (which I have some bad memories about..)

I'm working on builds with all my parts from the slowest to the fastest.. Mainly to test what still works and to relive some old classic games.. but also to get these parts out of drawers and into working systems.

Gandalf42 wrote:

I'm looking to do a build out of a DFI 586ITBD Rev. B1 motherboard which currently has an AMD K6-266 processor in it. I've got […]
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I'm looking to do a build out of a DFI 586ITBD Rev. B1 motherboard which currently has an AMD K6-266 processor in it. I've got a spare case over my folks that I will use to house the board (the board supports ATX and AT.. the case I'll be using is AT)..

The MB has 512kb cache and supports up to 256mb of memory... But I'm not sure if the chipset supports caching all of that.

I'm planning on making this a DOS/Win98 box and I've got a Voodoo2 arriving soon which I hope to get running in this system after I cobble together a patch cable for it. The main video card will be a Matrox Mystique

My questions:

1) Will the Voodoo2 operate in anything older than a P2? That was what was listed as it's minimum specs.

2) Should I just make this a straight Win98 system or a dual boot DOS 6.22 / Win98 rig. I'm mainly looking to play 1990-1995 era DOS games.. but would like to play a few Windows titles as well.

3) With the Voodoo2 installed, up to what year (games wise) will I comfortably be able to run.

4) I couldn't find a Voodoo1 for the system.. Will the Voodoo2 support DOS based GLIDE games?

5) What type of sound card should I go for?

Looking forward to hearing any advice on this build..

Alas, the TX chipset will not cache more then 64MB. The only way around this is by using a CPU that comes with it's own L2 cache, which are the K6-III, K6-2+ and K6-III+, all made by AMD. All the other Socket 7 CPU's don't have any L2 cache. This includes the K6-2, all the other K6's, all Intel Pentium 1's and all chips made by Cyrix and a couple others.

If your Super 7 board with the SiS is a SiS 530, this chipset isn't as bad as it initially looks, it's more the crappy systems these boards came with.
The SiS 530 has a 1/4 PCI divider, making it possible to run a 133Mhz FSB while keeping the other busses in spec (this comes with the price of having to disable the motherboard cache in most cases as the cache the motherboard makers put on these boards usually can't cope with the increase in speed from 100Mhz).
Though the SiS 530 doesn't have AGP, for a system of this vintage this doesn't really matter that much as AGP offered little performance improvement over PCI.

Often the ALI and VIA Super 7 boards could cache 128MB or more with any Socket 7 CPU.

Edit:Btw, the K6-266 is actually more like a K6-2 then the classic K6 as it runs much cooler at only 2.2v instead of the 2.9v and even 3.2v the original K6 ran at 😉

Gandalf42 wrote:

1) Will the Voodoo2 operate in anything older than a P2? That was what was listed as it's minimum specs.

Yes it can. It was a common upgrade for many MMX or similar systems back in the day. I ran mine on a P233 MMX so your K6 should do just fine. You will however experience some cpu bottlenecking as the V2 only reaches it's full potential with a 400mhz or so P2.

Gandalf42 wrote:

3) With the Voodoo2 installed, up to what year (games wise) will I comfortably be able to run.

V2s should run almost anything made up to 2000 and some games released in 2001, like Undying and that BG expansion (forgot what it's called). The K6 266 however will run out of steam long before that- some titles from '98 itself will strain it, e.g. NFS3.

If your Super 7 board with the SiS is a SiS 530, this chipset isn't as bad as it initially looks, it's more the crappy systems these boards came with.
The SiS 530 has a 1/4 PCI divider, making it possible to run a 133Mhz FSB while keeping the other busses in spec (this comes with the price of having to disable the motherboard cache in most cases as the cache the motherboard makers put on these boards usually can't cope with the increase in speed from 100Mhz).

I'll have to dig it out and take a closer look at it as I've currently got the system in storage.. BTW: It's the system with the K6-II 550 installed. All I remember is that it was never really stable.

Though the SiS 530 doesn't have AGP, for a system of this vintage this doesn't really matter that much as AGP offered little performance improvement over PCI.

I recall it didn't have an AGP slot.. and I seem to remember it had onboard video. Maybe this system would be a good candidate for voodoo2 or perhaps even 2 in an sli config. Thoughts?

With that CPU in mind you'll be able to play games up until 1999 with a lot of compromises on the 99' ones. I think you should stick with the mobo you have right now, 430TX are nice and reliable motherboards for the most part. Sure, you can't cache more than 64MB RAM, but do you really need any more? Super 7 motherboards with chipsets like the Aladdin V are quite a pain to get to work reliably and you can also ignore AGP on them, it's just worthless. I had one and it made my Voodoo 3 3500 run slower than a Voodoo 1, no matter how many different Via 3in1 driver packs I tried...
DOS Glide games aren't really that bad with the Voodoo 2. The most popular ones with work nicely, maybe with a bit of tweaking. There are a handful which are a pain to get to work on the Voodoo 2, but they can work. And then there are games like Blood 1 3Dfx and Dreams to Reality which will never work properly on a Voodoo 2, but I have also never seen them running properly on a Voodoo 1 either 😜

With that CPU in mind you'll be able to play games up until 1999 with a lot of compromises on the 99' ones. I think you should stick with the mobo you have right now, 430TX are nice and reliable motherboards for the most part. Sure, you can't cache more than 64MB RAM, but do you really need any more?

Actually, I don't need much more than 16mb.. As I said, I'm mainly looking at it as a DOS gaming rig.. Though, I'll probably max it out to 64mb for the few Windows games I plan to run on it.

Super 7 motherboards with chipsets like the Aladdin V are quite a pain to get to work reliably and you can also ignore AGP on them, it's just worthless. I had one and it made my Voodoo 3 3500 run slower than a Voodoo 1, no matter how many different Via 3in1 driver packs I tried...

The SiS board doesn't have an AGP port but I did notice the Aladdin V boards were quite particular about what you plugged into the AGP slot. I've never benchmarked the performance, but you're saying that a Voodoo2 SLI config should out perform a Voodoo3 3000 AGP on one of these? I've also got a Kyro II board I've been itching to try out.

DOS Glide games aren't really that bad with the Voodoo 2. The most popular ones with work nicely, maybe with a bit of tweaking. There are a handful which are a pain to get to work on the Voodoo 2, but they can work. And then there are games like Blood 1 3Dfx and Dreams to Reality which will never work properly on a Voodoo 2, but I have also never seen them running properly on a Voodoo 1 either.

I've also just found an Matrox M3D (With Hexen II disc) and a Voodoo3 2000 PCI card. I'm guessing the M3D would be too underpowered and the Voodoo3 would be overkill? Am I right?

I also have an old AST p1-133 non mmx that I could throw the M3D into... and a non-AGP Dell Optiplex p3-500mhz I could throw the Voodoo3 into.

The Super 7 AGP boards often had odd troubles with their AGP implementation. It's one of the reasons why I prefer to use 3DFX AGP cards in Super 7 boards. 3DFX AGP cards were basically PCI cards made to fit an AGP slot and used very few of the benefits that AGP offered. While this sounds like a disadvantage, it does have the advantage that, as 3DFX barely uses any AGP features, theres little that can cause an AGP related crash ;D

Tetrium wrote:

The Super 7 AGP boards often had odd troubles with their AGP implementation. It's one of the reasons why I prefer to use 3DFX AGP cards in Super 7 boards. 3DFX AGP cards were basically PCI cards made to fit an AGP slot and used very few of the benefits that AGP offered. While this sounds like a disadvantage, it does have the advantage that, as 3DFX barely uses any AGP features, theres little that can cause an AGP related crash ;D

This and the fact that PCI video cards were still viable choices during those days so you can have an AGP Voodoo card for Glide compatibility and a PCI card for DX/OpenGL without having to worry about the PCI card being hopelessly outdated for the games you want to play. A Banshee or V3 AGP and TNT2 or GF2MX PCI would pretty much cover you for the most part.