It has to be a K6-2+ since you need PowerNow! support with variable multiplier.

Edited, thanks!

Still, any K6-2 as long as it has 3DPower-Now! right?

The keyword is flexibility , if we can have a system that ranges from a no-L1 and no-L2 133MHz to a full 600MHz what is the question then? Does any other CPU covers this kind of options as easily as adding some lines to the config.sys?

Never had AMD cpu (except for a Mobile Athlon XP on an A7N8x-Deluxe when I was into silent-computing), or VIA chipsets for that matter. If it is about personal preferences the 440BX Slot 1 is awesome to me, and with an extra effort one can achieve the same flexibility, with the right cpu with the right step and the right mobo and cautious but effective OC , but if the goal is ease of use so you can focus on playing games shoudn't the Super7 be a better option?

There is no 3DPowerNow. There is 3DNow and there is PowerNow. 3DNow is a SIMD instruction set similar to Intel's SSE. PowerNow is the precursor to Cool'n'quiet and was used only in notebooks. The + CPUs have PowerNow and with it you can change the CPU multiplier by software means when the system is running.

However, all K6 CPUs have unlocked multipliers. You can set the motherboard to whatever you desire. AMD didn't start locking CPUs until Athlon.

Frankly I don't think you want a K6. Not if you want to play more than DOS games. K6 CPUs are quite a bit slower than a PII/PIII for 3D games. Figure a K6-3+ 600 is similar to a PII 400 with Unreal or Quake 3, as examples. You can set up a 440BX machine to run a wider range of CPU power than you can a K6 box. You can range from a Celeron 1.4GHz (Tualatin Slot adapter) down to a PII @ 200 MHz, and turn off caches, or use a slowdown TSR for speed-sensitive DOS games.

swaaye wrote:

You can range from a Celeron 1.4GHz (Tualatin Slot adapter) down to a PII @ 200 MHz

That would be nice too , more like a 700MHz Pentium III that Celeron, but still better than PII 400 and keeping some flexibility down to 200MHz.

Figure a K6-3+ 600 is similar to a PII 400 with Unreal or Quake 3, as examples.

My dreams shattered. Oh well...

How about a 1.0GHz Mobile Athlon 4, would it be a good retro?

If you already have a 440BX motherboard, there's no point in getting a Super 7 unless you want to do side by side comparison testing. Back when the hardware was new, a Super 7 system cost a lot less than a comparable P-II/P-III so it made sense for a lot of people to go that route but now you can pick up Slot 1/Socket 370 hardware just as cheaply as you can Super 7 hardware and get a better performing system with fewer hardware glitches and Windows crashes to deal with.

The SS7 system offers more flexibility for slowing things down. These boards have mainboard and this allows you to have them running at the equivalent of a 386DX and 486DX2.

The Slot 1 machines don't have mainboard cache anymore, so they are either super fast, or totally crippled (286-386DX speed depending on what CPU and FSB).

A fast K6-2+ or K6-3+ does indeed have fantastic flexibility if you only want a single machine and most of your games are DOS games.

But for W98SE a BX440 machine is the way to go. So I would get a KVM switch and build both boxes. Use the SS7 for DOS (with ISA cards) and keep the BX440 PCI / AGP only for W98 games.

Off the top of my head, I would summarize it like this:

Socket 7 with K6-2/3+
- CPU Multiplier can be changed from the DOS command prompt: 2x to 6x.
- L1 cache disabling results in 386 to 486 speeds.
- Poor AGP interface.
- Maximum CPU speed 600MHz, but FPU is not impressive.
- ATX / UDMA-33 IDE / SDRAM / ISA slots.

Slot 1 i440BX with Pentium II/III
- P-II CPU multiplier minimum is 2x (No L2 cache). 3x and 4x are easier to find (working L2 cache). Requires BIOS/Jumper settings.
- L2 cache disabling does not do much, L1 cache disabling results in 286 to 386 speeds.
- Maximum CPU speed 1400MHz, using special slotket adapter.
- 66..100MHz FSB range on most boards. Maximum FSB range is 50..133MHz on few boards. Works with SoftFSB for Windows 95/98 to set FSB on the fly.
- Works with Throttle slowdown utility (southbridge wait-states).
- Very compatible AGP interface. Fast, reliable and responsive chipset.
- ATX / UDMA-33 IDE / SDRAM / ISA slots.

I prefer the ALi Socket 7 chipset above the VIA one. I am fed up with VIA, they could not get things right up to their KT400 Chipset at least.

Pentium II/III at a 200MHz base speed can run plenty DOS games fine, I have a 95% success rate for the games I care for. But the socket 7 does have the undeniable L1 cache slowdown advantage.

sliderider wrote:

If you already have a 440BX motherboard, there's no point in getting a Super 7 (...)

I found it before I became interesting in retrogamming and did not used it at all, never did, just investigated the specs, found it funny to be a 1999 built based on socket7 wich led me to read about more good stuff!

If AGP would be the only weekness for a K6-2 we should be able to get around it by using a Trio64 for dos games, and a V2 SLI for Win98 games as they are all PCI... but 600MHz that behave as 400MHz PII is discouraging 😐 especially if you get your hands on a unlocked 400MHz deschutes wich would be as flexible... with a softbios multiplier...

How about a 1.0GHz Mobile Athlon 4, would it be a good retro?

How low can this baby get? Or, can a Pentium III-M fit a socket 370 440BX board? I have both, can I do anything with them?

An unlocked 1GHz Thunderbird seems to refuse booting under 600MHz 🙁

Don't get to burnt out or frustrated as it is very easy to happen. Personally don't worry to much and if you are able to build both at a very low or no cost then go for it. I always enjoyed building systems and having "options" when it came to choosing which system that I am going to use for any purpose. As for slot A athlon I am not big on that and they tend to be a little rare for both boards and cpus.

Socket 7 isn't that terrible when it comes to agp but it can be picky as hell sometimes when it comes to ram while slot 1 BX is easy.

It's hard to be sure which Super 7 boards have AGP that works ok. I have had nothing but trouble with VIA and ALI unless I just use a Voodoo3 or 5. 3dfx didn't use AGP texturing, a troublesome feature for Super 7 chipsets. Also, some motherboards of those days simply have iffy power delivery for the AGP slot.

From my experience there is no "the one system which covers it all".
You will always have games which do not match your system's "virtual" speed...

Even my three machines can't cover for 100%...

Thanks to all for all of your inputs!

nforce4max wrote:

Don't get to burnt out or frustrated as it is very easy to happen

😵 it comes with the job 😀

schlang wrote:

From my experience there is no "the one system which covers it all".
You will always have games which do not match your system's "virtual" speed...

Even my three machines can't cover for 100%...

I guess that inside of me I already knew this, but I can't help it 😁
It's a shame we''ll have to keep trying to build such a system isn't it? 😉

Hi

I am looking for info on what the best possible configuration would be for a PC machine that could run DOS games from the 80's-90's in addition to running Win 3.1 stuff and also capable of running 3D games from the late 90's. I will also need to run my 3DO Blaster within the machine so i need a graphics card with a feature connector.

I currently have a SB16 ISA which i ll use, plus i have an ATI Mach64 ISA card which seems great for running all my DOS games i need plus it has the feature port so i could use that one too? - Use it in tandem with a Voodoo 3D card?

I also looking at this thread for other possible PCI graphics cards i could use:

Best video cards with DOS / Win 3.x / Win 9x support

And the names that stand out are nvidia Riva 128 and the Voodoo 3 - do these have the feature port?

I m guessing that i should be looking at a high end pentium 1 - low end pentium 2 for the stuff i use (i currently use a Pentium MMX 200mhz). One more thing, i take it its possible to install Win3.1 and Win 9x on 2 different partitions but how would i do this and how can i switch betwen in 2 in terms of booting the chosen OS up?

Thanks for your time!

You i-want-single-computer-for-all-the-games guys don't know what you're loosing! It's not the games that are most interesting (although some of them are awesome), it's dealing with original hardware, designing, building, searching for information, comparing different specs to get the most suitable.

RacoonRider wrote:

You i-want-single-computer-for-all-the-games guys don't know what you're loosing! It's not the games that are most interesting (although some of them are awesome), it's dealing with original hardware, designing, building, searching for information, comparing different specs to get the most suitable.

😀 I think I know what you mean, you are right at some level. OTOH I feel the path to a single-computer-for-all-decades-of-gaming is full of dealing with original hardware, designing, building, searching for information and comparing different specs to get the most suitable.

Actually , since I've started all the gaming I've done was for testing several sound cards, several graphic cards and cpus, several different chipset motherboards.

Except for the 80's I don't think we all-in-one guys can get much far away from playing games on the hardware it was meant to be played on, we sure as hell are trying though! 😉 because its fun and because its full of dealing with original hardware, designing, building, searching for information, comparing different specs to get the most suitable.

That's my problem- I freely admit no one single computer will meet all of my gaming expectations or needs and now I have 3 retro rigs, plus 5 consoles and 4-5 portables. Might have more. I think my wife is threatening to burn my closet and apartment living room. 🤣

But it's so worth it, isn't it? I love working with and tweaking the original hardware.

jmrydholm wrote:

That's my problem- I freely admit no one single computer will meet all of my gaming expectations or needs and now I have 3 retro rigs, plus 5 consoles and 4-5 portables. Might have more. I think my wife is threatening to burn my closet and apartment living room. 🤣

But it's so worth it, isn't it? I love working with and tweaking the original hardware.

actually I would never again trade my ZNES against the real SNES 😉

schlang wrote:

jmrydholm wrote:

That's my problem- I freely admit no one single computer will meet all of my gaming expectations or needs and now I have 3 retro rigs, plus 5 consoles and 4-5 portables. Might have more. I think my wife is threatening to burn my closet and apartment living room. 🤣

But it's so worth it, isn't it? I love working with and tweaking the original hardware.

actually I would never again trade my ZNES against the real SNES 😉

In terms of the gaming experience alone, emulation is sometimes better all around (nostalgia aside), but in other cases it can still fall short of an ideal set-up using real hardware.
For one thing, many emulators still have some problems or inaccuracies compared to real hardware (or compared to certain model variants of real hardware), but several are very close to being ideal. Kega Fusion is among the very best examples, though it lacks some of the features other emulators support, it's also one of the most accurate console emulators out there.
Between ZSNES and SNES9x, you've got some nice emulators too, but the latest builds of both still have trade-offs between them and some drawbacks.
You also have cases like PSX, where emulation is almost perfect in every way (due to the way the hardware and API function in the Playstation) as well as well above average enhancement options for higher resolutions and filtering. (actually changing the way the game is rendered rather than just applying 2D filters to the completed frames, all possible due to the way the PSX hardware and software works -a few other platforms allow for this too, as seen with Dreamcast emulation)

Fastforward, slowdown, and save states are great to have too, but aside from really annoying games (long load times, unskipable cutscenes, poor/no save features, or such), I'd generally still prefer playing on real hardware if it's practical. (monetary expense and space to set things up are limits there too)

There's also the other issue of emulators not working well on certain hardware set-ups for odd reasons. (DOSBox and several NES emulators refuse to work properly on my dv9000 Vista 32 laptop . . . they will all work, but tend to take several minutes to boot up and -in the case of NES stuff- end up thrashing if I multitask at all)
Then there's the issue of having powerful enough machines to run the emulaton properly. (this would include certainly late gen games run in DOSBox, though that's not really a problem anymore either . . . at least, it wouldn't be on a decent low/mid-range modern desktop build these days -which I'm currently not using)

There's also the use of emulators for homebrew programmers/developers, but that's another story. 😉

In any case, for PC gaming I'd still prefer running most on real hardware (preferably on a win98SE rig for DOS and Win9x specific software) and resorting to DOSBox for the handful of problematic timing-sensitive games I might be interested in.

Playing around with old hardware builds is a separate matter in this case, rather than trying to build machines optimized to a specific set of games. (I'm more interested in just seeing how well certain -possibly obscure- set-ups run things, benchmarks, game performance, etc)
Space is a limiting factor too, and right now I'm probably looking at 2 retro builds: a fast general-purpose win98SE box (probably Celeron/PIII based) and another to play around with testing old socket 7 stuff (variable configuration) . . . and that would also imply at least 3 towers in total, since I'd want a decent modern build too.