I think so! It's the only way to find out! 🤣

sgt76 wrote:

CPU: Barton and Mobile XP seem to get top marks here, with no one even mentioning a Thoroughbred, Palomino, Thunderbird, etc (ok, this is technically not an XP, I know 😉 ) edit: forgot the Sempron! Thanks again for the good tips!

Motherboard: Looking at opinions and some of my own research, it seems the Epox boards of the era have capasitor quality problems.

Sempron 3000+ and up (to the best of my memory), are with Barton Core. You won't see a significant performance jump from the added 256K cache, but although the simple logics suggest that more cache = more heat, the bartons often clocked better than the Thoroughbred. I've seen a Mobile Barton @ 2800 Mhz on air.

T-bred 1700+ or 1800+ is cheap. Many of them run out of the box at 200FSB. Slightly overvolted. Mine goes for 2100-2200 Mhz at 1.5V (1.6 default). Keep in mind, that running 2x1 GB DDR will probably leave you at 200 FSB anyway.

Epox 8rda3+ rev 3.2 - I bought it when it was released. I bought this specific revision, because:
1) it allows chipset overvolt by BIOS. (prior revisions needed a hardware mod, as I remember).
2) it has additional 12V line feed for the CPU - it's somewhat important, cause modern CPU's have a weak 5V line.

The board was recapped with a cheap 5$ soldering iron. You need to change exactly 9 capacitors for this revision. It's annoying, because there are inlaid heat dispassion elements in the board, that the mosfes are soldered to. But it's not hard.

You can put any bigger capacity, and it will work even more stable (I went from 1800uF to 3300uF for the 12V line)

The board was running everyday since it was purchased - I powered if off for good a month or so ago. (it was too slow for youtube 😀 )

So you will understand why I consider this the best Socket A board 😀

But ... If you plan a PC for gaming, and you want a PC from that specific period - get a Intel 865 or 875 board and a Northwood/Prescott 3.0HT. Abit IC7-Max3, for example. Or Asus P4P800/P4C800 Deluxe.

I've compared both the Athlon with N-force 2, and the Prescott with 965 chipset, and the Intel platform just runs better.

From the game list you have put - Heroes 4 (and 5), Max Payne, Star Warrs, NWN 2, Warcraft III, NFS - ran perfectly well. I even played Fallout 3 on this setup, with radeon 9550@9600XT videcard 😀

sgt76 wrote:

As far as games go, I'm aiming to play some classics from that era: Age of Mythology Dungeon Siege Freedom Force Heroes of Migh […]
Show full quote

As far as games go, I'm aiming to play some classics from that era:
Age of Mythology
Dungeon Siege
Freedom Force
Heroes of Might and Magic IV
Mafia
Medieval: Total War
Neverwinter Nights
No One Lives Forever 2
The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind
Warcraft III
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Max Payne 2
Need for Speed Underground
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
XIII

That sorta thing. Whaddya think?

Most all of those should "run" but depending on what graphics card you pick and what resolution you need out of the computer, settings/performance will be variable (e.g. a Ti 4200 expected to run at 1920x1200 is probably going to be pretty laggy where a 9800XT expected to run at 800x600 will probably pull things off without a hitch). The FX or Radeon 9 will do better than the GeForce 4 or Radeon 8500 in general, but any of them should be "right" for the era. The Radeon 9 will be the best for later (earlier?) DX9 like Half-Life 2, but for older games (2004-earlier) the FX should be just as good. I wouldn't limit yourself to only the 5950 or 9800Pro; the other FX 5800/5900 and Radeon 9700/9800 cards would also be a better choice (and would be faster than the Ti 4600/4800 boards). A mid-range card from the era like an FX 5700 or 9600 would not be a bad choice either, if that's all you can find; if you want something fully passive I think there were some Sapphire 9600s that offered that - I'm not sure about anything faster than that (it would very likely be a Radeon though; most of the higher-end FX cards have dual-slot fan coolers).

Look through something like this review as far as FX vs Radeon 9:
http://techreport.com/review/4966/nvidia-gefo … -5800-ultra-gpu
And regarding the streamlined improvements that the FX 5900 brings:
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/gffx/5900u.html

Depending on your opinion regarding "other" makers, the Matrox Parhelia would also be relatively correct for the era, but performance will not be up to the FX or 9 series cards (usually I've seen it compared to the Ti 4200 or 4400; and remember that it's a DX8.1 card - it does three monitors though). I wouldn't bother with XGI though; performance is usually worse. Here's an ixbt review that looks at the top XGI card (and also provides a nice look at top and mid-range ATi and nVidia cards in a variety of applications):
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/volari-duo/index.html

How about Tyan s2466 + 2xAthlon MP 2800+?

SPBHM wrote:

also nforce 2 at 400fsb or more would get really hot, even the southbridge could get a little to warm... active cooling was a good thing, I had to mod my 8rda+ to add cooling, when going for high FSBs OC

I had the Shuttle AN35N Ultra. It came with only passive cooling on the nForce2 Ultra 400 chip. No problems. But there was more surface area to its larger heat sink than those lame little fanned heatsinks every other OEM put on.

The MCP chip doesn't need a heatsink.

swaaye wrote:

SPBHM wrote:

also nforce 2 at 400fsb or more would get really hot, even the southbridge could get a little to warm... active cooling was a good thing, I had to mod my 8rda+ to add cooling, when going for high FSBs OC

I had the Shuttle AN35N Ultra. It came with only passive cooling on the nForce2 Ultra 400 chip. No problems. But there was more surface area to its larger heat sink than those lame little fanned heatsinks every other OEM put on.

The MCP chip doesn't need a heatsink.

it has been 10 years since I've dealt with nforce 2 but, I remember on the Epox, when going for OC the NB was getting extremely hot, I added a fan (actually an athlon xp stock fan) and I think I even had more stability at high OC,

as for the southbridge, it was on the abit, I remember it was to hot to touch (like burn your finger 🤣) and I decided to add a heatsink, but I can't say I noticed any difference... so yes, you could probably run for years with no active cooling without some high OC and hot VGA/CPU (I was using a 9500NP with 8 pipelines and 275@370MHz, combined with the magic XP 1700+ it was pretty amazing how much performance you could unleash with OC and the pipeline mod form both CPU and VGA).

just for fun I touched my 440BX yesterday on the Asus p2b (no heatspreader, basically under the hot Pentium II) and it was also a "burn your finger in 1s" experience, but the boards has been working strong for so many years, never had a bad capacitor or anything since 1998/1999 or so, it has seen a few years of light activity or inactivity but it also worked daily for many years, I think (not sure) this was before all the bad capacitors scandals from the socket A era, so...

SPBHM wrote:

just for fun I touched my 440BX yesterday on the Asus p2b (no heatspreader, basically under the hot Pentium II) and it was also a "burn your finger in 1s" experience, but the boards has been working strong for so many years, never had a bad capacitor or anything since 1998/1999 or so, it has seen a few years of light activity or inactivity but it also worked daily for many years, I think (not sure) this was before all the bad capacitors scandals from the socket A era, so...

I've noticed that ASUS sometimes went with quality capacitors. I've seen Rubycon on some of their boards. I have a ASUS K7M with those.

440BX often comes with those little "greenie" heatsinks. I suppose some came bare though.

Space Cowboy wrote:

But ... If you plan a PC for gaming, and you want a PC from that specific period - get a Intel 865 or 875 board and a Northwood/Prescott 3.0HT. Abit IC7-Max3, for example. Or Asus P4P800/P4C800 Deluxe.

I agree with this advice! These P4 platforms are a joy to work with.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Space Cowboy wrote:

But ... If you plan a PC for gaming, and you want a PC from that specific period - get a Intel 865 or 875 board and a Northwood/Prescott 3.0HT. Abit IC7-Max3, for example. Or Asus P4P800/P4C800 Deluxe.

I agree with this advice! These P4 platforms are a joy to work with.

This is why I'm not considering a s478 platform at this time: Netburst ORGY
😉

sgt76 wrote:

This is why I'm not considering a s478 platform at this time: Netburst ORGY
😉

That thread brings back memories 😀 Looks like you are more than sorted with S478 😀

There's one other thing to mention. I have two boards featuring nForce 2 Ultra. In my case, the first (the budget one) has common MCP South Bridge, the other - a more high-end MCP-RAID, which supports SATA and might have other improvements. It's also a little smaller. There might be more versions of it, I hope someone can tell about it better than me.

The most interesting nForce2 MCPs are the one with the NVAPU (MCP-T) and the one with Gigabit ethernet (MCP-Gb).

Chipset RAID is best avoided. Having SATA though is nice because the MCP's SATA isn't using PCI bandwidth AFAIK. The boards using third party SATA controllers have them on PCI.

kokornov wrote:

How about Tyan s2466 + 2xAthlon MP 2800+?

I would go for either Asus A7M266-D or MSI K7D Master. There was a way to mod an Athlon XP to be recognized as MP, if I'm not wrong.

Anyway, I can't find any of these boards cheap - and I keep my eyes opened for more than half an year, cause I really want a dual Socket A setup. But I want it cheap 😀

But if you don't have the controllers to run on the 66 Mhz PCI slots, probably you won't see much benefit.

Space Cowboy wrote:

kokornov wrote:

How about Tyan s2466 + 2xAthlon MP 2800+?

I would go for either Asus A7M266-D or MSI K7D Master. There was a way to mod an Athlon XP to be recognized as MP, if I'm not wrong.

SMP-able is determined by a jumper setting on the chip's package (or lack thereof) - the MP and XP-M don't have it locked out, but some of the XP chips do, and can have it "hacked" to get around it (if you can pull it off without mangling the package). In general I'd just go find XP-Ms or MPs - they weren't ever more expensive than standard XPs when new, and I doubt they cost substantially more today either (it wasn't like Xeon and Pentium 4, where Xeon cost a lot more).

Here's an article with pictures:
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=393

Whether or not this would work on say, XP 3200+ chips, I do not know - if I remember right the top AthlonMP chips do not run the 400 FSB, and the boards don't expect it; either 266 or 333 was the top of the mark for AthlonMP. The XP-M should be fine because everything is unlocked, so you can just key in appropriate values and test, and the AthlonMP is the "correct" choice. If you don't want any surprises/headaches I'd go with the MP.

swaaye wrote:

Chipset RAID is best avoided. Having SATA though is nice because the MCP's SATA isn't using PCI bandwidth AFAIK. The boards using third party SATA controllers have them on PCI.

Do you mean the chipset itself is best avoided or it's RAID as a function? Why?

RacoonRider wrote:

Do you mean the chipset itself is best avoided or it's RAID as a function? Why?

Just the RAID function. Chipset RAID is often unreliable.

I'm surprised nobody suggested building an Athlon MP system as the ultimate Athlon XP machine. Internally, they are identical.

But were multiple processors really usefull for tasks from that era? Did it offer a significant advantage over single cpu setups?

In other words; cost/benefit analysis?

sliderider wrote:

I'm surprised nobody suggested building an Athlon MP system as the ultimate Athlon XP machine. Internally, they are identical.

Guess I'm nobody? 🤣 (I'm just giving you the business here... 😘)

NitroX infinity: Back in 2002-2003, no there was no real benefit for gaming and potentially the opposite as the actual AthlonMP chips run on a lower FSB and are individually going to be inferior to the faster XP or overclocked XP-M chips as a result (ofc if you went with modified XP chips or XP-Ms you could sidestep that up to the limits of the board). Basically the same reasoning as today: multiple slower CPUs that provide cost effective multi-threading have advantages in some kinds of tasks, but for gaming you will usually benefit from a single, faster CPU. This is amplified because multi-CPU/multi-core becoming a benefit for gaming wasn't heavily realized until a bit later (I think the first games that started really pushing dual-core in the system requirements didn't start appearing until around 2006), and the games that will show real benefits from it won't run very well (if at all) on a K7 platform (single or dual chip). With used hardware I doubt it should cost much more to go with SMP than a single CPU, but years ago it was certainly cost prohibitive for most folks.

Having said that, a dual K7 system would have advantages for multimedia tasks and general multi-tasking, which could be of some interest depending on what all the machine needs to do.

Also keep in mind if you go with twin CPUs you need an OS that supports that; Windows XP Professional is probably the best example. SMP wasn't universally supported back then though; there are plenty of operating systems that will not work with an SMP system either due to licencing lock-outs (e.g. XP Home Edition) or a lack of SMP support (e.g. Windows 9x). That may or may not be a factor for this build - if there is a goal to dual-boot it with NT and 9x, a single AthlonXP or XP-M would be a much better choice.

To speed up my Athlon XP journey, I got 2 complete systems and assorted parts from a local seller. Specs are as follows:

System 1, circa 2004:
Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton)
MSI KT4V
1 gb DDR400
Radeon X1300
DVD-RW and CD-RW drives
iCute casing and 250w PSU
SB Live!
no hard disks and damn filthy!

System 2, circa 2001:
Duron 1ghz (Morgan)
MSI K7T Turbo 2
448mb of SDR ram
MSI Nvidia 4200 Ti
coupla a CD drives
PCI 128 sound card
no hard disks
a really nice old case with a removable hard drive cage and motherboard tray!

Plus points:
1) They both boot up
2) The cases are pretty nice
3) I got a ton load of IDE optical drives with this deal (4 above + the seller threw a couple more in for free)
4) Good amount of ram
5) Reasonably nice components though not high-end by any means, i.e.motherboards, video cards, sound cards, peripherals
6) Whatever issues they have looks fixable by myself

And the bad:
1) The KT4V has one missing ram slot clip.
2) The K7T has one visible bad cap- a large one near the AGP slot
3) Both systems came with faulty hard drives
3) System 1 is fucking filthy

The plan:
First a good clean up and wash of all the parts to clear off 10-12 years of crap.
Next, I'll reexamine the boards and other parts for capacitor problems and replace the bloaty bad ones.
The KT4V will get a ram slot clip, else my OCD will not allow me to miss it!
I need to get 2 working hard disks.
Test everything more extensively on a bench again, motherboards, video cards, sound cards, hard disks, optical drives, floppy drives, cables, PSUs, etc.
Then reassemble the rigs with the best working of the bunch of components they came with.

I will post up some pics of this mess when I get home from work today.