I use a Radeon 7000 PCI Mac Edt. on my K6-3 450, it works well in 98.
But in DOS-Mode there are a few issues.

Descent does not run when k6 mtrr's are enabled.
dos4gw crash before entering graphics mode..

Descent 2 has same issue.
With mtrr's disabled it runs also, but only in VGA.

The AGP version should reduce total heat output though, which might help in cooling an AT case (if your intent is to use an AT case).
The AGP port on your motherboard might cause problems if the AGP board of your particular motherboard has trouble supplying enough power to the card.
And if using an AGP V3, the PCI V3 can be put to use in another system (and if his rig blows up, it'll be less of a loss 😜).

But in the end the difference won't be substantial I guess.

And that's quite a lot of RAM for 98. Are you sure your board can cache all of it?

Your RAM will most likely be running at 100MHz. If you're actually using PC-133, you could opt to lower latency from cl3 to cl2, but I'm not sure how so much RAM will affect stability when lowering the cl.

archsan wrote:

P.S. Kill your SiS6326... with fire! Calling it "average" would be a gross overstatement. I know, I had one. 😁

Nah, he should keep it. It's hardly possible to find anything slower that will fit any AGP slot 😁
I used a couple too, these are slow no matter what you do with them 🤣

Tetrium wrote:

And that's quite a lot of RAM for 98. Are you sure your board can cache all of it?
Your RAM will most likely be running at 100MHz. If you're actually using PC-133, you could opt to lower latency from cl3 to cl2, but I'm not sure how so much RAM will affect stability when lowering the cl.

When the system posts it counts all the RAM but I know thats not got anything to do with this cache limit, amirite?
I'd love to know more about this board cacheable memory limit, I can't really find an explanation as I don't know the proper terms. Is it to do with L caches/External Cache? Or just an inherent limit in the amount of memory the CPU or mainboard can access at once (because of controllers or the northbridge) ?

After a little searching here on vongons I found a thread about the GA-5AA, which said it had a 128mb cache limit but no other info as to why. I have the checked the mobo manual but its rather lacking in technical specs too so any insight would be a huge help.

Cheers, W.

EDIT:

nforce4max wrote:

For other people can find (google searchers)
Oops, I think I killed my Voodoo3 (just don't make the mistakes that are in that thread).

That was pretty brutal 😵 , thanks for all the tips. The cable tied fan is not the most secure as its only got the two diagonal mount points but I'll rig up something more permanent on the weekend, seems to cool it sufficiently though.

RacoonRider wrote:

Voodoo3! Great pick, no doubt best of what is at hand.
I would consider either that or an nvidia card, something like TNT2 or Ti200, paired with 1-2 V2. But V3 would do the same job perfectly. And it's PCI, which is a huge benefit for SS7, AGP is far from being its strong point.

Thanks for the input RacoonRider, Voodoo3 seems like the favoured card from the community here. The more I read the more I hear about this generation having some pretty bad AGP related problems. Is this specific to the super socket 7 architecture or just growing pains of a new interface?

matze79 wrote:

I use a Radeon 7000 PCI Mac Edt. on my K6-3 450, it works well in 98. But in DOS-Mode there are a few issues.
Descent does not run when k6 mtrr's are enabled. dos4gw crash before entering graphics mode..
Descent 2 has same issue. With mtrr's disabled it runs also, but only in VGA.

Thanks for the info on MTRR or Memory Type Range Register settings. I think I understand them a bit better after reading the wiki on them, but with your issues is it just because of the Radeon and MTTS settings together or the MTRR alone? Also Descent and Descent 2 are both great games, on a more modern note have you played any Sublevel Zero?

Whiskey wrote:

200W AT Power Supply (The GA-5AA supports AT & ATX power. However the current AT power supply is wired directly into the power button and heat shrink'd. Any advice on changing over to an ATX 450W is welcome.)

To get an ATX power supply to work, one of two things must first happen. One, the motherboard has a power switch header (two pins) that when shorted will turn on and off the power from the MB. This is a typical PC power switch and connector:

Wire up a switch to these two pins so that it shorts the connector when you press the button and it should do an ATX power supply just fine. If not, let us know and I have an idea (number two) to nearly hard-wire a SPST switch to the 24-pin ATX power supply motherboard connector directly to do the same job.

This is a Single Pole-Single Throw (SPST) switch:

Whiskey wrote:

When the system posts it counts all the RAM but I know that not got anything to do with this cache limit, amirite? I'd love to k […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote:

And that's quite a lot of RAM for 98. Are you sure your board can cache all of it?
Your RAM will most likely be running at 100MHz. If you're actually using PC-133, you could opt to lower latency from cl3 to cl2, but I'm not sure how so much RAM will affect stability when lowering the cl.

When the system posts it counts all the RAM but I know that not got anything to do with this cache limit, amirite?
I'd love to know more about this board cacheable memory limit, I can't really find an explanation as I don't know the proper terms. Is it to do with L caches/External Cache? Or just an inherent limit in the amount of memory the CPU or mainboard can access at once (because of controllers or the northbridge) ?

After a little searching here on vongons I found a thread about the GA-5AA, which said it had a 128mb cache limit but no other info as to why. I have the checked the mobo manual but its rather lacking in technical specs too so any insight would be a huge help.

Cheers, W.

I'm not a technical guy, but I'll try to explain a bit how this matters, what it affects and how you can prevent it causing problems.

The main problem is decreased speed when using more memory than the system will cache. This issue is separate from how much any given motherboard can accept and run with.
Intel 430TX is a good example (this is a common s7 chipset), it can run with I think 256MB, but the chipset will only allow the system to cache 64MB and basically if you put anything more in it, your system will run slower.

How much it can cache, depends on several things, but mostly it's to do with chipset, the motherboard cache and the CPU cache.

What the CPU is concerned, it comes down to this:
Does the CPU have any L2 cache? --> No problem!
Does the CPU not have any L2 cache? --> check chipset/motherboard

A general rule of thumb is this:
Anything Slot 1/Slot A and newer --> forget about cacheable area (except for the very first Celeron, but that CPU is in a class of its own 🤣)
Socket 8 --> forget about cacheable area, you're good to go 😁
Anything Socket 7 which uses a CPU which has L2 cache --> No problem!
Anything Socket 7 and earlier with a CPU without L2 cache --> check motherboard/chipset/cache/etc.

CPUs for s7 which do have L2 cache include: AMD K6-3, AMD K6-2+ and AMD K6-3+ (the AMD K6-2 does not have any L2 cache, it's different from the K6-2+).

The K6-2+ has 128KB L2 cache while both K6-3 variants have 256KB and this is one of the reasons these K6-3's are so popular for (Super) Socket 7.

Install one of these and you're basically good to go.

When not using any of above mentioned CPUs, it's up to the motherboard, chipset and the available L2 cache on the motherboard itself to cache the RAM.
There are many exceptions here though, but generally speaking Socket 7 usually caches 64MB and Super Socket 7 usually caches 128MB (but some can cache more and a few ones perhaps less).
Intel 430HX is a noticeable exception to this rule, but like I said, theres lots of "ifs" and "buts" here 😀

Whiskey wrote:

Thanks for the input RacoonRider, Voodoo3 seems like the favoured card from the community here. The more I read the more I hear about this generation having some pretty bad AGP related problems. Is this specific to the super socket 7 architecture or just growing pains of a new interface?

Both I think.

Some graphics cards will simply not like being mated with a particular motherboard and some motherboards had a somewhat non-optimal AGP implementation (like not being able to supply enough power, which may result in system instability or sometimes even fireworks! 😁) and sometimes it will be drivers giving you headaches. Or the OS. It's a bit a matter of hit&miss

But imo AGP was never really fully reliable and sometimes an extra nudge to get running, so to speak.

I think i follow, so really its dependant on the CPU and the chipsets if the L2 cache needs aren't met at least.
What kind of a performance hit are we talking here and is it proportional to how much over the cache limit you have gone? ie. 128mb=0%hit | 256=20% | 512=40% | 768=60%. Something like that, or is it a one off performance slash if you're over?

It seems like my solution here would just be to try and get a 2+ or 3+ version of the K6 or remove some mem if it will really speed things up alot. It might be worth mentioning I have a Cyrix MII-333GP (75 MHz 2.9V)... scratch that just googled it and it lacks a L2 cache too.

If no one has done a comparison of the performance hit on this topic, i'll perform some benchmarks when it's up and running with varying amounts of mem installed.

Tetrium wrote:

Both I think. […]
Show full quote

Whiskey wrote:

Thanks for the input RacoonRider, Voodoo3 seems like the favoured card from the community here. The more I read the more I hear about this generation having some pretty bad AGP related problems. Is this specific to the super socket 7 architecture or just growing pains of a new interface?

Both I think.

Some graphics cards will simply not like being mated with a particular motherboard and some motherboards had a somewhat non-optimal AGP implementation (like not being able to supply enough power, which may result in system instability or sometimes even fireworks! 😁) and sometimes it will be drivers giving you headaches. Or the OS. It's a bit a matter of hit&miss

But imo AGP was never really fully reliable and sometimes an extra nudge to get running, so to speak.

That. And, AFAIK, AGP was introduced by Intel, partially to house their "special" i740 graphics, partially to emphasize the superiority of then-new PII over AMD chips. Small wonder I've heard bad things of AGP on non-intel chip sets up to Athlon XP era, seems like there was a lot of trouble for quite some time. Never heard of any serious AGP issues on Intel chip sets, at least starting from 440BX.

No, AGP was specially designed with a double-pumped data interface compared to PCI (66 MHz instead of 33 MHz) and designed to be able to directly address system RAM for use as texture storage, allowing for much more detailed textures than the card's internal memory might allow. Now, the i740 chip - that was designed around the AGP bus, not the other way around. It was the first big graphics chip from Intel that supported all those texture mapping features and the full 66MHz interface and wasn't just an AGP board version of a PCI card chipset and memory like most other cards at the time were.

How do I know this? I actually owned a Diamond Stealth II G460 card back in the day. It was the Intel i740 chip with 8MB of memory on an AGP 2x bus and it worked great for years. Sure, it can't hold a candle to the crazy stuff pulled out by Voodoo2 and up and ATI and nVidia with their TNT2 and later cards. The GeForce cards stomp it into the ground. But it took a few years for non-Intel chip/card manufacturers to catch up to what AGP allowed them to do.

For a K6-II-500 system, I have three competing GFX choices. Wich I find equally good in their own ways.

- TNT2-Pro/Ultra paired with Voodoo2 or Voodoo2-SLI
- Voodoo3-2000/3000/3500
- Voodoo Banshee.

Whiskey wrote:

I think i follow, so really its dependant on the CPU and the chipsets if the L2 cache needs aren't met at least. What kind of a […]
Show full quote

I think i follow, so really its dependant on the CPU and the chipsets if the L2 cache needs aren't met at least.
What kind of a performance hit are we talking here and is it proportional to how much over the cache limit you have gone? ie. 128mb=0%hit | 256=20% | 512=40% | 768=60%. Something like that, or is it a one off performance slash if you're over?

It seems like my solution here would just be to try and get a 2+ or 3+ version of the K6 or remove some mem if it will really speed things up alot. It might be worth mentioning I have a Cyrix MII-333GP (75 MHz 2.9V)... scratch that just googled it and it lacks a L2 cache too.

If no one has done a comparison of the performance hit on this topic, i'll perform some benchmarks when it's up and running with varying amounts of mem installed.

Benchmarks are always welcome 😀

I think someone on Vogons did actually measure this recently by benchmark, but no idea where it was posted.

Fwiw, 128MB RAM for 98SE should be plenty anyway, especially considering it's a ss7 platform 😀.

I'd say just remove all the RAM till you have 128MB remaining, it should work perfectly fine that way...except when you're using lots and lots of programs of course.

As already discussed in other threads, most agp cards from 1999 to later are probably going to be really limited by cpu (and if we're talking about the original cacheless K6-2 even more) so for me I would think to these:
Savage 4 (a good brand) 16MB AGP
Voodoo3 2000 AGP
Geforce 1 SDR 32MB AGP
Radeon 7200 64MB AGP
I don't know about retro compatibility of the last two but imho the highest time correct choice (in DX7 api).

About the cacheable RAM in sockel7 board (VIA or ALI Aladdin), here is a good explanation for the AMD K6 family:

http://www.amd-k6.com/cacheable-ram-on-socket-7-platforms/

So, depending what Revision your ALI chipset is onto the GA-5AA board, you can have 128Mb, 512Mb or 4096Mb cacheable RAM for K6 and K6-2.
As you can see, the K6-2+ or K6-3(+) are not limited.

By the way, i have also a K6-2 500 system (DOS/Win95) with sockel7 (VIA MVP3). I use a RivaTNT (32Mb) and 64Mb RAM only...

melbar wrote:

By the way, i have also a K6-2 500 system (DOS/Win95) with sockel7 (VIA MVP3). I use a RivaTNT (32Mb) and 64Mb RAM only...

TNT1 had 16MB max afaicr, you're referring to a TNT2 variant perhaps?

Sorry, was a writing error from me. Sure, i have a RivaTNT2.

It's a ELSA Synergy II-32.

archsan wrote:

P.S. Kill your SiS6326... with fire! Calling it "average" would be a gross overstatement. I know, I had one. 😁

Whiskey wrote:

And as for the SiS card, before I tested it this afternoon I thought it was dead as a Norwegian Blue, but no it lives!

Tetrium wrote:

Nah, he should keep it. It's hardly possible to find anything slower that will fit any AGP slot 😁
I used a couple too, these are slow no matter what you do with them 🤣

Tetrium wrote:

Anything Slot 1/Slot A and newer --> forget about cacheable area (except for the very first Celeron, but that CPU is in a class of its own 🤣)

Great... Now we have SiS 6326 and Celeron 266 CovUCKington reunion in this thread. You guys sure have brought me back the darkest memories in my life and rubbed salt in my bloodiest wounds...

Don't mind me... carry on... T_T ... 🤣

archsan wrote:

Great... Now we have SiS 6326 and Celeron 266 CovUCKington reunion in this thread. You guys sure have brought me back the darkes […]
Show full quote

archsan wrote:

P.S. Kill your SiS6326... with fire! Calling it "average" would be a gross overstatement. I know, I had one. 😁

Whiskey wrote:

And as for the SiS card, before I tested it this afternoon I thought it was dead as a Norwegian Blue, but no it lives!

Tetrium wrote:

Nah, he should keep it. It's hardly possible to find anything slower that will fit any AGP slot 😁
I used a couple too, these are slow no matter what you do with them 🤣

Tetrium wrote:

Anything Slot 1/Slot A and newer --> forget about cacheable area (except for the very first Celeron, but that CPU is in a class of its own 🤣)

Great... Now we have SiS 6326 and Celeron 266 CovUCKington reunion in this thread. You guys sure have brought me back the darkest memories in my life and rubbed salt in my bloodiest wounds...

Don't mind me... carry on... T_T ... 🤣

Might make for an awesome slowdown rig that doesn't need a bag of trick to actually slow down 😜

What are some games to test all of this?

I got a VIA MVP3 board ready to go and this topic interests me 😀

I got all the usual benchmarks:

- 3DMark99
- Forsaken
- Incoming
- Quake 2
- Drakan
- Unreal (Has Glide as well)
- Turok 2 (Has Glide as well)

I'm particular interest in stuff that runs well on such a system and isn't a slide show

For DOS the usual 3dbench 1.0c, Doom, Quake, PCPBench maybe also in high resolution?

FFXIhealer wrote:

No, AGP was specially designed with a double-pumped data interface compared to PCI (66 MHz instead of 33 MHz) and designed to be able to directly address system RAM for use as texture storage, allowing for much more detailed textures than the card's internal memory might allow. Now, the i740 chip - that was designed around the AGP bus, not the other way around. It was the first big graphics chip from Intel that supported all those texture mapping features and the full 66MHz interface and wasn't just an AGP board version of a PCI card chipset and memory like most other cards at the time were.

Thanks for the info FFXIhealer. It's interesting to see the reasoning for these developments in retrospective, as at the time it was just a new 'thing' and I didn't really think about the whys and hows. It's funny to see how things were driven forward by new leaps in tech and the competitive nature of the industry back then. Compared to now where there's only a few industry giants and a pretty stale market, hopefully the new chips nVidia and AMD are slowly bringing to the market will give the choice we have a well needed booster shot.

EDIT: Also that info on the AT/ATX power supply and the pwr switch is very handy. For now I'm going to see how the 200W PSU handles running my setup, if it can't hack it I'll probably be back to pester you for more details as I kind of like the AT case I have.

brostenen wrote:

For a K6-II-500 system, I have three competing GFX choices. Which I find equally good in their own ways. […]
Show full quote

For a K6-II-500 system, I have three competing GFX choices. Which I find equally good in their own ways.

- TNT2-Pro/Ultra paired with Voodoo2 or Voodoo2-SLI
- Voodoo3-2000/3000/3500
- Voodoo Banshee.

386SX wrote:

As already discussed in other threads, most agp cards from 1999 to later are probably going to be really limited by cpu (and if […]
Show full quote

As already discussed in other threads, most agp cards from 1999 to later are probably going to be really limited by cpu (and if we're talking about the original cacheless K6-2 even more) so for me I would think to these:
Savage 4 (a good brand) 16MB AGP
Voodoo3 2000 AGP
Geforce 1 SDR 32MB AGP
Radeon 7200 64MB AGP
I don't know about retro compatibility of the last two but imho the highest time correct choice (in DX7 api).

What I have at hand right now out of the cards suggested are the Voodoo3 2000 which is the PCI version and a Radeon 7200 SE which is AGP. If i can track them down I know I've got a Voodoo 4 & 5 stashed away somewhere. Personally I never had any nVIdia cards till the geforce 440 MX came out as I was rocking a Voodoo5 5500 AGP for a long time before then.

Tetrium wrote:

Benchmarks are always welcome :) I think someone on Vogons did actually measure this recently by benchmark, but no idea where it […]
Show full quote

Benchmarks are always welcome 😀
I think someone on Vogons did actually measure this recently by benchmark, but no idea where it was posted.

Fwiw, 128MB RAM for 98SE should be plenty anyway, especially considering it's a ss7 platform 😀.

I'd say just remove all the RAM till you have 128MB remaining, it should work perfectly fine that way...except when you're using lots and lots of programs of course.

melbar wrote:

About the cacheable RAM in socket7 board (VIA or ALI Aladdin), here is a good explanation for the AMD K6 family: […]
Show full quote

About the cacheable RAM in socket7 board (VIA or ALI Aladdin), here is a good explanation for the AMD K6 family:

http://www.amd-k6.com/cacheable-ram-on-socket-7-platforms/

So, depending what Revision your ALI chipset is onto the GA-5AA board, you can have 128Mb, 512Mb or 4096Mb cacheable RAM for K6 and K6-2.
As you can see, the K6-2+ or K6-3(+) are not limited.

By the way, i have also a K6-2 500 system (DOS/Win95) with sockel7 (VIA MVP3). I use a RivaTNT (32Mb) and 64Mb RAM only...

Thanks for all the advice and info about cacheable ram and how it works Tetrium and melbar. That linked article explains the whole thing very well! I checked the board and its a ALI revision E so it can cache 128MB as was suggested might be the case. I looked around for a K6-2+/III/3+ cpu too see if anywhere close by had some going cheep, but they all seem to be in the States and thus the postage to the UK makes them waaaayyy over priced.

So I'll go with the 128MB ram solution, however I have a lot of SDRAM thats compatible with the board so I will defiantly bench a variety of RAM configurations (got 2x64 PC100, 1x128 PC100, 2x256 PC100 and 1x256 PC133).

archsan wrote:

Great... Now we have SiS 6326 and Celeron 266 CovUCKington reunion in this thread. You guys sure have brought me back the darkest memories in my life and rubbed salt in my bloodiest wounds...

Don't mind me... carry on... T_T ... 🤣

What happened archsan?!?! Sounds like some dark times indeed. Maybe we need a Computer PTSD thread for people to share their stories of woe so the healing can begin. I know I need to share some stories about all nighters spent fixing broken OS installs and upgrades gone awry.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

What are some games to test all of this? […]
Show full quote

What are some games to test all of this?

I got a VIA MVP3 board ready to go and this topic interests me 😀

I got all the usual benchmarks:

- 3DMark99
- Forsaken
- Incoming
- Quake 2
- Drakan
- Unreal (Has Glide as well)
- Turok 2 (Has Glide as well)

I'm particular interest in stuff that runs well on such a system and isn't a slide show

For DOS the usual 3dbench 1.0c, Doom, Quake, PCPBench maybe also in high resolution?

Wow I had no idea PhilsComputerLab frequented here! Really been enjoying your videos and they have been very informative too.
As for benchmarks for this DOS/W95/W98 era including glide supported games, defiantly try out Serious Sam The First Encounter/The Second Encounter. I remember booting that game up after getting my first Voodoo card, what a difference it made with so many entities on screen!

As for other things there's a really good DOS and Win98 source port of quake/qworld which has some code designed for 3dfx cards which can be found here http://dk.toastednet.org/QDOS/ - take note of the MTRRLFBE.EXE in the Tool section at the bottom of the page which "Enable(s) Write Combining and Linear Frame Buffering via MTRRs..." Which "...Greatly speeds up Quake on 3DFX." This build of quake also supports mp3/ogg versions of the sound track to be used instead of relying on the CD even in DOS, which is a great addition for people like me who can't keep track of physical media (I moved recently, box city).

Haha, this is where it all started 😊

Bugger I already started and got the Velocity 100 and V3 3500 results in. Testing the Banshee next. I use Serious Sam SE all the time under XP, didn't think of using the first one 😀

Glide capable games I am using are Turok 2 and Unreal.