SS7 may have hiccups with AGP cards but 3dfx ain't part of them. K6-2+/3+ are highly recommended because they can be clocked down easily by software, but be aware of the board and chipset revisions if you are mating them with ALi Aladdin V chipset.

Just... why exactly? What games/era are you targeting that work OK using a slowed-down socket 7 CPU but don't work OK on, for example, an early PII like the 266MHz with cache disabled? You're already happy on a 440BX platform which I agree is solid, I wouldn't change it unless I had a very good reason. Just my view though, maybe you're aiming to the extreme slow-down capabilities of the K6s.

I would say that SS7 + Voodoo 5 dosnt make sense.

I would also say that ALI 5 + Voodoo isnt a good combination if top performance is of importance (ATI and Nvidia work better if the motherboard can provide enough power).

VIA MVP3 + Voodoo normally works great but with a K6-3+ @550+ expect P2 400 performance in most games.

My experience with the via mvp 3 is unstable at best both in performance and stability. A good bx slot system would be prefable you can always use a 266 mhz and play with jumper settings some boards have great tweaking possibilities.
Since your considering building a new system why not consider either a pentium 1 or 486? My experience with the tx, vx and hx chipset are that they are rock solid.

What is your BX board? In particular, how low can it's CPU VRMs go? It might be usable for a very flexible slowdown machine based on a C3 chip.

I'm just waiting for a slocket to arrive, then I'll be able to compare an Ezra chip with my socket 7/PMMX slowdown machine that uses TR12 registers.

Interesting points being made. I've been using Pentium III 500 on my BX system. Yes, it's probably underpowered to feed a Voodoo5, but I found myself using the BX system for late 1990's games anyway; titles like Incoming, Jane's Longbow, Jane's F-15, Need For Speed III, and Monster Truck Madness, while using the Voodoo5 5500 to do 4x SSAA whenever applicable. I don't play, let say, Unreal Tournament on the BX system. So I guess a Pentium II 400 performance should be fine for my purpose. On the other hand, I'm really curious if I could slow down my system enough to reach a Pentium 100 level --to play titles like Strike Commander and Wings of Glory in pure DOS without software slowdown.

What makes me worry from a K6 system is stability and compatibility. Has there been any game unplayable on the AMD processor due to instability or incompatibility?

For pure DOS gaming, I believe that you don't need more than 32MB RAM and a cpu over the 133 MHz barrier. I had build a pure DOS gaming PC back on 2003 - 2004 with a Celeron 400 MHz and 440BX but for my needs and the games I use to play (1988 - 1997) it was an overkill, so I've downgraded to SS7 build with Pentium MMx 233 downclocked to 133 MHz and 32MB RAM. It's very easy to downclock the cpu with jumpers or from the bios. My 450 MHz K6-2 also dowclocked to 133 MHz with no issues. AMD K5, K6 are compatible, no issues at all. I've just used the P55C for nostalgic reasons because it was my first Pentium.

The most demanding DOS games do well with monstrous amounts of CPU power, otherwise the performance range you're talking about is perfectly adequate. If the P55c's TR12 registers can be manipulated with SETMUL, it will have much finer adjustments than any K6-2+ or -III+ although top end performance will be less. C3 Ezras reportedly tune down even deeper in performance than both Pentiums and K6 chips.

I had some issues with Desert Strike and Jungle Strike with divide overflow errors when the cpu was running at 233 MHz. When I downclocked to 133 MHz no problems occurred. The motherboard which isn't supported by setmul, is the ASUS P5-99VM with SiS-530.

Back in the day, I had a k6-2 at 450 Mhz and found most of the DOS stuff I played to just work fine. Demanding DOS games like Tomb Raider or Descent at 640 by 480 or even 800 by 600 ran good. Voodoo 3 AGP handles quake 2 era super smooth, and quake 3 engine titles with some settings fiddling.

I have since upgraded to k6-2+ at 600 mhz, and the extra clocks and cache help quite a bit. Get the best kk-2+ or 3+ you can. I have the MVP 3 chipset, and while it works fine with 3dfx, avoid Aureal vortex sound cards with that chipset.

Skyscraper wrote:

I would say that SS7 + Voodoo 5 dosnt make sense.

I would also say that ALI 5 + Voodoo isnt a good combination if top performance is of importance (ATI and Nvidia work better if the motherboard can provide enough power).

VIA MVP3 + Voodoo normally works great but with a K6-3+ @550+ expect P2 400 performance in most games.

I agree that SS7 + Voodoo5 makes absolutely no sense no matter which way you slice it. But I disagree that Voodoo in general is a bad choice with the ALI chipset. You bottleneck the Voodoo5 so badly you might as well use a Voodoo3 or Voodoo2. Voodoo3 based cards dont make full use of all AGP features however so with some of the buggy AGP implementations the Voodoo3 or the Voodoo Banshee is actually probably the only AGP cards that will be problem free. SS7 + Voodoo3/Banshee is probably the most common machine

Rhuwyn wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

I would say that SS7 + Voodoo 5 dosnt make sense.

I would also say that ALI 5 + Voodoo isnt a good combination if top performance is of importance (ATI and Nvidia work better if the motherboard can provide enough power).

VIA MVP3 + Voodoo normally works great but with a K6-3+ @550+ expect P2 400 performance in most games.

I agree that SS7 + Voodoo5 makes absolutely no sense no matter which way you slice it. But I disagree that Voodoo in general is a bad choice with the ALI chipset. You bottleneck the Voodoo5 so badly you might as well use a Voodoo3 or Voodoo2. Voodoo3 based cards dont make full use of all AGP features however so with some of the buggy AGP implementations the Voodoo3 or the Voodoo Banshee is actually probably the only AGP cards that will be problem free. SS7 + Voodoo3/Banshee is probably the most common machine

My experiences with Voodoo cards and ALI 5 arent great, the stability has been fine but the performance lacking for what ever reason. The same motherboards have worked fine with ATI and Nvidia cards performing as expected.

My PC Chips M577 VIA MVP3 board performs well with Voodoo cards, or well as well as expected 😁

Rhuwyn wrote:

I agree that SS7 + Voodoo5 makes absolutely no sense no matter which way you slice it. But I disagree that Voodoo in general is a bad choice with the ALI chipset.

Is this what you mean? But it is a BIOS setting issue, isn't it? Especially the "Frame Buffer Posted Write" setting, which should be set to Enable.

F2bnp wrote:

I can't thank you enough Nahkri! It was a BIOS setting after all, specifically "Frame Buffer Posted Write". Setting it to Enable […]
Show full quote

I can't thank you enough Nahkri! It was a BIOS setting after all, specifically "Frame Buffer Posted Write". Setting it to Enabled boosts performance to your levels.

Here's where it gets weird though. Back in August, I remember tinkering with that setting (I think it has to do with Write Combining?) and I even PM'ed Skyscraper about it, telling him to tweak anything similar looking on his GA-5AX. After trying it for a while though, the system seemed to return to its slower self, so I kind of dismissed that option. Weird 😖 .
I'm on Windows 2000 right now and saw MDK 2 performance jump from 27FPS to 33FPS. Pretty sure I'll hit 37FPS if I switch back to Win98SE, like everybody else. Quake 2 performance also jumped from 43FPS to 80FPS in Demo1.

Tomorrow morning I'm installing Win98SE again and see if everything is back to normal. I'll see if I can install my Voodoo 5 in there as well, see how that fares against a Voodoo 3 on a K6. I've heard people here say that the Voodoo 3 will perform somewhat better due to less driver overhead. Compatibility is also worse than Voodoo 3, unfortunately. On the other hand, with Voodoo 5 you're literally getting at least 2x sample AA for free and my card is sitting in an OEM Compaq Pentium III 1GHz system literally collecting dust 🙁. Anyway, I'll see if I can do all of the tests tomorrow! 😊

Rhuwyn wrote:

You bottleneck the Voodoo5 so badly you might as well use a Voodoo3 or Voodoo2. Voodoo3 based cards dont make full use of all AGP features however so with some of the buggy AGP implementations the Voodoo3 or the Voodoo Banshee is actually probably the only AGP cards that will be problem free. SS7 + Voodoo3/Banshee is probably the most common machine

In my case it shouldn't matter, I suppose, since enabling 4xFSAA (which is SSAA) theoretically cut down the Voodoo5's fill rate to half (or is it a quarter?), which brings down its performance to be on par to that of Voodoo3 as far as Texel fill rate is concerned. Or am I wrong?

PS: I edited the Wikipedia screenshot to bring the header down.

carangil wrote:

I have since upgraded to k6-2+ at 600 mhz, and the extra clocks and cache help quite a bit. Get the best kk-2+ or 3+ you can. I have the MVP 3 chipset, and while it works fine with 3dfx, avoid Aureal vortex sound cards with that chipset.

What? How about ALi Aladdin? Does it also have problem with Aureal Vortex?

Heh, I remember that old post. There is actually an AGP Utility for Ali Aladdin V chipsets that lets you tweak various settings. The critical settings have to do with write combining, if you set these up the wrong way, you can expect to see performance halved in half.

Voodoo5 can make sense on a Super Socket 7 system, since you can basically get free 2x SSAA and still have the card providing Voodoo3 levels of performance. If you use 4x SSAA, you will be getting single Voodoo2 levels of performance (so that's a quarter, not half).
It is also just as trouble free as a Voodoo3.

My suggestion to you Kreshna is to just go out and buy yourself one of the great SS7 boards along with either a K6-2+ or a K6-3+ and try it yourself. If you encounter issues or performance isn't right, we will definitely be able to help you solve them. To me, it sounds like you'll be mostly GPU limited, AFAIK you always use the 4x SSAA on the Voodoo5, correct? If that is the case, the K6 will never hold you back.
But, don't expect Pentium 2 400 levels of performance from the CPU on every game. It does depend on the games, sometimes a high clocked K6 can be faster, sometimes it can be quite a bit slower. Here is a thread with a list of benchmarks from last year:

Pentium II/III VS K6-III+

JSO wrote:

I had some issues with Desert Strike and Jungle Strike with divide overflow errors when the cpu was running at 233 MHz. When I downclocked to 133 MHz no problems occurred. The motherboard which isn't supported by setmul, is the ASUS P5-99VM with SiS-530.

Why wouldn't it support Setmul? It's the processor that supports it.

At the very least, L1 cache manipulation should be supported.

F2bnp wrote:

Voodoo5 can make sense on a Super Socket 7 system, since you can basically get free 2x SSAA and still have the card providing Voodoo3 levels of performance. If you use 4x SSAA, you will be getting single Voodoo2 levels of performance (so that's a quarter, not half).
It is also just as trouble free as a Voodoo3.

Indeed. I found myself playing more and more Voodoo2-era games using Voodoo5, maximizing 4x SSAA for such old games. The Pentium III 500 MHz and 440Bx board seems wasted. Of course, they're trouble free and rock-stable, but since my Voodoo5 is mostly used on games earlier than the GPU itself, then I believe I can use slower CPU. On the other hand, I've heard good things about SS7's excellent underclockability, so...

F2bnp wrote:

My suggestion to you Kreshna is to just go out and buy yourself one of the great SS7 boards along with either a K6-2+ or a K6-3+ and try it yourself. If you encounter issues or performance isn't right, we will definitely be able to help you solve them. To me, it sounds like you'll be mostly GPU limited, AFAIK you always use the 4x SSAA on the Voodoo5, correct? If that is the case, the K6 will never hold you back.
But, don't expect Pentium 2 400 levels of performance from the CPU on every game.

And I don't. The most demanding game I play on the said BX system is Jane's Longbow II, whose minimal CPU requirement is Pentium 133. So I guess I could be fine with SS7.

What worries me is stability and compatibility problem. For example, could we use Aureal Vortex 2 on ALi Aladdin chipset? Would Jane's Longbow II crash on K6-III CPU? You know, such things.

lvader wrote:

JSO wrote:

I had some issues with Desert Strike and Jungle Strike with divide overflow errors when the cpu was running at 233 MHz. When I downclocked to 133 MHz no problems occurred. The motherboard which isn't supported by setmul, is the ASUS P5-99VM with SiS-530.

Why wouldn't it support Setmul? It's the processor that supports it.

It isn't functioning well and with speed accuracy of the settings I use. Moslo! works better.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

What worries me is stability and compatibility problem. For example, could we use Aureal Vortex 2 on ALi Aladdin chipset? Would Jane's Longbow II crash on K6-III CPU? You know, such things.

Yes, you can use a Vortex 2 and there shouldn't be any stability issues with Aladdin V (I have never had the chance to use MVP3) other than some AGP quirks that you can get rid of.