To get around the 64 MB restriction on my 430TX board I use an AMD K6 III-500 with onboard L2 cache. I assume you confirmed that you cannot run a II/III+ or III chip on your motherboard and have looked for updated BIOSes. You can look here http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm for a patched BIOS, or see if Jan is willing to patch your BIOS for K6 2/3 plus support.

I have a patched BIOS that will run 2+ or III CPUs but I can't find one for a (for me) reasonable price, they seem to be going for no less than 40-50 EUR each on eBay..

Watch the neighbour's kids for half a day while their parents get some badly needed respite; there's your 40 euro, maybe 50 if you get a tip 😀

Via's VPX is generally comparable to the i430VX, so a definite step back in terms of performance compared to the TX. Also it shared the VX's extreme pickyness when it comes to SDRAM. You only get the 128MB cachable area if you switch to write-through, further reducing performance.

For normal, period correct, use, I'd say the advantages of unrealistically large RAM in no way compensate for the relatively poor performance. The only case you'd be better off is if you are thrashing away madly for lack of RAM, but I can't imagine an application that would run happily on an old CPU like this needing so much RAM.

dionb wrote:

Via's VPX is generally comparable to the i430VX, so a definite step back in terms of performance compared to the TX. Also it shared the VX's extreme pickyness when it comes to SDRAM. You only get the 128MB cachable area if you switch to write-through, further reducing performance.

For normal, period correct, use, I'd say the advantages of unrealistically large RAM in no way compensate for the relatively poor performance. The only case you'd be better off is if you are thrashing away madly for lack of RAM, but I can't imagine an application that would run happily on an old CPU like this needing so much RAM.

Bottom line is, 64MB should be enough for anybody? (For a K6-2 Windows 98SE gaming build targeting 1998 at the very least?)

dionb wrote:

Via's VPX is generally comparable to the i430VX, so a definite step back in terms of performance compared to the TX. Also it shared the VX's extreme pickyness when it comes to SDRAM. You only get the 128MB cachable area if you switch to write-through, further reducing performance.

Do you happen to have any benchmark numbers with regard to WB vs. WT for L2 cache on the VX? Wiki mentions 64 MB as being the max cacheable on the VX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_c … entium_chipsets

appiah4 wrote:

Bottom line is, 64MB should be enough for anybody? (For a K6-2 Windows 98SE gaming build targeting 1998 at the very least?)

Well, if you were still using your 430TX back in early-to-mid 2000's, you'd probably want 128 MB or more for web browsing. Or if you are dual booting with W2K, then 128+ MB. When I ordered my Dell Workstation in 1998, it came with 64 MB standard, though I upped it to 128 MB.

imho in win98 128mb ram is the minimum for a quality experience - only if no big programs are in use, or many programs in parallel;
but the board You chose does not seem to improve over what You have that much - this might not pay off - cache coverage issues, also possibly lower performance overall..

appiah4 wrote:

Bottom line is, 64MB should be enough for anybody? (For a K6-2 Windows 98SE gaming build targeting 1998 at the very least?)

The VPX isn't a 1998 chipset but a very early 1997 one, and this was one of the periods when that really mattered. When the VPX came out, it was before the launch of the K6; for most tasks a Cyrix MII was probably the fastest CPU around (unless you actually used your FPU), otherwise the new, shiny and very expensive Pentium MMX was the way to go. Most systems would have been equipped with 16MB or 24MB of RAM, with 32MB reserved for the real high-end.

Now fast-forward to Windows 98SE. That puts you not in 1998 but mid 1999, so two and a half years later. Chances are you'd have a Celeron 300A and be trying to run it at 450MHz on a BX board, or if you had cash to burn you might have an early Pentium III. If money was tight you'd have a later K6-2 on a SuperSo7 platform. Entry-level RAM would be 64MB, with 128MB being standard on a performance system.

So trying to run Win98SE on an early 1997 system is like trying to run Windows 95 on a 1992-era 486 (or indeed Windows XP on that same Celeron Mendocino with 128MB RAM...). Yes, it was possible, but you'd have to push the platform to its limits, sink a lot of good money on maxing legacy stuff (old RAM mainly) and still results would be disappointing. That was true in 1999 and is still true today.

feipoa wrote:

dionb wrote:

Via's VPX is generally comparable to the i430VX, so a definite step back in terms of performance compared to the TX. Also it shared the VX's extreme pickyness when it comes to SDRAM. You only get the 128MB cachable area if you switch to write-through, further reducing performance.

Do you happen to have any benchmark numbers with regard to WB vs. WT for L2 cache on the VX? Wiki mentions 64 MB as being the max cacheable on the VX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_c … entium_chipsets

I have something, but it's hardly authoritative. Back in the 2000s I did a load of memory performance benchmarks of the various So5/7 chipsets, always using the same Pentium 100 and 2x 32MB EDO or 1x 64MB SDRAM. One of the issues was that different boards had very different memory settings, so in the end I settled on doing a "conservative" run with everything set as slow as possible and a "performance" run with everything as fast as I could get it stable. After a while it became clear this was pretty pointless as of course the amount you could enable/disable varied as much as the settings, so it was still comparing apples and oranges - and I went with the 'performance' figures for comparison. But I kept doing both settings because I had started it so I would finish it. In the case of the VPX one of the 'conservative' settings was setting L2 from WB to WT - although there was a lot more than that (general RAM timings tight/loose). I used a FIC PA-2010+ for VPX, and tested with RAMspeed INTmem and FLOATmem.

Results are here, with the difference between the "C" and the "P" run being about 30%. But once again, that is bigger than just WB vs WT.

I'm not aware of any better figures for regular PCs though - googling found an academic paper on WB vs WT on a MIPS RISC platform...

Are you still saying that the cacheable range of the VX chipset is 128 MB when L2 is in WT mode? Best to confirm this with CTCM7 and CPUMark99.

feipoa wrote:

Are you still saying that the cacheable range of the VX chipset is 128 MB when L2 is in WT mode? Best to confirm this with CTCM7 and CPUMark99.

No, the i430VX is limited to 64MB regardless of the amount of cache installed and the operating mode.

It's the VPX that is more flexible. With 512kB it can cache 64MB in WB, 128MB in WT. Theoretically it can support 2MB of cache, in which case it can do 25MB in WB and 512MB in WT - but I've never seen a VPX board with that sort of cache - Via kept the same cache architecture up to the MVP3, where you can find 1MB/2MB boards. In practice with the VPX you're stuck with at best 512kB and so 64/128MB cacheable depending on mode.

The board I'm considering buying is the one attached, is this a 512K board? Would using it in WT mode for 128MB RAM be worthwhile for playing games up to and including 1998 compared to a TX board with 64MB RAM?

appiah4 wrote:

The board I'm considering buying is the one attached, is this a 512K board? Would using it in WT mode for 128MB RAM be worthwhile for playing games up to and including 1998 compared to a TX board with 64MB RAM?

That photograph's too blurry to make out the cache chip markings, so can't say, but it's highly unlikely to be more than 512kB.

Not sure how easy it is to find decent (and decently priced) hardware where you are, but as I said, things were moving very fast in 1997. A board like this would have been great in early 1997, but irritatingly dated/low-end by late 1997 and far more so by 1998. For a 1998 build I'd strongly suggest going with a 1998 chipset such as the ALi Aladdin V or Via MVP3, or at least a late 1997 one like the ALi Aladdin IV, SiS 5581 or Via VP3. That gives you a bit more performance, more bus speed options, decent SDRAM support and more cacheable area.

Those are not quite easy to come by but I guess I will keep looking. I want an ATX board anyhow..