My first question would be what OS and what will you be using it for?

What is the Maximum amount of memory which the motherboard can cache? Motherboards from around that time frame were typically up to 64mb.

Despite the PC-Chips reputation, this board is - clock-for-clock - the fastest single So7 board I have ever tested, beating big-name boards with Aladdin V, i430TX and (with bigger margin) MVP3 chipsets. Now, the Aladdin IV(+) chipset can cache either 64MB (with 8b tag) or 512MB (with 11b tag), same as with early revisions of the Aladdin V. I don't remember what the M560 had, so check that tag RAM chip next to the northbridge.

If you have an 8b tag, performance will be significantly faster if you keep RAM <=64MB, unless you actually need all that space. For DOS and Win9x, you almost certainly don't need >64MB, certainly not with a pedestrian old P166 non-MMX bottlenecking performance.

As for graphics & sound - agree with foey, it all depends on OS and application. SBLive is decent for Windows, but a bad choice for DOS, I'd sooner suggest something more period-correct, and in any event an ISA card with proper DMA. The TNT2-M64 is good for performance and compatibility, but also period-incorrect and doesn't do any of the more period-correct interesting stuff like GLide or S3 MeTaL.

foey wrote:

My first question would be what OS and what will you be using it for?

As for OS, I will go with Windows 98 SE

As for cacheable RAM, I never thought about it, and wanted to see all memory slots filled, even if overkill 😊

dionb wrote:

SBLive is decent for Windows, but a bad choice for DOS, I'd sooner suggest something more period-correct, and in any event an ISA card with proper DMA. The TNT2-M64 is good for performance and compatibility, but also period-incorrect and doesn't do any of the more period-correct interesting stuff like GLide or S3 MeTaL.

As for sound, I have also SB16 for ISA as a backup solution, and so-far-seemingly-nonfunctional AWE32 for ISA.
I have some Crystal ISA sound cards as well.

As for graphics, this is the exact reason why I ask the suggestions. I have also some PCI S3 cards , but am thinking about Voodoo card eventually...

Still no word about what you will be using it for - unless you just want to look at the background of Windows 98SE. That rather influences the answers to your questions, particularly as you're running a rather slow CPU - odd to go for overkill in other fields when you only do 166MHz on a board that could take a 500MHz CPU.

In any event, be sure to use the older .vxd drivers if you intend to go with the SBLive, not the newer .wdm. The latter are complete CPU-hogs, with people with fast AthlonXP and >2GHz Pentium 4 systems complaining about the impact. With that P166, you really can't miss any CPU cycles at all.

assasincz wrote:

Hi guys, […]
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Hi guys,

So I am in a final steps of refurbishing my old Pentium 166 Mhz PC, which I handed over to a friend of mine 17 years ago to do whatever he wants, and now got it back - bare motherboard, CPU, and an AT case almost completely stripped down except for the faceplate. I am building it back up to its former glory.

So the CPU and MoBo are:
PcChips M560 rev 3 - http://www.elhvb.com/webhq/models/pcchips/m560.htm - 4x PCI slots and 4x ISA slots are available to me
CPU FV80502166 - http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium/Intel-P … FV80502166.html

What I did so far is
- I maxed out the RAM to total of 196 MBs (4xSIMM modules, 2xSD-RAM)
- I am trying to make SSD SATA-IDE work okay
- have a brand new modular ATX power supply ready for the moment my ATX-to-AT adaptor arrives from China, until now working with old 200W AT power supply

What I am kinda hesitant about is what GPU and sound card combo to put in there to make it appropriate...
I have prepared:
- Guillemot Maxi Gamer Cougar TNT2 M64 PCI
- SB Live SB0220

But I would like to hear your suggestions as to how to kit this baby out - what are your suggestions, kind sirs and ladies?

I assume you'll be using it for 1995-1996 games under Windows 98. My tips:

- stick to 64MB - no need to go over that. In fact, as dionb says, more is actually detrimental and your CPU can't handle games that need anything even close to that. On top of that, some DOS games go bonkers with that much memory.
- the SB Live is a GREAT Windows 98 card (I have one myself in my P3 600 rig) BUT mostly for later games that have EAX support so it's quite pointless here. Also, it's PCI and not ISA so DOS support will be crap and music will sound terrible. Go with an AWE64 instead or an older ISA based c ard.

- I'd try to figure out how far your motherboard can be pushed with its CPU - a P166 is a rather weak CPU for most Windows 98 games (by 1998, a Pentium 166 was pretty dated) - I upgraded mine to a Pentium 233 MMX and that makes quite a big difference.
- the TNT2: don't bother with that. Most games that run on that CPU, won't have terribly good Direct3D support or none at all. My vote would be to get a Voodoo 2 instead which is a lot more suitable for the era (Tomb Raider, Quake, etc. all had Voodoo patches). A TNT2 is more for a late Pentium II or Pentium III era PC.

Basically, you're building a rig for a Pentium II or III system but with a Pentium I CPU - you need to go down a step and generation with sound, graphics, memory, ...

The M64 is a crippled version of the TNT2, with only half the normal memory bandwidth. Which puts its performance just about neck and neck with the first generation TNT and Voodoo 2. So while a regular TNT2 is definitely a late PII or PIII era card, the M64 version is more suited to a late (super) socket 7 or early PII build. Which still makes it overkill for the P166, especially since, as already mentioned, games that will run on that CPU, will have poor or no Direct3D support at all. So Voodoo is definitely the way to go. I'd say Voodoo 1 is even the better fit for the CPU, and it has better support among the accelerated DOS games.

Aside for that little nitpick, totally agree with what red_avatar wrote, you're basically building a PII system but using a wholly underpowered CPU. You will not enjoy the experience of trying to run Windows 98 and its era games on a P166. It's better to either upgrade the CPU to fit the rest of the build, or downgrade the sound, video, memory and OS targets.

frudi wrote:

The M64 is a crippled version of the TNT2, with only half the normal memory bandwidth. Which puts its performance just about neck and neck with the first generation TNT and Voodoo 2. So while a regular TNT2 is definitely a late PII or PIII era card, the M64 version is more suited to a late (super) socket 7 or early PII build. Which still makes it overkill for the P166, especially since, as already mentioned, games that will run on that CPU, will have poor or no Direct3D support at all. So Voodoo is definitely the way to go. I'd say Voodoo 1 is even the better fit for the CPU, and it has better support among the accelerated DOS games.

Aside for that little nitpick, totally agree with what red_avatar wrote, you're basically building a PII system but using a wholly underpowered CPU. You will not enjoy the experience of trying to run Windows 98 and its era games on a P166. It's better to either upgrade the CPU to fit the rest of the build, or downgrade the sound, video, memory and OS targets.

With a P166, I'd call the whole D3D vs GLide discussion pretty academic. The relevant thing is rather VESA support, and there nVidia did an excellent job, not quite at S3 or Cirrus Logic levels, but close, similar to 3DFx and better than say ATi or Tseng.

I'm also building a "over the top Pentium MMX" machine. (I plan to use Win95 OSR 2.5 there) I have a S7 motherboard with 2xSDRAM and 6x72pin RAM slots for that. (Tyan s1571: https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/T/T … tium-S1571.html ) It currently has 1 SDRAM stick of 256MB in there. I also have 4x512MB ECC SDRAM, but those were not accepted by the board. CPU is 200MHz MMX overclocked to 225MHz, to get the tasty 75MHz bus speed. GPU is also a question for me (i don't want to really go over year 1997), sound will probably be some very compatible ISA card. (Either some good old sound blaster or some very compatible clone like ES1868F)

Interesting thread. (Y)

P200MMX@225MHz vs P166 non-MMX is a world of difference. Those MMX instructions are pretty irrelevant, but the extra cache of the P55C makes a big difference, and at this speed, almost 50% clock speed does too.

If you don't want to go over 1997, get that ludicrous 256MB DIMM out of there. The i430TX chipset can only cache 64MB so you'll actually get better performance with 64MB. Win95 OSR 2.5 certainly doesn't need anything like that amout of RAM, so you'll get no benefit from it to offset the lack of L2 caching. 64MB would only become common in late 1998 or early 1999, anything more than that is second half of 1999.

dionb, i haven't researched it yet, but maybe it's a perfect way to create a 192MB ramdisk on that part of ram that isn't cached?

dionb wrote:

With a P166, I'd call the whole D3D vs GLide discussion pretty academic. The relevant thing is rather VESA support, and there nVidia did an excellent job, not quite at S3 or Cirrus Logic levels, but close, similar to 3DFx and better than say ATi or Tseng.

You're right, unless his motherboard has an S3 or Cirrus Logic chip, it makes for a good 2D card. But then I'd still recommend adding a Voodoo. For a while I tried to get Voodoo-focussed games to run on my TNT2 back in 1999 and it was quite hit & miss. Some games just had specific Voodoo support with maybe one or two other cards being supported (Resident Evil was one of those I recall) and others just didn't perform as well.

Built myself around what I had lying about and ended up with a really good gaming Windows 95/DOS system.

MB: Micronics M55hi+
CPU: Intel Pentium P54c 200MHz
RAM: 64MB (16MBx4 72-pin SIMMs) 60ns EDO
MB Sound: Creative Labs Vibra16 (SB16 chip, ISA bus)
PCI1: ATI Rage IIc 2MB
PCI2: Diamond Monster 3D 4MB Voodoo 3D Accelerator
HDD: Maxtor 20.4GB IDE (using drive overlay software)
OS: Windows 95

It works really well with later-era DOS games that aren't speed sensitive and early GLIDE games with the Voodoo1 card. I got a pass-through off of the internet and it works incredibly well as a replacement for the cables nobody ever seems to want to sell with their original Voodoo cards.

Since the system was being built around the MB and CPU limitations, I planned the build around 1996-1997, which actually meant for me downgrading to Windows 95, installing DirectX 5/6/7, the OSR2 pack, etc. The fun part was getting DOS configured correctly to work out of the box with just about any game. With 64MB to work with, I was able to not only load DOS into high memory area, freeing up to 614KB of conventional memory, I also have both 8MB of Expanded Memory and the rest is Extended Memory, so both types of DOS games will work without the need for selection programs like Phil likes to use. I also have working CD-ROM and MOUSE drivers at all times, whether they're needed or not.

Honestly, for early Windows 9x gaming, 64MB of RAM is overkill. Hell, 32MB would have been a cherry sweet-spot for gaming. I used to run Windows 95 on an early Packard Bell with only 16MB of RAM and it worked fine, though not as a gaming machine because of its restrictive 100MHz Pentium and lack of any dedicated 3D graphics hardware.

Now, compare that to my 1999 gaming rig, which is a totally separate system.

MB: ASUS P2B Revision 1.02
CPU: Intel Pentium III 600MHz Katmai Slot-1, 100MHz FSB
RAM: 256MB (128MB x 2 DIMMs) PC-100 SDRAM
AGP: Diamond Viper V770 (NVIDIA Riva TNT2) 32MB
PCI1: STB V2-1000 12MB Voodoo2 3D Accelerator
PCI2: STB V2-1000 12MB Voodoo2 3D Accelerator
PCI3: 10/100 Ethernet
ISA2: Creative Labs AWE64 Standard
HDD: Western Digital 40GB IDE
OS: Windows 958 SE

As you can see, stepping forward a few years into a Pentium 3 chip, I can now push more graphics horsepower properly, so I've front-loaded this system graphically, with a TNT2 card (NOT the M64 version) and dual Voodoo2 cards in SLI. This is a gaming beast by 1998/1999 standards and plays most games of the era flawlessly. Half-Life is buttery smooth, using either the TNT2 or the Voodoo2 cards. Unreal, Quake 1&2...all liquid. And this is without a 1 GHz processor.
The system shows its age with later games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein (FPS drops below 20 sometimes, noticeable stuttering in heavy action scenes), a basic inability to run Morrowind, even though it meets "minimum" system requirements, things like that.

I would agree with the earlier posters. Either center your system around that 166MHz CPU by dropping your expectations of the graphics and sound hardware or step the whole thing up by dumping the CPU and replacing it with a much faster AMD chip at or near 500MHz.

dionb wrote:

With a P166, I'd call the whole D3D vs GLide discussion pretty academic. The relevant thing is rather VESA support, and there nVidia did an excellent job, not quite at S3 or Cirrus Logic levels, but close, similar to 3DFx and better than say ATi or Tseng.

I agree for the most part. But I figured OP was probably looking to play some 3D accelerated games, not just software rendered, if they were going with a card like the TNT2 M64. In which case they are likely to be very disappointed with 3D performance in any game that would support the 3D features of the card. A Voodoo card would be more useful, since some DOS games, that would run decent enough even on a P166, already had support for it; games like Tomb Raider, Carmageddon, Descent, etc. A TNT2 would be limited to software mode in those games.

For graphics, just use one of your PCI S3 cards and add a Voodoo 2 to it, if you can find one.

Also upgrading the CPU to a MMX/233 or something similar is a good idea as well, and you will get more out of the Voodoo that way.

With a P166 + S3, it's mostly a DOS gaming and Windows productivity system. With MMX/233 + S3 + Voodoo, you are getting a lot more advanced games support and you enter the Windows 95 3D games era.

GigAHerZ wrote:

dionb, i haven't researched it yet, but maybe it's a perfect way to create a 192MB ramdisk on that part of ram that isn't cached?

... and i just tried it out, and it works well!
I'm using XMSDSK to allocate TOP 192MB of XMS memory for ramdrive therefore leaving bottom 64MB for Windows. And it works - Windows only sees 64MB of RAM and i have Windows-Compatible ramdisk of 192MB. Good place to put your browser cache and maybe some other temporary stuff.

Autoexec.bat has to have similar line: (192MB, R: drive, Top placement in XMS, No confirmations)
C:\APPS\XMSDSK\xmsdsk.exe 196608 R: /t /y

So there is some use to have more than 64MB of ram even on those old machines that can't cache more than that. 😀

Writing this post from my P200MMX@225MHz.

Wow, that's an eye-opener, will try to replicate myself and see how it works (including cachechk) under DOS.

GigAHerZ wrote:

... and i just tried it out, and it works well! I'm using XMSDSK to allocate TOP 192MB of XMS memory for ramdrive therefore leav […]
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GigAHerZ wrote:

dionb, i haven't researched it yet, but maybe it's a perfect way to create a 192MB ramdisk on that part of ram that isn't cached?

... and i just tried it out, and it works well!
I'm using XMSDSK to allocate TOP 192MB of XMS memory for ramdrive therefore leaving bottom 64MB for Windows. And it works - Windows only sees 64MB of RAM and i have Windows-Compatible ramdisk of 192MB. Good place to put your browser cache and maybe some other temporary stuff.

Autoexec.bat has to have similar line: (192MB, R: drive, Top placement in XMS, No confirmations)
C:\APPS\XMSDSK\xmsdsk.exe 196608 R: /t /y

So there is some use to have more than 64MB of ram even on those old machines that can't cache more than that. 😀

Writing this post from my P200MMX@225MHz.

Wow that sounds really easy.

Whenever I finally upgrade my main system (i5 2500K, P67 motherboard) I want to try to turn the old one into a system that runs DOS\Win98SE (no gui boot by default), but can also boot to Windows XP and Windows 10. The RAM disk would solve the issue of having way too much RAM. I could probably copy the entire Windows partition to the RAM drive at startup (from an SSD) and then run it from there, just for kicks. I wonder how fast Windows 98 and games would load on such a system when running from a 2133Mhz dual channel DDR3 RAM drive.

Ozzuneoj, you might still have some problems with win98's himem.sys, when you go to 2GB+ ram.

GigAHerZ wrote:

Ozzuneoj, you might still have some problems with win98's himem.sys, when you go to 2GB+ ram.

Ah... didn't know about that one.