SS7 and AGP card is never a good combination, especially a PCchips board.

MKT_Gundam wrote on 2020-05-25, 02:03:

SS7 and AGP card is never a good combination, especially a PCchips board.

Ah yes, instability. I've noticed that but I actually don't have any good PCI video cards, I have a Trio64 from 1995 with a whopping 1MB of VRAM (non-upgradeable), which, for a K6-2, is meh. Tri064 is pretty fast, but S3-wise, I'd at least like to have a ViRGE (I know it's basically the same thing but they generally have more VRAM and other stuff), and that's if I even decide to go S3. My main concern at the moment is with the CPU configuration. Once I get that settled, I'll get a good PCI 2D card of some kind.

I have always run AGP cards on SS7, including S3 Virge and Voodoo3....never experiencing any instability. They aren't PCChips boards though.

Agp is fine on ss7 until you get to high power draw cards, so Virge, tnt, tnt2, rage series except Maxx fine, but tnt2 ultra, geforce except 2mx, and radeons should be avoided.

If your wanting to upgrade their are a few parts to look at.

Voodoo Banshee is good choice, for CPU find a k6-III 400and run 66x6 aka 66x2.5, the k6-3 isn't as affected by the 66mhz fsb thanks to its ondie L3 cache.

candle_86 wrote on 2020-05-25, 03:02:

Agp is fine on ss7 until you get to high power draw cards, so Virge, tnt, tnt2, rage series except Maxx fine, but tnt2 ultra, geforce except 2mx, and radeons should be avoided.

If your wanting to upgrade their are a few parts to look at.

Voodoo Banshee is good choice, for CPU find a k6-III 400and run 66x6 aka 66x2.5, the k6-3 isn't as affected by the 66mhz fsb thanks to its ondie L3 cache.

Unfortunately, I can't find any K6-III 400's for under US$100, which is way too much money for one CPU:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_tr … &_odkw=amd+k6-3

If I'm going to try something of that sort, I'll probably need a K6-2 of some kind, or something. There's also only like 4 listings for the thing, I guess it's a pretty rare CPU or something of that sort.

I'm probably going to avoid the AGP bus altogether and grab a PCI Riva 128 or a 2D card + 3dfx Voodoo, something of that sort.

Could just be that your CPU can't do 366MHz. I personally don't like odd FSB frequencies that use non integer dividers or just run buses off-spec all-together. In my experience, you're just asking for trouble, especially on old hardware where capacitors may have gone a little bad without you even noticing and even doubly so on PC-Chips boards 😜.

My suggestion? Either settle for 333MHz or grab the cheapest K6-2+ and run it at 400MHz on the 66MHz FSB. The extra cache will help, but don't expect any miracles from the K6, it'll probably run about as fast as a Pentium II 233 or 266 for the most part. You could go for another board with a chipset that can do 100MHz FSB and go nuts aiming for 600MHz clocks, but that can get expensive fast and it's not particularly worth it for the performance.

Also, 32MB is not a lot, I'd grab a stick of 128MB PC100 or PC133 if the motherboard can address it, tweak the timings a little bit just for that little bit of performance and call it a day. As far as the video card goes, a Voodoo Banshee or a Voodoo2 will be more than enough with this CPU for 640x480 3D gaming. Voodoo3 can also work fine, but I haven't looked at 3Dfx prices in a few years now, it's not really worth it for the performance as the CPU will definitely limit you. The Riva 128 you mentioned is nice and quirky enough, would go over well with a Voodoo2.

Garrett W wrote on 2020-05-25, 19:56:

Could just be that your CPU can't do 366MHz. I personally don't like odd FSB frequencies that use non integer dividers or just run buses off-spec all-together. In my experience, you're just asking for trouble, especially on old hardware where capacitors may have gone a little bad without you even noticing and even doubly so on PC-Chips boards 😜.

My suggestion? Either settle for 333MHz or grab the cheapest K6-2+ and run it at 400MHz on the 66MHz FSB. The extra cache will help, but don't expect any miracles from the K6, it'll probably run about as fast as a Pentium II 233 or 266 for the most part. You could go for another board with a chipset that can do 100MHz FSB and go nuts aiming for 600MHz clocks, but that can get expensive fast and it's not particularly worth it for the performance.

Also, 32MB is not a lot, I'd grab a stick of 128MB PC100 or PC133 if the motherboard can address it, tweak the timings a little bit just for that little bit of performance and call it a day. As far as the video card goes, a Voodoo Banshee or a Voodoo2 will be more than enough with this CPU for 640x480 3D gaming. Voodoo3 can also work fine, but I haven't looked at 3Dfx prices in a few years now, it's not really worth it for the performance as the CPU will definitely limit you. The Riva 128 you mentioned is nice and quirky enough, would go over well with a Voodoo2.

Other Super Socket 7 motherboards are quite expensive on eBay, so unfortunately, this one is my only choice. I really hope that the capacitors aren't going bad (I doubt they are), because as I've said before, I don't have the skill to replace them. As far as the CPU is concerned, the 333MHz reporting as 337MHz kind of bothers me, makes me feel like something is off. I'll likely just stick to 300MHz with this thing and call it a day until I get another CPU that can do higher clocks. Same goes for the 32MB of PC100 I have in there, I have all of the timings set as low as possible. I don't think a 300MHz K6-2 is going to make much use of any more than 32MB considering that the most intensive game I can run on it at the moment is going to be along the lines of software-rendered Quake. Once I get a Voodoo Banshee or the such, I might upgrade to 64MB, but I think 128MB is going to be too much for a K6-2 up until the very "fast," variants. For me at least, 128MB is more so Pentium III or late Pentium II territory than K6-2 territory. I'm not going to be getting a banshee anyways until I get at least a 400MHz K6-2 going in there.

I'm not really expecting any miracles for this thing, I'm just trying to get it as fast as I can with the motherboard I have. From what I've seen, a 266MHz K6-2 performs slightly better than a P54CS Pentium 200 in Quake, by measure of 1-5fps, and running it at 300MHz boosts it by another 5 or so FPS. Going to "333," also raises it another few FPS, but then things start getting weird, and I don't think it's worth all that mess.

you could run some tool like speedsys or chkcpu and see what they detect as CPU speed. it's pretty typical that FSB doesn't run at the exact specified number, but a fraction under/over that, though 4 mhz difference on CPU clock seems more than usual indeed. what does the board report when it's set to 266 mhz?

a k6-2 400 upgrade on this board may be underwhelming due to the 66mhz FSB without decoupled l2 cache bus, and the 75/83mhz shenanigans are iffy due to reasons already mentioned in the OP. if you're after speed, a slot 1 system would serve you much better in games like quake for sure.

Found a seller with K6-2+ 400 chips for 20$ in the US, perhaps it suits your wallet:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-K6-2-400ATZ-1-6V … or/254568245067

This should be the fastest thing this board can take without raising the FSB above 66MHz. The K6+ CPUs are essentially die shrunk K6-III CPUs, which means they run cooler and at higher clock speeds. The K6-2+ is a little cheaper because it has half the L2 cache at just 128KB, however this only makes a small difference in the end. Even when put side by side at higher clockspeeds, the differences in performance are marginal. If you ever get a better board, you should be able to overclock this processor quite a bit as well, they usually hit 550MHz easily at 2V or even less and a lot of them are completely stable at 600MHz which is pretty much end of the line for these CPUs as the multiplier doesn't go above 6x. In the end, you're getting a clock increase of 100MHz over your 300MHz overclock on your current processor and the benefits of on-chip cache. Should be a nice little upgrade.

I maintain that 32MB is just too small an amount, especially if you're using Win98SE. The OS will take up a lot of it, probably more than 16MB, which means that whatever game you're trying to play will have to fight for that memory and probably cause a lot of disk thrashing making the experience even more unpleasant than it should be on this little CPU. 64MB would be a lot better and 128MB even more so and should be really easy and cheap to find. 256MB is probably unreasonably much for this setup, unless you want to try Windows 2000 or Windows XP for the fun of it. Not entirely sure if this chipset can address single-sided DIMMs (ala 440BX) which could cause some headaches, look into that before buying.

Again, if you want to get the most out of this system, IMO you should go for a K6-2+ (whichever model, just set it up for 6x66=400MHz and the lowest available voltage, the 2x multiplier remaps as 6x), get 128MB RAM and reduce the timings and get a decent 3D card that won't break the bank. Savage4 could be a nice alternative to Riva and 3Dfx cards, a quality Savage4 card can actually exceed the Banshee and even match a single Voodoo2 card in most games and it's a nice all-in-one solution with good image quality, definitely worth a look.

Garrett W wrote on 2020-05-25, 23:10:

Found a seller with K6-2+ 400 chips for 20$ in the US, perhaps it suits your wallet: https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-K6-2-400ATZ-1- […]
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Found a seller with K6-2+ 400 chips for 20$ in the US, perhaps it suits your wallet:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-K6-2-400ATZ-1-6V … or/254568245067

This should be the fastest thing this board can take without raising the FSB above 66MHz. The K6+ CPUs are essentially die shrunk K6-III CPUs, which means they run cooler and at higher clock speeds. The K6-2+ is a little cheaper because it has half the L2 cache at just 128KB, however this only makes a small difference in the end. Even when put side by side at higher clockspeeds, the differences in performance are marginal. If you ever get a better board, you should be able to overclock this processor quite a bit as well, they usually hit 550MHz easily at 2V or even less and a lot of them are completely stable at 600MHz which is pretty much end of the line for these CPUs as the multiplier doesn't go above 6x. In the end, you're getting a clock increase of 100MHz over your 300MHz overclock on your current processor and the benefits of on-chip cache. Should be a nice little upgrade.

I maintain that 32MB is just too small an amount, especially if you're using Win98SE. The OS will take up a lot of it, probably more than 16MB, which means that whatever game you're trying to play will have to fight for that memory and probably cause a lot of disk thrashing making the experience even more unpleasant than it should be on this little CPU. 64MB would be a lot better and 128MB even more so and should be really easy and cheap to find. 256MB is probably unreasonably much for this setup, unless you want to try Windows 2000 or Windows XP for the fun of it. Not entirely sure if this chipset can address single-sided DIMMs (ala 440BX) which could cause some headaches, look into that before buying.

Again, if you want to get the most out of this system, IMO you should go for a K6-2+ (whichever model, just set it up for 6x66=400MHz and the lowest available voltage, the 2x multiplier remaps as 6x), get 128MB RAM and reduce the timings and get a decent 3D card that won't break the bank. Savage4 could be a nice alternative to Riva and 3Dfx cards, a quality Savage4 card can actually exceed the Banshee and even match a single Voodoo2 card in most games and it's a nice all-in-one solution with good image quality, definitely worth a look.

Thanks for finding that CPU, that's the break I needed CPU-wise. As far as RAM usage is concerned, I'll likely stick with 64MB where I'm using Windows 95 OSR2 instead of '98. It just seemed overkill when I have a Pentium 200 system with 32MB of SDRAM that came with that amount, and it seems quite good with what it has to work with. Considering that the K6-2 at 300MHz performs roughly the same as an MMX 233 in Quake (using timedemo demo3 at 320x200), in its current configuration, I see no reason to upgrade the RAM. A MMX 233 with 64MB of RAM is a little overkill I think (at least, looking at similar machines from a time-accurate perspective).

This system is unlikely to be running anything more intensive than Quake, maybe Quake II, which is why I'm being so lax in terms of RAM amounts and the such. I have far too many SDRAM modules, ranging from 32MB-512MB in size (yes, I have a 512MB PC133 SDRAM stick, unsure of why it exists but it does), so a memory upgrade wouldn't be any harder than dealing with the motherboard's lack of standoffs and therefore lack of support under the RAM slots. I have to jam a finger under the motherboard where the RAM slot is at the edge of the board, or while I try to install the RAM, the thing will just flex. I don't mean to be dismissive as I appreciate the help a lot, but my own biased tendencies towards time-accuracy and the self-inflicted suffering that results override any practical or otherwise good solutions.

I'll have to look into the Savage4 though, as even if I don't have a use for it in this particular situation, I may find use for it in an upcoming build or two. Getting "good," graphics cards from that time is fairly expensive, so any breaks I can find, I will take.

Re: the Windows protection error - have you tried the Windows 95 patch for AMD 350 MHz and faster CPUs?

jakethompson1 wrote on 2020-05-27, 01:42:

Re: the Windows protection error - have you tried the Windows 95 patch for AMD 350 MHz and faster CPUs?

I actually didn't know about that, though with the BIOS bugging out saying 375MHz instead of 366MHz, I don't know if I'll do that anyways. If it said 366, I'd definitely try it, but something seems broken once I get to that speed with the CPU itself and I don't want to push it too hard.

Also, update on the video card: I got a 2MB PCI Trident TGUI 9680-1, which I know has less performance than most other 2D cards, but it's what I have, and as far as I can tell, it works, not crashing in any games or causing instability. I may be able to get a TSENG ET6000 or something similar in the future, but that will take a bit and I prefer stability over performance in this case, the AGP bus in this system is just too flaky.

In fact, I now have two of these Trident cards, the one with all 2MB soldered on the board is in the K6-2 system, and I have a 1MB variant which I will be upgrading to 2MB shortly, not sure which system I'll end up using that one for yet.