Which less RAM did you test with? Because losing the 256 stick is probably the best bet.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-11-18, 19:43:

Which less RAM did you test with? Because losing the 256 stick is probably the best bet.

Both only with 256 MB and only 128 MB

Hmmm Direct X has been known to barf on faults with input and sound devices apart from video.

What's the version of DirectX you installed?

The first thing that stands out is some of the AGP cards you're using.
All those cards (perhaps with the exception of the TNT2) are AGP 4X, and are likely to have 1.5V AGP connectors.

I also own the P3B-F, in both 5 PCI / 2 ISA (v1.3) and 6 PCI / 1 ISA (v1.4) configurations, and AFAIK, the AGP connector is 3.3V. So, there is a good chance that some of these cards are not compatible with the motherboard.
I have not (nor dare) to try out my 3dfx Voodoo4 4500 AGP on any of my P3B-F motherboards. I'm assuming you have the retail Voodoo4. If you're using the EvilKing4, then that is 3.3V.

Have you tried using a PCI graphics card?
Also, have you tried running any non-Direct3D applications or games? GLQuake or Quake II?

You must first try to isolate the problem to something more specific, because at this stage, it's not clear to tell whether it's a software or hardware fault.

I've got the P3B-f too, running a p3-933 Coppermine at 980 (fsb at 140) and paired it with a GF4 Ti4200 with no problem. Also ran it with a Mx440 before with 150MHz fsb. I doubt the problem lies with the AGP cards bein go x4. The TNT should work any way to provided it's a good one.

My first thought would be the same as stated earlier: remove all the ram, see what's the fastest ram (8ns or faster needed for fsb 100, preferably 7.5ns pc133 or even better: 7ns pc133) and put it in alone, closest slot to the CPU.

In BIOS, just let the timing be configured automatically. Or set them manually to a very loose setting.

Could you reinstall windows and fresh drivers?
My best bet would be Dx7 or 8.1,
Make sure the chipset drivers are installed
for the TNT driver version 21
for the mx440 driver version 40something.
For testing remove both the modem and sound blaster, you may reinstall then later on.

If you cannot reinstall windows, boot into safe mode and removed all software related to the graphics card, modem and sound card. Also removed them from the device manager. The the computer down, remove the modem and sound blaster and reboot. Install drivers as above and go on.

In reply to dormcat, janskjaer, BitWrangler and waterbeesje.
First of all, thanks all for the suggestions, I will try some solutions.

First about the Software side of things, I had three different versions of DirectX installed on this system, 7.0, 8.1 and 9.0c. All three gave the exact same result, which is locking up in any Direct3D or Application.

Yes, i installed the chipset Drivers for the 440BX, thinking that this would be the problem, no luck.
By the way, which version of the chipset drivers would you guys recommend for this?
The ASUS P3B-F Support CD doesn't appear to have any.

And the system was already fresh reinstalled 4 times.

Glide and OpenGL games works flawlessy, like UT 99 in Glide Mode, Half-Life / Counter-Strike 1.5 in OGL, Quake III (although a bit slow when used with the TNT2)

The only thing I haven't done yet, is to use a PCI video card, which currently I don't have here any to test.
Also I thought first that the TNT2 would be defective, as originally I had Windows for Workgroups 3.11 installed on a second HDD, which gave a lot of crashes and graphical corruption, in which I bought that GeForce 4 MX440 (AGP Universal Card), to find out that the drivers for WfW 3.11 of Riva TNT is buggy, and not the card is defective.
Then a friend of mine gave me as a gift this Voodoo 4 4500 AGP, which I thought the best choice is to put on this Pentium III class machine.
I think that the Voodoo 4 is an universal AGP card, as it is keyed for both 3.3 and 1.5V signaling.
On the "next" build I have in here, which is an AMD Sempron 2800+ with 1 GB DDR400, I would say that the Voodoo will be a total bottleneck. The MX440 AGP ended up in that build.

This problem happens even before I installed the SB Live, the NIC and the Modem.
I had only the Video Card on the AGP Slot (the TNT2) and a ESS PCI Sound card.

One interesting fact, is that I have Windows 98 SE and Windows 2000 dual-booting on this system, and on Windows 2000, tested a D3D game that freezes under 98SE, but does play fine on 2K.

My bet would be to repartition the HDD (80 GB HDD), reinstall everything from scratch and gets more space for Win 2K and gets Win 98 only to run legacy stuff.