All this talk of Slot A is making me want to play with one ..perhaps one that is on par with my P3 Slot 1 .. which would be expensive as its a 1Ghz P3, still I do wonder how they would match up clock for clock with same GPU and Memory.

Was the Athlon a better CPU than the P3 ?

Depends. Pure FPU is better, but no SSE.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-07-27, 15:53:

Depends. Pure FPU is better, but no SSE.

hmm I didn't know that they didn't have SSE, I can see that might be an issue with some programs and games.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-27, 15:58:

hmm I didn't know that they didn't have SSE, I can see that might be an issue with some programs and games.

On the other hand, 3DNow! might give the Athlon a slight edge when paired with Voodoo cards, since 3DFX optimized their drivers for that instruction set. Here's a period correct test on Anandtech.

It would be interesting to see that kind of comparison using the latest drivers and game patches that are available to us today. Provided that someone here has both a P3 and an Athlon CPU which run at the same frequency.

The AMD Duron 1GHz with Morgan Core was the first and slowest AMD CPU with SSE support and later all Athlon XP CPUs.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-27, 16:18:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-27, 15:58:

hmm I didn't know that they didn't have SSE, I can see that might be an issue with some programs and games.

On the other hand, 3DNow! might give the Athlon a slight edge when paired with Voodoo cards, since 3DFX optimized their drivers for that instruction set. Here's a period correct test on Anandtech.

It would be interesting to see that kind of comparison using the latest drivers and game patches that are available to us today. Provided that someone here has both a P3 and an Athlon CPU which run at the same frequency.

It might happen one day, if I can find a 1Ghz Athlon Slot A at a reasonable price, the few I have seen were priced well beyond what I would be willing to part with. Motherboard might be a small issue too as Slot A was right in the middle of the Capacitor Plague.

Might just be easier to grab a 800Mhz P3 and Athlon .. likely cheaper too as 800Mhz models are quite common. (Located what looks like a nice deal, recapped board with Uni AGP and ISA + Athlon 850 for 100 USD)

I'm honestly really interested to see how they compare with each other, I have a pair of Voodoo2s and a Geforce2 Ultra so I could replicate a similar setup to what the OP has here.

Lack of SSE on Athlon shouldn't be a big issue as long as software supports 3DNow!. I would say it became indispensable later in Windows XP era.

I regard Athlon as a superior CPU to PIII. I also happen to have a few spare Athlon 1200 cpus with KT133 boards (3x). Since PIII 900 is sufficient for all Windows 98 games and I got it earlier, Athlon ended up in a drawer even though it's better.

bloodem wrote on 2022-07-27, 06:27:

His motherboard has the AMD 751 "Irongate" chipset. Never tested this specific Biostar board, but if it's anything like my Gigabyte GA-7IXE boards (which have the same chipset), he will have absolutely NO issues with period correct GeForce cards (I've tested GeForce 2 GTS/Ti, GeForce 3 Ti 500 and GeForce 4 Ti 4400 on mine).

Yeah that is the same as the AMD 750. 750 refers to the entire platform. 751 is the northbridge. The 756 southbridge is something I've never seen. I haven't tried the Biostar AMD 751 board either but the ASUS K7M also uses AMD 751 and GeForce cards can be trouble with it. I kid you not. 😁

Power delivery might be part of it, like with so many other boards back then. GeForce FX running off external power seems the least problematic. GeForce 2 GTS, MX and 4MX are probably relatively low power so that might help too.

Interesting PDF to peruse below. It describes the reason for AGP 1x with NV10 and uses the word "alleviate". In other words it just reduces the problem to some degree. Every GeForce card I tried defaulted to 1X with this chipset. I tried forcing 2x with some of them via Rivatuner and the GeForce FX may have been stable but others became very unstable. My ASUS K7M had Superfetch available so was a later stepping.

The VIA KX133 chipset has similar problems but with AGP 4x. Its AGP 2x seems pretty solid. That's my experience with the ASUS K7V-T incarnation of it.

I've personally had zero crashes with GF2MX and GF4MX on my ASUS K7M that I built not too long ago. I played on that system quite a bit, so I think they should be fine, but then again who knows maybe I got very lucky.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-07-27, 13:49:

751 is north bridge. And 750 is chipset, which also includes dumb AMD south bridge, which was ditched almost immediately in favor of VIA (both were connected with PCI bus anyway). And yeah, 751 is the one which had massive AGP issues, but it might have been ameliorated with new revisions during production run.

True, true. Poor choice of words on my part. 😀 I was referring to the north bridge, since that's the one responsible for the AGP bus communication (and it's the first suspected when an AGP specific problem exists with a motherboard).

Now, I for one have even had 440BX motherboards where AGP 2X was flaky (especially in conjunction with certain video cards). So there is definitely more to it than just the chipset a motherboard has, it's most likely also a matter of board design and how stable those signals are on that specific board. I can even suspect that, during that era, for some cheapo manufacturers, there was probably also some degree of variance between (what should've been) identical boards.

What I do know for sure is that I have 3 x Gigabyte GA-7IXE boards (that I bought some years ago from different sources), and they are all as stable as any of the very well known/reliable 440BX boards out there. They might have a newer north bridge revision, but not sure...
On the other hand, I have two KX133 boards (Acorp 7VIA71A / Jetway 771AS). The Jetway is super stable, the Acorp not so much.

One thing I've noticed about the KX133 boards is that memory compatibility is much better than the AMD 750 boards (the GA-7IXE despises memory modules with higher density chips and simply refuses to post).

swaaye wrote on 2022-07-27, 17:53:

Power delivery might be part of it, like with so many other boards back then. GeForce FX running off external power seems the least problematic. GeForce 2 GTS, MX and 4MX are probably relatively low power so that might help too.

Yes, power delivery is not an issue with the GA-7IXE, because it doesn't have a voltage regulator that converts 5V to 3.3V, it uses the PSU's 3.3V rail. Not sure about others, though. I would think that, by this point, most motherboards should've dropped the dreaded low current regulators.

swaaye wrote on 2022-07-27, 17:53:

Interesting PDF to peruse below. It describes the reason for AGP 1x with NV10 and uses the word "alleviate". In other words it just reduces the problem to some degree. Every GeForce card I tried defaulted to 1X with this chipset. I tried forcing 2x with some of them via Rivatuner and the GeForce FX may have been stable but others became very unstable. My ASUS K7M had Superfetch available so was a later stepping.

Indeed, interesting read. So it does seem like at some point they might've fixed the issue. Then again, as I said, AGP 1X is more than enough for video cards of the time (and even newer).

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-27, 16:24:

It might happen one day, if I can find a 1Ghz Athlon Slot A at a reasonable price, the few I have seen were priced well beyond what I would be willing to part with. Motherboard might be a small issue too as Slot A was right in the middle of the Capacitor Plague.

Might just be easier to grab a 800Mhz P3 and Athlon .. likely cheaper too as 800Mhz models are quite common. (Located what looks like a nice deal, recapped board with Uni AGP and ISA + Athlon 850 for 100 USD)

I'm honestly really interested to see how they compare with each other, I have a pair of Voodoo2s and a Geforce2 Ultra so I could replicate a similar setup to what the OP has here.

You don't really need a 1 GHz Athlon. What you need is a cheap 600 - 700 MHz Athlon (or similar) that has a ~800 - 900 MHz CPU die (yes, this was actually very common for the Pluto CPUs, because AMD had very good yields). Then you can easily overclock it to 1 GHz (well, not 'easily', you need a golden finger device + do a bit of soldering work, or more soldering without golden finger device). And, IMO, this is actually nicer (more period correct) than just buying an overpriced 1 GHz part. 😀 See my post here.

bloodem wrote on 2022-07-28, 08:27:

True, true. Poor choice of words on my part. :-) I was referring to the north bridge, since that's the one responsible for the A […]
Show full quote

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-07-27, 13:49:

751 is north bridge. And 750 is chipset, which also includes dumb AMD south bridge, which was ditched almost immediately in favor of VIA (both were connected with PCI bus anyway). And yeah, 751 is the one which had massive AGP issues, but it might have been ameliorated with new revisions during production run.

True, true. Poor choice of words on my part. 😀 I was referring to the north bridge, since that's the one responsible for the AGP bus communication (and it's the first suspected when an AGP specific problem exists with a motherboard).

Now, I for one have even had 440BX motherboards where AGP 2X was flaky (especially in conjunction with certain video cards). So there is definitely more to it than just the chipset a motherboard has, it's most likely also a matter of board design and how stable those signals are on that specific board. I can even suspect that, during that era, for some cheapo manufacturers, there was probably also some degree of variance between (what should've been) identical boards.

What I do know for sure is that I have 3 x Gigabyte GA-7IXE boards (that I bought some years ago from different sources), and they are all as stable as any of the very well known/reliable 440BX boards out there. They might have a newer north bridge revision, but not sure...
On the other hand, I have two KX133 boards (Acorp 7VIA71A / Jetway 771AS). The Jetway is super stable, the Acorp not so much.

One thing I've noticed about the KX133 boards is that memory compatibility is much better than the AMD 750 boards (the GA-7IXE despises memory modules with higher density chips and simply refuses to post).

swaaye wrote on 2022-07-27, 17:53:

Power delivery might be part of it, like with so many other boards back then. GeForce FX running off external power seems the least problematic. GeForce 2 GTS, MX and 4MX are probably relatively low power so that might help too.

Yes, power delivery is not an issue with the GA-7IXE, because it doesn't have a voltage regulator that converts 5V to 3.3V, it uses the PSU's 3.3V rail. Not sure about others, though. I would think that, by this point, most motherboards should've dropped the dreaded low current regulators.

swaaye wrote on 2022-07-27, 17:53:

Interesting PDF to peruse below. It describes the reason for AGP 1x with NV10 and uses the word "alleviate". In other words it just reduces the problem to some degree. Every GeForce card I tried defaulted to 1X with this chipset. I tried forcing 2x with some of them via Rivatuner and the GeForce FX may have been stable but others became very unstable. My ASUS K7M had Superfetch available so was a later stepping.

Indeed, interesting read. So it does seem like at some point they might've fixed the issue. Then again, as I said, AGP 1X is more than enough for video cards of the time (and even newer).

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-27, 16:24:

It might happen one day, if I can find a 1Ghz Athlon Slot A at a reasonable price, the few I have seen were priced well beyond what I would be willing to part with. Motherboard might be a small issue too as Slot A was right in the middle of the Capacitor Plague.

Might just be easier to grab a 800Mhz P3 and Athlon .. likely cheaper too as 800Mhz models are quite common. (Located what looks like a nice deal, recapped board with Uni AGP and ISA + Athlon 850 for 100 USD)

I'm honestly really interested to see how they compare with each other, I have a pair of Voodoo2s and a Geforce2 Ultra so I could replicate a similar setup to what the OP has here.

You don't really need a 1 GHz Athlon. What you need is a cheap 600 - 700 MHz Athlon (or similar) that has a ~800 - 900 MHz CPU die (yes, this was actually very common for the Pluto CPUs, because AMD had very good yields). Then you can easily overclock it to 1 GHz (well, not 'easily', you need a golden finger device + do a bit of soldering work, or more soldering without golden finger device). And, IMO, this is actually nicer (more period correct) than just buying an overpriced 1 GHz part. 😀 See my post here.

The question I have is are the 1Ghz Slot A CPUs the same as the 1Ghz Socket A CPUs ? they are both Thunderbird right.
If so there really shouldnt be any performance difference between them and I could substitute a 1Ghz Socket A instead.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-28, 09:37:

The question I have is are the 1Ghz Slot A CPUs the same as the 1Ghz Socket A CPUs ? they are both Thunderbird right.
If so there really shouldnt be any performance difference between them and I could substitute a 1Ghz Socket A instead.

No! There are Slot A Thunderbird CPUs available (and I do have a few), but those are actually a bit slower compared to Plutos, at least at these lower speeds (even though they have a full speed on-die L2 cache). Also all the Slot A Thunderbird SKUs I have are very poor overclockers (but this might just be bad luck on my part).

IMO, if you are building a Slot A system, it ABSOLUTELY has to be either an Argon, Pluto, or Orion which DO NOT have an on-die L2 cache (so they are similar to Pentium 2 / Pentium 3 Katmai). Thunderbirds 'belong' to Socket A. 😁

- Argons are the first that AMD launched, and they're manufactured on the older 250nm process. They are HOT and very poor overclockers, but they do have the appeal of being "the first". Their L2 cache runs at 50% the core speed.
- Plutos are my favorite. They are manufactured on the newer 180 nm process that turned out to have very good yields. Because of this, AMD was forced to sometimes use higher tier dies on lower tier models (which is why it's a common thing to find ~ 900 MHz cores on 600 - 700 MHz SKUs). L2 cache runs at 50% (up to 700 MHz) and 40% (up to 850 MHz).
- Orion is the same as Pluto, but it was a name that, for some reason, AMD chose to give the 900 - 1000 MHz models. The L2 cache runs at 33% the core speed on these CPUs (because the cache chips usually plateaued at 350 - 360 MHz). The 1 GHz Orion is extremely expensive because it was the first commercially available CPU to reach the 1 GHz speed (Intel did have a demo of a pre-production P4 running at 1.5 GHz before this, but... Netburst doesn't count 😁 ).

bloodem wrote on 2022-07-28, 09:47:

No! There are Slot A Thunderbird CPUs available (and I do have a few), but those are actually a bit slower compared to Plutos (e […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-28, 09:37:

The question I have is are the 1Ghz Slot A CPUs the same as the 1Ghz Socket A CPUs ? they are both Thunderbird right.
If so there really shouldnt be any performance difference between them and I could substitute a 1Ghz Socket A instead.

No! There are Slot A Thunderbird CPUs available (and I do have a few), but those are actually a bit slower compared to Plutos (even though they have a full on-die L2 cache), and the SKUs I have are very poor overclockers.
IMO, if you are building a Slot A system, it ABSOLUTELY has to be either an Argon, Pluto, or Orion which DO NOT have an on-die L2 cache (so they are similar to Pentium 2 / Pentium 3 Katmai).

- Argons are the first that AMD launched, and they're manufactured on the older 250nm process. They are HOT and very poor overclockers, but they do have the appeal of being "the first". Their L2 cache runs at 50% the core speed.
- Plutos are my favorite. They are manufactured on the newer 180 nm process that turned out to have very good yields. Because of this, AMD was forced to sometimes use higher tier dies on lower tier models (which is why it's a common thing to find ~ 900 MHz cores on 600 - 700 MHz SKUs). L2 cache runs at 50% (up to 700 MHz) and 40% (up to 850 MHz).
- Orion is the same as Pluto, but it was a name that, for some reason, AMD chose to give the 900 - 1000 MHz models. The L2 cache runs at 33% the core speed on these CPUs (because the cache chips usually plateaued at 350 - 360 MHz). The 1 GHz Orion is extremely expensive because it was the first commercially available CPU to reach the 1 GHz speed (Intel did have a demo of a pre-production P4 running at 1.5 GHz before this, but... Netburst doesn't count 😁 ).

Ok of the two choice I have found that should work

1 - AMD-K7850MPR52B A - 512KB - Pluto for $115 USD (Biostar M7MKE, Uni AGP, ISA) <--Research shows this board may have a lot of issues with Nvidia GPUs but works fine with ATI/AMD GPUs.
2 - AMD A1000AMT3B - 256KB Thunderbird for $69USD (Asus A7V133 RAID, AGP 4X, No ISA)

I would love a Slot A but that OC mod looks like a royal pain in the ass compared to grabbing the Socket A setup, what are your thoughts here ?

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-28, 10:06:

Ok of the two choice I have found that should work […]
Show full quote

Ok of the two choice I have found that should work

1 - AMD-K7850MPR52B A - 512KB - Pluto for $115 USD (Biostar M7MKE, Uni AGP, ISA) <--Research shows this board may have a lot of issues with Nvidia GPUs but works fine with ATI/AMD GPUs.
2 - AMD A1000AMT3B - 256KB Thunderbird for $69USD (Asus A7V133 RAID, AGP 4X, No ISA)

I would love a Slot A but that OC mod looks like a royal pain in the ass compared to grabbing the Socket A setup, what are your thoughts here ?

Well, you are asking the wrong person. 😁
I would definitely go for the Pluto. The price seems a bit high (for me), but it might be acceptable depending on what you can reasonably find in the Land Down Under 😀.
If you're not comfortable with the OC modding procedure (it does involve a certain amount of risk), you can definitely leave it as is. At 850 MHz it is a very decent performer (and the L2 cache runs @ ~ 340 MHz, so pretty close to the limit).

That being said, if you simply want to play games and have a nice experience (without tinkering too much), the Asus A7V133 + Thunderbird 1 GHz will be a much more sensible choice (even though it hurts me to say it. 😁).

bloodem wrote on 2022-07-28, 10:25:

Well, you are asking the wrong person. :-D I would definitely go for the Pluto. The price seems a bit high (for me), but it migh […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-28, 10:06:

Ok of the two choice I have found that should work […]
Show full quote

Ok of the two choice I have found that should work

1 - AMD-K7850MPR52B A - 512KB - Pluto for $115 USD (Biostar M7MKE, Uni AGP, ISA) <--Research shows this board may have a lot of issues with Nvidia GPUs but works fine with ATI/AMD GPUs.
2 - AMD A1000AMT3B - 256KB Thunderbird for $69USD (Asus A7V133 RAID, AGP 4X, No ISA)

I would love a Slot A but that OC mod looks like a royal pain in the ass compared to grabbing the Socket A setup, what are your thoughts here ?

Well, you are asking the wrong person. 😁
I would definitely go for the Pluto. The price seems a bit high (for me), but it might be acceptable depending on what you can reasonably find in the Land Down Under 😀.
If you're not comfortable with the OC modding procedure (it does involve a certain amount of risk), you can definitely leave it as is. At 850 MHz it is a very decent performer (and the L2 cache runs @ ~ 340 MHz, so pretty close to the limit).

That being said, if you simply want to play games and have a nice experience (without tinkering too much), the Asus A7V133 + Thunderbird 1 GHz will be a much more sensible choice (even though it hurts me to say it. 😁).

I have a 1Ghz P3 Slot 1 and was looking to match it up against a 1Ghz Athlon Slot A with similar setups to see how each compares against the other, I think the P3 can downclock easy enough .. easier than the Athlon at any rate, and that BioStar board has a few other nice things like on board Aureal Vortex. (Seems this model doesnt)

Might mull it over a bit, the price is a bit high for a 850.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-28, 10:28:

More than I have a 1Ghz P3 and was looking to match it up against a 1Ghz Athlon with similar setups to see how each compares against the other, I think the P3 can downclock easy enough .. easier than the Athlon at any rate.

Not sure what you mean by "downclock". The P3 has a factory locked multiplier that can't be unlocked (or at least, a method of unlocking the multiplier was never discovered).
The Socket A Athlons, on the other hand, they can be unlocked with the pencil method. And Slot A athlons can be downclocked with a Golden finger device.

So, based on the above, the Athlon is much better in this regard.

If your P3 is running on a socket 370 platform, then... yeah, a Socket A Athlon would be a good match for it.
If, on the other hand, you have a Slot 1 Pentium 3, then a Slot A Athlon is definitely the better match.

bloodem wrote on 2022-07-28, 10:33:

Not sure what you mean by "downclock". The P3 has a factory locked multiplier that can't be unlocked (or at least, a method of u […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-28, 10:28:

More than I have a 1Ghz P3 and was looking to match it up against a 1Ghz Athlon with similar setups to see how each compares against the other, I think the P3 can downclock easy enough .. easier than the Athlon at any rate.

Not sure what you mean by "downclock". The P3 has a factory locked multiplier that can't be unlocked (or at least, a method of unlocking the multiplier was never discovered).
The Socket A Athlons, on the other hand, they can be unlocked with the pencil method. And Slot A athlons can be downclocked with a Golden finger device.

So, based on the above, the Athlon is much better in this regard.

If your P3 is running on a socket 370 platform, then... yeah, a Socket A Athlon would be a good match for it.
If, on the other hand, you have a Slot 1 Pentium 3, then a Slot A Athlon is definitely the better match.

Yup you are right . .brain fade on my part

Edit - Grabbed the Slot A setup, might grab the Socket A setup down the road if its still up at the price it is now.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-28, 10:35:

Edit - Grabbed the Slot A setup, might grab the Socket A setup down the road if its still up at the price it is now.

Nice! Let us know how it goes and if you encounter any issues.

I would say that you should be able to run GeForce cards just fine on that Biostar board. I have yet to encounter a platform that doesn't work with GeForce cards (some might require a bit more tweaking than others, though).

If you experience any AGP related issues/freezes, the first step is to force a lower AGP transfer speed. The KX133 will probably have issues @ AGP 4x, but it should work fine at AGP 2X. Worst case scenario, AGP 1X is also a viable option because, again, there is no tangible performance loss. Also, be sure to use a more modern VIA 4in1 driver (4.35 would be a good starting point).

Also, always use a GPU that has low power consumption (GeForce 2 GTS is a good choice), or at least start with such a GPU before trying something more powerful/modern. A GeForce 2 MX/GTS will allow you to use period-correct drivers like Detonator 7.76, which has very good performance and compatibility.

bloodem wrote on 2022-07-28, 12:54:

Nice! Let us know how goes and if you encounter any issues. […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-28, 10:35:

Edit - Grabbed the Slot A setup, might grab the Socket A setup down the road if its still up at the price it is now.

Nice! Let us know how goes and if you encounter any issues.

I would say that you should be able to run GeForce cards just fine on that Biostar board. I have yet to encounter a platform that doesn't work with GeForce cards (some might require a bit more tweaking than others, though).

If you experience any AGP related issues/freezes, the first step is to force a lower AGP transfer speed. The KX133 will probably have issues @ AGP 4x, but it should work fine at AGP 2X. Worst case scenario, AGP 1X is also a viable option because, again, there is no tangible performance loss. Also, be sure to use a more modern VIA 4in1 driver (4.35 would be a good starting point).

Also, always use a GPU that has low power consumption (GeForce 2 GTS is a good choice), or at least start with such a GPU before trying something more powerful/modern. A GeForce 2 MX/GTS will allow you to use period-correct drivers like Detonator 7.76, which has very good performance and compatibility.

Going with a GeForce 2 Ultra and a pair of Voodoo2s since the cards are not in use atm, also have a Voodoo 4 4500 on the display shelf I could throw in it for extra tests. Since it has an ISA slot I think a nice ESS 1868F should work good, depending on how much fun the Athlon is I may just keep it around as a working system !

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-28, 12:59:

Going with a GeForce 2 Ultra and a pair of Voodoo2s since the cards are not in use atm, also have a Voodoo 4 4500 on the display shelf I could throw in it for extra tests.

If you end up pairing the Athlon with a 3DFX card, check if you have the "Geometry Assist" option in the driver control panel:

The latest official Voodoo 3 drivers have this, and turning it on can provide a slight boost to performance.

Also, it's fun to benchmark Quake 2 vanilla vs. the 3DNow! optimized version on such a setup. I once did a test of vanilla Quake 2 3.20 + OpenGL ICD vs. MiniGL + 3DNow! patch and the difference in performance was noticeable.