LiquifiedBeef wrote on 2023-07-17, 03:17:

I have tried multiple Nvidia drivers ranging from 52.X to 81.X (latest). Performance remains the same. […]
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I have tried multiple Nvidia drivers ranging from 52.X to 81.X (latest). Performance remains the same.

I would use 45.23 drivers with that card. It would help.

It could perhaps help to reduce the amount of RAM? I don't think your motherboard can cache that much. If you had a K6-2+ then that's not an issue from what I understand - more details here: Cacheable ram?

And it might be worth trying some of the K6-2 optimisation tools here: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/k6-2-2-3-resources.html.

I use CTU in Win98 and get a boost out of it.

Second the dropping RAM to 64MB. It's not going to make a massive difference but definitely will help.

Another thing you could do is downgrade to a GeForce2MX GPU. That would let you use older, less bloated Detonator drivers. Again, won't make a massive difference but can help.

Finally, a K6-2 475 runs at 5x 95MHz. You can almost certainly overclock that to 500MHz, which increases not just CPU clock but also memory and PCI. It's only 5% but on So7 platforms, anything that improves FSB will generally give 1:1 improvement in application speed.

You're correct in saying that your motherboard is limiting you - this is a low-end integrated VGA chipset. With Gf2MX/4MX cards, PCI will be bottlenecking performance. This was a bottom-scraping low-end machine back in the day and was never inteded to give best performance to the components on it. You could of course (if it's standard ATX, whcih Compaqs weren't always around that time) look into replacing the motherboard, but then it's hardly the same machine anymore.

dionb wrote on 2023-07-17, 06:20:

Second the dropping RAM to 64MB. It's not going to make a massive difference but definitely will help.

That amount of cacheable RAM depends on the amount of cache on the motherboard.
You can try to detect the amount of L2 cache with the tool SpeedSys 4.78 from dosbench suite.
You can try to detect the cacheable area with the tool ctcm from heise/c't magazine.

dionb, your calculation may be wrong. With 512 kB of cache, a cacheable area of 128 MB should be achieved.

Top google result tho.

Somone reccomended leaving the 1st memory slot empty to get rid of shared memory.
http://www.k6plus.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=1725

What I'm reading is max cache is 64mb, if you want to cache more you need a K62+. Then you can cache 128.

I don't think K6-III/ K6-2+ cache more RAM. They just don't rely on MBO cache so much :
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/amd-k6-2-vs- … -vs-k6-iii.html

normal K6 doesn't have L2 cache so it relies on external L2 cache to cache ram. Plus version have L2 cache and can cache ram without the exernal L2 cache that becomes L3 cache. That site says nothing about a normal K6, everything Phil is saying is about Plus versions so its irrelevant to the discussion.

if you disable the extenal L2 cache on non plus version, perfomance plumets, if you disable the L2 cache on plus version not much happens, except a drop in maybe 1-2 FPS likely contributed to just having less cache.

K6-2/3 best graphics card for me would be Geforce2 MX400 64MB AGP, then Geforce2MX 32MB AGP, if you can get PCI version of them, use older drivers (version 7.76 is good).Rage128 Pro is also nice with right drivers and OpenGL version if you do not use newer Directx7 games and stay more up to Directx 6.1 ones with that rage build. Still Nvidia OpenGL support is better and has directx7. If you have chance do get Voodoo2 12MB, add that for your setup.
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/nvidia- … pci-64-mb.b1569

My best results are with one stick of memory and the size of the ram is important, for my Aopen AX59Pro (1MB) 1x256MB RAM is the best, get ram that has slower CL time at 100 or 133MHZ. If your motherboard has chaceable memory max @ 64MB then use that size,i tought that with 512KB it would be 128MB, still 64MB is good for Dos and Win9x, you can use lite version of Win9x os also.
https://www.litepc.com/98lite.html

Sometimes older chipset drivers are better than newer ones. Right chipset drivers are important, at least for my VIA MVP3 + other tweaks that this chipset needs to unleash the power. Use more games that has 3DNow support in it, if you miss more speed, use older games. Use higher resolution for you games (better picture, same speed) limiting factor is probably cpu not gpu. Use FSP speed 100MHz for your Motherboard/CPU.
https://web.archive.org/web/20001109071400/ht … dnow/optimized/

Warlord wrote on 2023-07-17, 04:41:

LiquifiedBeef wrote on 2023-07-17, 03:17:

I have tried multiple Nvidia drivers ranging from 52.X to 81.X (latest). Performance remains the same. […]
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I have tried multiple Nvidia drivers ranging from 52.X to 81.X (latest). Performance remains the same.

I would use 45.23 drivers with that card. It would help.

I have seen that 45.23 drivers are widely considered the best, but when I go to install the driver it does not detect a Nvidia graphics chip.

badmojo wrote on 2023-07-17, 05:17:

It could perhaps help to reduce the amount of RAM? I don't think your motherboard can cache that much. If you had a K6-2+ then that's not an issue from what I understand - more details here: Cacheable ram?

And it might be worth trying some of the K6-2 optimisation tools here: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/k6-2-2-3-resources.html.

I use CTU in Win98 and get a boost out of it.

Quick update: I pulled out two sticks of RAM leaving one 128 MB stick. This actually got my FPS up by like 5-10 frames in areas where I was getting decent framerate, which is pretty significant when you're talking sub 30 frames! However, the stuttering is still there. For instance, when playing Half-Life, frames drop to 0-8 and I get several stutters that are maybe .5-1 second long whenever enemies load into the game. This looks like a CPU bottleneck, but I believe it is this infamous motherboard.

When I am walking around and there is not much going on, Half-Life runs at a "smooth" 35+ frames. Performance tanks when enemies are loading in or the environment gets complex. I will keep tinkering with the BIOS to see how far I can push it, and will keep you updated.

Warlord wrote on 2023-07-17, 08:41:

normal K6 doesn't have L2 cache so it relies on external L2 cache to cache ram. Plus version have L2 cache and can cache ram without the exernal L2 cache that becomes L3 cache. That site says nothing about a normal K6, everything Phil is saying is about Plus versions so its irrelevant to the discussion.

if you disable the extenal L2 cache on non plus version, perfomance plumets, if you disable the L2 cache on plus version not much happens, except a drop in maybe 1-2 FPS likely contributed to just having less cache.

I played around with external cache, and I have found this to be the biggest difference in performance. When enabled, my highest framerate is 38 fps. When disabled, highest is about 26 FPS with stuttering in places I was not seeing it before.

I think at this point, I am going to nuke and repave the entire system to have a clean foundation to build on.

That stuttering makes me think of issues I've had with 2 IDE devices sharing same cable, so take when one is being accesses, it clearly affects the other, IIRC I've experienced some stutter from that ...

Are you running the SiS chipset drivers? https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-5SMM/ … pport-dl-driver the UDMA modes will speed up HDD access and stop the drives from robbing CPU cycles, which may speed things up a lot.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-07-17, 17:55:

Are you running the SiS chipset drivers? https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-5SMM/ … pport-dl-driver the UDMA modes will speed up HDD access and stop the drives from robbing CPU cycles, which may speed things up a lot.

This actually helped with the stuttering a little but. Frames will still drop to 8 FPS, but the stuttering is basically gone. Thanks!

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-07-17, 15:21:

That stuttering makes me think of issues I've had with 2 IDE devices sharing same cable, so take when one is being accesses, it clearly affects the other, IIRC I've experienced some stutter from that ...

I checked, and my SD-Card adapter is the only device on the two connector IDE cable. It is using the first of the two connector on the cable.

Edit: I tried disconnecting the IDE cable from the CD-ROM drive, and I think it might have made a small difference? Stuttering was virtually gone after I installed the UDMA via the SiS Chipset driver BitWrangler suggested. This leads me to wonder if and how 80 wire IDE cables would work?

LiquifiedBeef wrote on 2023-07-17, 11:49:

Warlord wrote on 2023-07-17, 04:41:

LiquifiedBeef wrote on 2023-07-17, 03:17:

I have tried multiple Nvidia drivers ranging from 52.X to 81.X (latest). Performance remains the same. […]
Show full quote

Copy code to clipboard

I have tried multiple Nvidia drivers ranging from 52.X to 81.X (latest). Performance remains the same.

I would use 45.23 drivers with that card. It would help.

I have seen that 45.23 drivers are widely considered the best, but when I go to install the driver it does not detect a Nvidia graphics chip.

45.23 driver was released before the GeForce 4 MX4000 was released, so this version will most likely not supported with you card. Maybe it works if card information added to this 45.23 driver inf, like in 7.76 driver you can add Geforce3 Ti200 support, but i doubt it, that it works for MX4000. Geforce3 is also one of the best cards to the K6-2/3+, but voodoo3 2000/3000 PCI would also be nice card to have and i still think that you get much more out of the K6-2 with Geforce2/3 and older 7.76 drivers.

Disruptor wrote on 2023-07-17, 06:26:

That amount of cacheable RAM depends on the amount of cache on the motherboard. You can try to detect the amount of L2 cache wit […]
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dionb wrote on 2023-07-17, 06:20:

Second the dropping RAM to 64MB. It's not going to make a massive difference but definitely will help.

That amount of cacheable RAM depends on the amount of cache on the motherboard.
You can try to detect the amount of L2 cache with the tool SpeedSys 4.78 from dosbench suite.
You can try to detect the cacheable area with the tool ctcm from heise/c't magazine.

dionb, your calculation may be wrong. With 512 kB of cache, a cacheable area of 128 MB should be achieved.

Incorrect in the case of the SiS 530:
https://softpixel.com/~cwright/papers/tech/0530DS10.PDF

Table 5.2-1 Supported Size of L2 Cache CACHE SIZE TAG RAM CACHEABLE SIZE 256K 8Kx8 32M 512K 16Kx8 64M 1M 32Kx8 128M 2M 64Kx8 256 […]
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Table 5.2-1 Supported Size of L2 Cache
CACHE
SIZE TAG RAM CACHEABLE SIZE
256K 8Kx8 32M
512K 16Kx8 64M
1M 32Kx8 128M
2M 64Kx8 256M

512kB L2 gives 64MB cacheable, to do 128MB requires 1MB.

So if reducing RAM to 128MB already showed a clear improvement, dropping to 64MB will improves things further.

dionb wrote on 2023-07-17, 19:55:

Incorrect in the case of the SiS 530: https://softpixel.com/~cwright/papers/tech/0530DS10.PDF […]
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Disruptor wrote on 2023-07-17, 06:26:

That amount of cacheable RAM depends on the amount of cache on the motherboard. You can try to detect the amount of L2 cache wit […]
Show full quote

dionb wrote on 2023-07-17, 06:20:

Second the dropping RAM to 64MB. It's not going to make a massive difference but definitely will help.

That amount of cacheable RAM depends on the amount of cache on the motherboard.
You can try to detect the amount of L2 cache with the tool SpeedSys 4.78 from dosbench suite.
You can try to detect the cacheable area with the tool ctcm from heise/c't magazine.

dionb, your calculation may be wrong. With 512 kB of cache, a cacheable area of 128 MB should be achieved.

Incorrect in the case of the SiS 530:
https://softpixel.com/~cwright/papers/tech/0530DS10.PDF

Table 5.2-1 Supported Size of L2 Cache CACHE SIZE TAG RAM CACHEABLE SIZE 256K 8Kx8 32M 512K 16Kx8 64M 1M 32Kx8 128M 2M 64Kx8 256 […]
Show full quote

Table 5.2-1 Supported Size of L2 Cache
CACHE
SIZE TAG RAM CACHEABLE SIZE
256K 8Kx8 32M
512K 16Kx8 64M
1M 32Kx8 128M
2M 64Kx8 256M

512kB L2 gives 64MB cacheable, to do 128MB requires 1MB.

So if reducing RAM to 128MB already showed a clear improvement, dropping to 64MB will improves things further.

I will try a stick of 64MB and let you know how it goes.

LiquifiedBeef wrote on 2023-07-17, 21:12:

I will try a stick of 64MB and let you know how it goes.

Fine. But please try the utility ctcm from heise/c't too (with the 128 MB module installed).
https://www.heise.de/download/product/ctcm-1825