VOGONS


First post, by Opelin

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Hi guys,
My name is Adam and I'm happy to be here 😀
On the beginning I would like to apologize for my grammar and English, well it's not so good.
I just looked around here and wasn't able to find any post which can present a list of MOBOs with included functionality mentioned in the topic.

Therefore I want try to create a list of these. I know there is a lot of famous MOBOS like ASUS P5a, Gigabyte GA-5AX etc. but i believe there is also a few of them which are not so famous and maybe there is a lot of peoples who do not know about them.
I'm a good example. Some time ago I bought MOBO called: PCPartner MVP3BS7-954 also known as a SuperGrace SG-MVP3A5 and few others.

Quite by accident, I discovered that this board has the ability to overclock the FSB above the standard 100MHz. My surprise was even greater because it is not documented in User Manual and this is a board based on the VIA Apollo MVP3 chipset. Until now, I thought that SS7 overclocking was only possible on boards with the ALADDIN chipset

By accident i set jumpers in wrong combination - like I said in combination which is not documented in User Manual. And my K6-2+ CPU has been recognized as 336MHz. That was strange for me because multiplier of the CPU I have set on 3x. I was wondering from where he took this 336... In the system CPU-Z explain me everything and I just seen FSB: 112 MHz... That was a huge surprise for me.

Hence the idea to create such a list. The above-mentioned famous MOBOs are not only expensive, but unfortunately difficult to obtain. Therefore, it would be good to have a list of the less known ones as well. I bought the PCPAtner board I mentioned for 1/4 of the price of, for example, ASUS P5A-B. So I guess this post makes sense. To confirm what I wrote here, below are screenshot from the CPU-Z program and the mentioned PCPAtner board.

If you guys have any idea or known MOBOs with similar possibility like this PCPartner MVP3BS7-954 please post that in the comments. If you have also any technical documentation howto reach higher FSB on these MOBOs would be great to put these here as well.

Best regards
Adam

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Reply 1 of 6, by Repo Man11

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K6Plus.com has a list of motherboards that are compatible with the K6-2/3+ CPUs that includes the possible bus speeds: http://www.k6plus.com/compatlist/

"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

Reply 2 of 6, by BitWrangler

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While the chipsets have to be capable of high speeds, and their top end is "silicon lottery" determined, the important factor is whether the clock can be supplied, and that is all down to the PLL clock chips used on a per-board basis. Some Aladdin boards might get stuck with a fairly low tech clock chip that has a 3 bit truth table only allowing 8 settings the top of which is the 100Mhz, some may have 8 settings but chop out 50 or 83Mhz and thus be able to be set at 105 or 110. Late nineties going into noughts, the soft settable PLLs came into use where they had many more settings available from 4 bit or more configuration pins and some could be set by the mhz. That tended to become common only on late Pentium 3 and Socket A, some earlier of which were stuck with a 100/105/110/115/124/133 type table.

It might even be worth testing SiS 559x chipset boards that come your way, a few people have found 95Mhz settings stable on some. Given a good silicon lottery ticket and an overspec PLL combination it's not unreasonable to expect that somewhere out there there's a SiS based board that can clock past 100... barely.

People owning a PCI Voodoo3/4 or Banshee, Rage 128 PCI etc might want to keep an eye out for the MVP4 based boards, unpopular due to reserving AGP for integrated gfx, and having only PCI externally available, these will go to speeds above 100.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 3 of 6, by gerwin

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This topic below comes close to what you suggest. As BitWrangler already mentioned, one essential part of these FSB settings is the PLL-chip AKA Clock Generator.
Clock generators on Socket 7 and older motherboards

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Reply 4 of 6, by Opelin

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Hi guys,
Thank you for referring to the topic. That is what I expected 😀
@BitWrangler great explanation - I didn't realize that so many factors influence the FSB OC capabilities.

Fact, I have checked the posts you guys mentioned.
@RepoMan11 from the web site http://www.k6plus.com/compatlist/ which you mentioned I agree similar list exist. However my point of view was a bit different. First of all mentioned list is quite huge and telling us where we can run K6-2+/K6-III+ CPUs. I have seen that Intel 430TX/430VX etc chipsets are mentioned there as well. That wasn't my point to be honestly. I want to prepare a list of MOBOs which allow us to get FSB 100+ MHz. (From my point of view SS7 was designed generally for AMD K6 CPUs because Intel/Cyrix/Rise etc did not had equivalent to one working with FSB 100MHz on mentioned SS7. These works on 66MHz out of the box standards and of course can be overclocked. I do not negate it. Just saying that my goal is something else:)).

@gerwin. Thanks for sharing the list of "Clock Generators" I believe it may be helpful for others but again - not for me 🙁 These explain which PPL chip can be found on which motherboard with Socket 7, not SS7 correct? And if I understand correctly what BitWrangler said, constructions which basing on SS7 have Clock Generator included with the chipset (Northbridge) ? So there is no simple way to obtain which MOBO can go across 100MHz yes? Correct me if I'm wrong.

I have a few SS7 MOBOs at this moment on my hand. One is ASUS P5a-b rev 1.03 where as we know K6+ CPUs have no performance issue. Second one is mentioned PCPartnr MVP3BS7-954. And the last one is EPoX MVP3C-M.

The goal for me was to build best possible platform to deal with DOS and early 3D Games in Windows 98SE.
My first bought MOBO was mentioned EPoX and I can't say any single bad word on this motherboard. Everything works perfectly stable and smooth. Except mentioned overclocking possibility which this board seems to not have 🙁
The next one was ASUS P5a-b. As we know overclocking possibilities are fantastic on this one. I was been able to run my K6-2+ on 110MHz with enabled onboard cache and 120 MHz with disabled onboard cache. On these settings system was stable. But I had to give up on this one because I couldn't get this board to work with AGP cards. No matter what card I used on the interface (AGP 2x/4x), I couldn't run any 3D games. Even DirectX in dxdiag did not pass the test. AGP acceleration was immediately turned off after crushed test and each game simply went back to the desktop. This is probably a known issue with the implementation of AGP texturing on boards with the ALi Aladdin V chipset, right?
Therefore I decided to stay with board managed by VIA MVP3 where I had no any single issue with AGP.

And because I had another one mobo - mentioned PCPartner I just want to give it a try and check the performance differences between these. like I mentioned It was a huge surprise when I obtain that FSB OC is also possible on this one...

The Target platform is something around:
CPU: AMD K6-2+ (eventually modded to K6-III+)
RAM: 256MB SDR PC 133MHz CL2 (yes, yes I know 256 can't be cached on these mobos which I have but I don't plan to keep enabled onboard cache when I'm using K6+ CPus 😉)
GPU: GeForce 256 DDR, 3dfx Voodoo2 12MB (For glide games)
Disk: via CompactFlash Card
MOBO: Well, to be decided later 😀

Reply 5 of 6, by Repo Man11

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I linked to the K6plus site as it would be a good starting point for the list you wish to build regarding what Socket 7 motherboards can exceed 100 MHz FSB.

"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

Reply 6 of 6, by gerwin

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Opelin wrote on 2023-10-20, 08:35:

@gerwin. Thanks for sharing the list of "Clock Generators" I believe it may be helpful for others but again - not for me 🙁 These explain which PPL chip can be found on which motherboard with Socket 7, not SS7 correct?

The list I linked to starts with the Asus P5A, which is a Super Socket 7 motherboard. Did not check the rest. But often people just write Socket 7 when they mean both the original and the super version.

Opelin wrote on 2023-10-20, 08:35:

And if I understand correctly what BitWrangler said, constructions which basing on SS7 have Clock Generator included with the chipset (Northbridge) ? So there is no simple way to obtain which MOBO can go across 100MHz yes? Correct me if I'm wrong.

I have three SS7 motherboards. They all have the somewhat latest ALi Aladdin V Northbridge, but the PLL chip is not integrated in that one. I see a separate ICS PLL chip on the board. Actually ALL retro motherboards I can recall feature a separate PLL chip.
EDIT: Epox EP-MVP3G5 photos show a PLL clock generator chip, it is there between the CPU socket and the DIMM slots.

Opelin wrote on 2023-10-20, 08:35:

This is probably a known issue with the implementation of AGP texturing on boards with the ALi Aladdin V chipset, right?
Therefore I decided to stay with board managed by VIA MVP3 where I had no any single issue with AGP.

It is a well known issue yes. Voodoo3 AGP does not really use AGP specific features, and is one of the few AGP cards that is sure to work well on ALi Aladdin V. The good thing is that Voodoo3 has its 3DFX/Glide retro appeal, integrated a good 2D core and works very well for DOS too.
VIA MVP3 has different issues, but I cannot remember now what it was. I do remember years ago I preferred to obtain ALi Aladdin V over VIA MVP3, because of testimonials on Vogons, and also because I was still disappointed by some VIA Socket A chipset quirks. Plus I never intended to go for the performance crown, since SS7 will struggle to do what a Pentium III does easily and reliably.

The other SS7 chipset brand is SiS. SiS chipsets often (always?) have their own integrated video, which is better replaced, but it still takes up space and the AGP bus.

Here are older topics about it
Super Socket 7: VIA MVP3 vs. ALi Aladdin V
Best (Super) Socket 7 motherboard?

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