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First post, by ifrit05

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Hey all. Just ordered a ASUS P3b-F v1.03 and was wondering if a VIA C3 would be worthwhile over a Pentium II.

I do have a SS7 with a K6-2+ but it's incredibly finicky. My thought was to use the C3 with this new board to be able to set the speed on the fly for late DOS and early 9x games. I tried to do some research but there's a lot of conflicting info.

So, if this is viable, what speed C3 should I get? I don't really need a top of the line model (I could just get a PIII for that). Also, what slotket should I look for? And I do plan in upgrading the BIOS with the modded one.

Thanks for any insight.

P3B-F v1.03 | VIA C3 Nehemiah 1GHz @ 1.33GHz| 4x128 PC133 | GeForce4 Ti 4200 | OPL3-SA3+DreamBlaster X2GS

Reply 1 of 5, by Gmlb256

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It is viable and a worthwhile effort, the best models are the Ezra-T (being able to reach 486 speeds easily) and Nehemiah (faster FPU). I have the Nehemiah 1.2A whose performance is comparable to a PIII-750, which is good for games up to 2001.

A slotket adapter that accepts Coppermine CPUs is recommended, the most popular one here being the MSI MS-6905 Master. Other adapters that works are the ABIT SlotKET !!! and Upgradeware Slot-T.

There are modded BIOS from DenizOezmen that adds support for VIA C3 CPUs on several ASUS motherboards (including the P3B-F), and they be found here.

VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.2A @ 1.46 GHz | ASUS P2-99 | 256 MB PC133 SDRAM | GeForce3 Ti 200 64 MB | Voodoo2 12 MB | SBLive! | AWE64 | SBPro2 | GUS

Reply 2 of 5, by ifrit05

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Thanks!

So, the cheapest and closest C3 I could find was this. Would this be ok with this sloket? (Only one I could find that doesn't look like junk/cheap knockoffs).

P3B-F v1.03 | VIA C3 Nehemiah 1GHz @ 1.33GHz| 4x128 PC133 | GeForce4 Ti 4200 | OPL3-SA3+DreamBlaster X2GS

Reply 3 of 5, by Gmlb256

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ifrit05 wrote on 2023-10-21, 17:16:

Would this be ok with this sloket? (Only one I could find that doesn't look like junk/cheap knockoffs).

That one is an early revision of the MSI MS-6905, which doesn't have official support for Coppermine CPUs.

VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.2A @ 1.46 GHz | ASUS P2-99 | 256 MB PC133 SDRAM | GeForce3 Ti 200 64 MB | Voodoo2 12 MB | SBLive! | AWE64 | SBPro2 | GUS

Reply 4 of 5, by ifrit05

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Well that's no good. I will continue to search. Thanks!

EDIT: What about a Gigabyte GA-6R7PR? Seems to have Coppermine support.

P3B-F v1.03 | VIA C3 Nehemiah 1GHz @ 1.33GHz| 4x128 PC133 | GeForce4 Ti 4200 | OPL3-SA3+DreamBlaster X2GS

Reply 5 of 5, by Gmlb256

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ifrit05 wrote on 2023-10-21, 17:40:

EDIT: What about a Gigabyte GA-6R7PR? Seems to have Coppermine support.

Sorry for the late response as I didn't notice that you edited the post. It should work if it is a revision that has Coppermine support.

VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.2A @ 1.46 GHz | ASUS P2-99 | 256 MB PC133 SDRAM | GeForce3 Ti 200 64 MB | Voodoo2 12 MB | SBLive! | AWE64 | SBPro2 | GUS

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