I think it’s far too new to be of much retro use, and far too “meh” to make a good base for a Windows 7 build.

I guess it might be OK for some kind of XP build, but there’s plenty of high end XP kit available for peanuts.

The last Phenom build I had I donated to the mother in law to run Win 10 on.

The processors that this motherboard supports do not have instructions that today are almost essential, so its total usefulness reaches 2016 at the latest.
I see two options, Windows 7 32 bits or 64, although with a mechanical hard drive the difference is noticeable and the 64-bit version suffers in load times without an SSD, or use it for Windows XP.
In short, only adding a graphics card suitable for any software until the year 2011-2012 it could be a good computer.
I could run Crysis without problems 😀
I speak from my own experience since I have two computers of that generation.

if some kind of graphics card it could be a competent gaming PC for windows XP games,
with an SSD it might be passable for web browsing
could also be used to emulate old platforms,

So, I have a phenom ii with a 780 chipset, and the board provides floppy, ide, serial, parallel, legacy boot, etc. I use it all the time, and in fact, has been my primary machine for over a decade. I'm surprised that anyone cares about the instruction set! Just yesterday I was researching something on ssse3, kind of unrelated to anything but just trying to answer a question and knowing that the phenom ii doesn't have it, I was trying to understand if anyone actually cares! I'll I could find is maybe some games, some that might have gotten "patched" but nothing really that stood out to me. I never have hit an issue. This still seems like a modern machine to me.

I've only ever run linux on it, which is current and up to date. But BTW, since you can run steam on it too, you can also get access to latest vulkan on AMD open source drivers, which gives you DX12 support! Indeed it works well. You might be able to run Win10, but why? There are quite a few games you can play on this, and you don't need windows. So I consider it modern and possibly good for alot of other things in a pinch.

I used for a long time a Phenom II 1100T with a 990fx and 16gb ram, the last graphics card I used in it was an RX580 and the lack of instructions left me with no other option than to change the equipment.
As always, it depends on what the computer is used for.
The last "modern" game I tried on that computer was "Horizon Zero Down" and it just couldn't run because of this lack of SSE4.1 and others.
My frustration level was very high because the six cores of this processor did not start to be useful until years after it was released, but the lack of the most modern instruction sets has made it useless for modern games, the first games. that tried and needed a patch were RE7, Doom 2016 and FFXV, but there were a lot of games that won't even start.
Of course, in 2016 the processor was already seven years old.

justin1985 wrote on 2023-01-14, 14:22:

I recently dug out a moderately old machine that has been sat in our garage for a year or two since my other half upgraded to a new small Dell desktop. This was originally an ASUS branded barebones system - which was simply a bundle of totally standard mATX motherboard, case, and generic PSU. I'm very much torn about what to do with it ...

The motherboard is an ASUS M4A78LT-M LE with an AMD 760G chipset. The CPU is an AMD Athlon II X3 (I think 440), which seems kind of exotic in itself! There's two sticks of DDR3 RAM (I think 4Gb total), and it has been running with a Samsung 1Tb 5400RPM spinning drive, a pair of IDE DVD -RW and -ROM drives, and only integrated graphics (+ a PCIe WiFi card).

Snip

Chipset is 780L

I had Asus mATX board based on 785 with DDR2 version, Phenom II x2, one day died. Had a look to find out why and was known to be a high failure rate.

Cheers,

Hoping wrote on 2023-01-14, 20:17:

I used for a long time a Phenom II 1100T with a 990fx and 16gb ram, the last graphics card I used in it was an RX580 and the lac […]
Show full quote

I used for a long time a Phenom II 1100T with a 990fx and 16gb ram, the last graphics card I used in it was an RX580 and the lack of instructions left me with no other option than to change the equipment.
As always, it depends on what the computer is used for.
The last "modern" game I tried on that computer was "Horizon Zero Down" and it just couldn't run because of this lack of SSE4.1 and others.
My frustration level was very high because the six cores of this processor did not start to be useful until years after it was released, but the lack of the most modern instruction sets has made it useless for modern games, the first games. that tried and needed a patch were RE7, Doom 2016 and FFXV, but there were a lot of games that won't even start.
Of course, in 2016 the processor was already seven years old.

SSE4.1 would be ok with a 45nm Core 2,
but some games are also starting to require AVX, so anything older than Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge is out.

also I think SSE4.1 speeds up HEVC decoding and encoding a good amount , but you fan kind of brute force a lot with 6 cores of a Phenom II also.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2023-01-14, 18:57:

So, I have a phenom ii with a 780 chipset, and the board provides floppy, ide, serial, parallel, legacy boot, etc. I use it all the time, and in fact, has been my primary machine for over a decade. I'm surprised that anyone cares about the instruction set! Just yesterday I was researching something on ssse3, kind of unrelated to anything but just trying to answer a question and knowing that the phenom ii doesn't have it, I was trying to understand if anyone actually cares! I'll I could find is maybe some games, some that might have gotten "patched" but nothing really that stood out to me. I never have hit an issue. This still seems like a modern machine to me.

I've only ever run linux on it, which is current and up to date. But BTW, since you can run steam on it too, you can also get access to latest vulkan on AMD open source drivers, which gives you DX12 support! Indeed it works well. You might be able to run Win10, but why? There are quite a few games you can play on this, and you don't need windows. So I consider it modern and possibly good for alot of other things in a pinch.

dx12 on the 760g IGP? that's RV610 based it's not even DX11,
it's only 40SPs VLIW4, 4 ROPs and memory performance is kind of terrible because the memory controller is on the CPU and "talks" to the IGP via Hyper Transport, that's why they had the version of the IGP with sideport (dedicated vram, like 32bit ram even) to help alleviate that bottleneck

SPBHM wrote on 2023-01-15, 00:14:

SSE4.1 would be ok with a 45nm Core 2, but some games are also starting to require AVX, so anything older than Bulldozer and San […]
Show full quote

Hoping wrote on 2023-01-14, 20:17:

I used for a long time a Phenom II 1100T with a 990fx and 16gb ram, the last graphics card I used in it was an RX580 and the lac […]
Show full quote

I used for a long time a Phenom II 1100T with a 990fx and 16gb ram, the last graphics card I used in it was an RX580 and the lack of instructions left me with no other option than to change the equipment.
As always, it depends on what the computer is used for.
The last "modern" game I tried on that computer was "Horizon Zero Down" and it just couldn't run because of this lack of SSE4.1 and others.
My frustration level was very high because the six cores of this processor did not start to be useful until years after it was released, but the lack of the most modern instruction sets has made it useless for modern games, the first games. that tried and needed a patch were RE7, Doom 2016 and FFXV, but there were a lot of games that won't even start.
Of course, in 2016 the processor was already seven years old.

SSE4.1 would be ok with a 45nm Core 2,
but some games are also starting to require AVX, so anything older than Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge is out.

also I think SSE4.1 speeds up HEVC decoding and encoding a good amount , but you fan kind of brute force a lot with 6 cores of a Phenom II also.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2023-01-14, 18:57:

So, I have a phenom ii with a 780 chipset, and the board provides floppy, ide, serial, parallel, legacy boot, etc. I use it all the time, and in fact, has been my primary machine for over a decade. I'm surprised that anyone cares about the instruction set! Just yesterday I was researching something on ssse3, kind of unrelated to anything but just trying to answer a question and knowing that the phenom ii doesn't have it, I was trying to understand if anyone actually cares! I'll I could find is maybe some games, some that might have gotten "patched" but nothing really that stood out to me. I never have hit an issue. This still seems like a modern machine to me.

I've only ever run linux on it, which is current and up to date. But BTW, since you can run steam on it too, you can also get access to latest vulkan on AMD open source drivers, which gives you DX12 support! Indeed it works well. You might be able to run Win10, but why? There are quite a few games you can play on this, and you don't need windows. So I consider it modern and possibly good for alot of other things in a pinch.

dx12 on the 760g IGP? that's RV610 based it's not even DX11,
it's only 40SPs VLIW4, 4 ROPs and memory performance is kind of terrible because the memory controller is on the CPU and "talks" to the IGP via Hyper Transport, that's why they had the version of the IGP with sideport (dedicated vram, like 32bit ram even) to help alleviate that bottleneck

Ahem, be certain you are talking about correct chipest on specific board as sometimes we make mistakes.

His board is 780L chipset.

Cheers,

760g, 780l, 780g, 790gx all share the same basic IGP with certain clock variations and video decoding block being not present in some.

SPBHM wrote on 2023-01-15, 00:14:

dx12 on the 760g IGP? that's RV610 based it's not even DX11,

This board is not IGP.

What to do with an Am3 / AMD 760G Chipset Motherboard?

I'd say it would make for a nice Win7 system. I've used 3 AM3 systems in the past, a PhenomII x4, an AthlonII x2 and an AthlonII x3. The PhenomII was my main rig at the time and the 2 AthlonII systems were essentially LAN spares, using whatever spare graphics card I could stuff in them at the time. They also held my leftover memory modules after upgrading my main rig etc.
Perhaps do consider throwing in some spare graphics card you may have left over.

I really liked these systems. It should be really easy to mount good HSFs on these as AM3 has a (theoretically) very wide range of compatible heatsinks. Also a LOT of different graphics cards should be able to work in there.

Also it's a very late IDE board, I reckon that also counts for something. And it's an AAAahhh-sus board! People will pay big bucks for that down the road! 🤗(yes I am being a bit ironic here but I don't think it's far from the truth).

If it'll also work with WinXP, even better I'd say 🙂

Thanks guys, useful information here.
I also have one 760G based setup which I'm not upgrading right now, but who knows...maybe some day...
Yes, one. I'm not a collector of this stuff, honest 😁

I wonder if FX series processors would be a possibility for the OP here?
Not officially supported of course, but maybe there's a way to do it?
Some of those even have AVX! Besides games, I've found that to be very useful for any AI stuff too.

Looks like only the 95W models are suitable for that mobo, so you'll need to pay close attention to TDP.
I kinda got bitten by this myself, fortunately I didn't get as far as to try to install any of the 125W models.

mr.cat wrote on 2023-01-15, 20:01:

Thanks guys, useful information here. I also have one 760G based setup which I'm not upgrading right now, but who knows...maybe […]
Show full quote

Thanks guys, useful information here.
I also have one 760G based setup which I'm not upgrading right now, but who knows...maybe some day...
Yes, one. I'm not a collector of this stuff, honest 😁

I wonder if FX series processors would be a possibility for the OP here?
Not officially supported of course, but maybe there's a way to do it?
Some of those even have AVX! Besides games, I've found that to be very useful for any AI stuff too.

Looks like only the 95W models are suitable for that mobo, so you'll need to pay close attention to TDP.
I kinda got bitten by this myself, fortunately I didn't get as far as to try to install any of the 125W models.

FX series require a new motherboard revision. Namely for ASUS, look for boards that start with M5A instead of M4A. I think M4A boards can only use AM3 CPUs not AM3+.

760G-based AM3+ boards do exist. I have an ASUS M5A78L/USB3 that I'm using with a FX-8350. It's rock stable from what I can tell, just that the board has very limited overclock potential, and that FX-8350's 4GHz is pretty much a ceiling for AM3+ as a whole.

A while ago I tried running WinNT 3.51 on such configuration. Sadly it only works with Standard PC HAL. The board turned out to be not MPS complaint contrary to my belief. Even so the CPU's single-core raw performance is more than enough for that OS.

AMD 700 series boards usually retain more legacy interfaces than their successors. I think some 800 series also have legacy stuffs. It's only until 900 series where legacy stuffs are going away.

Still, none of the ATI/AMD chipsets have any working form of legacy capability necessary for DOS-compatible PCI sound cards to operate.

Thanks for all of the replies! It is definitely a 760G chipset, and it definitely has an IGP - which is the only graphics the system has ever had! I don't think I've so much as tried a 3D game on it though.

LSS10999 wrote on 2023-01-16, 06:27:

Still, none of the ATI/AMD chipsets have any working form of legacy capability necessary for DOS-compatible PCI sound cards to operate.

Another kick in it's teeth there! Although DOS gaming was probably never on the cards for this.

I guess the only potential use for me might then be with the same CPU, and adding a GPU, for more demanding late 9x / XP era games that won't easily run in Win10, but are too taxing for my Compaq Piii Win98 box, or Thinkpad X60s XP laptop ... There do at least seem to be XP drivers available for the chipset. Do that many games fall in that category though? I've hit several of my old CD games, like Caesar IV, that seem to not work in Win10 (because of broken DRM tools in that case) but kind of feel its tempting to just re-buy a patched /DRM free version from GOG ?

I think if this machine did survive, in my ownership, it would have to be transferred to a smaller case though! The ASUS mATX box is totally standard in every way, but it still feels like it takes up an awful lot of space (for something that would only be used occasionally).

I did have a look for smaller mATX cases that still use full height cards - it feels to me that a normal mATX case wastes a lot of width because of the 5.25" drive bay and ATX power supply define the width, leaving dead space above the cards. If you took the height of the card slots as the defining width, rather than drive bay or ATX PSU, you could save a lot of space without having to resort to a low profile card?

Surely it must be possible to have a minimal sized mATX case that uses an SFX or other small PSU, and has a vertical (slim) ODD drive bay? Something like this: https://www.scan.co.uk/products/cit-s8-sff-ch … sb-20-matx-mitx - but with full height cards?
I did find a few Chinese mATX cases on AliExpress that moved an SFX type PSU to the top front, saving height, but then they didn't even have a slim ODD bay, an an optical drive kind of feels essential for a retro machine to me ...

Any recommendations for the smallest mATX case?

Otherwise, I guess its going to go! Probably better sold as parts, rather than as a whole PC?

If you aren't going to keep it, are you going older or newer? I'm afraid something like am3/am3+ is the last chance you can get with essentially everything still integrated. Newer you'll have to start getting expansion cards to get back what you lost, and older, well, that is hard to call modern anymore, and you'll definitely start cutting out being able to run more recent things. Of course when it comes to sound, that will always have some problem no matter what you choose. For me, when you go older, I'd start rethinking about using modern linux on anything back before the AMD Athlon 64.

Last Am3 system I had (Phenom II x6) I used as a Truenas system.
Eventually I did replace it with a standalone Netgear NAS. But it worked well enough for about two years.
Just a thought, although it would likely require more drives for some type of redundancy.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2023-01-16, 18:03:

If you aren't going to keep it, are you going older or newer?

Well I currently have:

• Pentium III 500mhz / 128mb RAM / integrated ATI rage / integrated ESS sound / Win98SE - Compaq SFF
• Core Duo 1.6Ghz / 2Gb RAM / intel GMA950 / WinXP - IBM ThinkPad X60s
• Core i5 7500 / 16Gb RAM / currently between GPUs but planning to fit something sub-£200 like GTX1660 / Win10 - main Windows PC for stuff that can't run on MacOS
• (Daily driver is 2020 intel MacBook Pro )

So I guess the question is, is the gap between what I can run between those machines worth filling? Are there many games that the ThinkPad wouldn't cope with, but also won't run on Win10?

I think a Phenom II / Athlon II still makes an acceptable basic web / office machine but I'd put in a more recent discrete GPU.

I'd probably prefer the 760G with a discrete graphics card and good phenom ii added to it. But I would say the Core i5 is technically more forwards compatible, and with a discrete graphics card is pretty good. So either way. The thinkpad isn't really needed to run anything, but they are nice machines to keep around. The P3 is for the old/low end? I suppose! For all the modern stuff, year 2000 or later, you are pretty well covered, I'd say, unless you have more details you want to cover.