For that speed of CPU the Voodoo 3 is what you want.

AlienWeird wrote on 2024-09-21, 15:19:

motherboard also has a Socket 370 along with the slot
three 256 sticks of RAM that somehow read 600MB of RAM total

im getting bad sis/via motherboard with integrated graphics vibes?

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-09-21, 15:42:

AlienWeird wrote on 2024-09-21, 15:19:

motherboard also has a Socket 370 along with the slot
three 256 sticks of RAM that somehow read 600MB of RAM total

im getting bad sis/via motherboard with integrated graphics vibes?

crap, you're right, it's a VIA chipset... although it doesn't have integrated graphics

welp

suppose it's time to cut my losses and dump the entire thing (I'm only partially sarcastic)

A GeForce 4 is overkill for the type of processors you're looking at. If the goal is to play late 90's games like Half-Life and Unreal, then the Voodoo 3 is fine. If you wanted something a bit faster, I'd consider a GeForce 256 DDR or GeForce 2 GTS.

A 500 MHz Pentium III will also be solid for late 90s games and fine for Windows 98. The fastest generally available CPU in 1999 was the Pentium III 733 (technically the 800 came out at the very end of '99, but most people wouldn't have had one until the year 2000).

You can reduce the RAM to 512MB since it's the maximum that Windows 98 will natively support without being patched. Even 256MB is plenty for that time period.

Overall, a 500MHz Pentium III with a Voodoo 3 graphics card and 256 / 512MB of RAM should make for a solid late 90s gaming rig.

ODwilly wrote on 2024-09-21, 15:25:

For that speed of CPU the Voodoo 3 is what you want.

I do want to go faster, though. And I'm assuming the Voodoo 3 is going to start being a bottleneck the further away from 500MHz I move.

From the looks of it, I should be able to get all the way up to an 800MHz Pentium 3 in Slot 1 (apparently the socket in this one is reserved only for Celerons...)

AlienWeird wrote on 2024-09-21, 16:03:

crap, you're right, it's a VIA chipset... although it doesn't have integrated graphics

So one of 256MB modules is seen as 128. Afaik that was mainly 440BX problem, but also happened to early VIA chipsets? is it 693?
500mhz V3 is good for anything up to Q3/UT

AlienWeird wrote on 2024-09-21, 16:03:

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

crap, you're right, it's a VIA chipset... although it doesn't have integrated graphics

welp

suppose it's time to cut my losses and dump the entire thing (I'm only partially sarcastic)

Via boards have a bad rep because their memory performance was quite a bit slower than contemporary Intel chipsets - and because people too often managed to mess up installation of chipset drives (install your 4-in-1 driver FIRST THING after installation of OS, before VGA, and you should be fine). Yes, a P3-500 with ApolloPro+ chipset will probably perform comparably to a P3-450 on an Intel i440BX, but in this era of Core i9s and Ryzens, that difference is negiligible.

More concerning is that the quality of motherboards with early Via P2/P3 chipsets tended to be subpar. Could you try to ID the specific board you have? So370 and Slot 1 reeks of PC-Chips, although even top-line brands like Tyan had a few boards like that.

AlienWeird wrote on 2024-09-21, 16:17:

[...]

I do want to go faster, though. And I'm assuming the Voodoo 3 is going to start being a bottleneck the further away from 500MHz I move.

From the looks of it, I should be able to get all the way up to an 800MHz Pentium 3 in Slot 1 (apparently the socket in this one is reserved only for Celerons...)

Not so fast... there's a big rabbit hole to dive down when it comes to Slot 1 / So370 compatibility.

Your P3-500 is probably a 'Katmai' P3 which runs at max 1.8V. P3-800 CPUs will be 'Coppermine' which run at max 1.75V. Early P2/P3 boards can't supply lower than 1.8V so won't be able to run a Coppermine CPU without some tomfoolery (and more stress to the voltage regulators on the board than many a PC-Chips board can handle).

As for So370 - there are three versions of So370: PPGA, FC-PGA and FC-PGA2. If something is 'Celeron only' that means it has the PPGA pinout, as the only CPU released for PPGA was the 'Mendocino' Celeron. Later (>533MHz) Celerons are FC-PGA too and won't work on this either. FC-PGA was used for 'Coppermine' CPUs and FC-PGA2 for the very last 'Tualatin' So370 CPUs >1GHz. Aside from pinout, the same voltage constraints apply as with the slot. There are interposers to convert from PPGA->FC-PGA->FC=PGA2, but they are a lot rarer than Slocket adapters to use a socket 370 CPU in a Slot 1.

But before listing every possible corner case, let's ID that board so we know what we are talking about and what options you have.

Btw the 600MB RAM makes no sense at all. It's common that DIMMs are only recognized at half size (again, lots of theory, but exact situation depends on your board), but that would lead to 2x 256MB and 1x 128MB = 640MB total. Integrated VGA (which you say you don't have) could take a two-power out of that, i.e. 4, 8 16 or 32MB. So 608MB I would have understood. But 600MB doesn't make any sense. I suspect your board has a BIOS which simply hasn't been programmed to deal with this amount of RAM. I'd check with a software tool to see how much RAM it detects.

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-09-21, 18:04:

AlienWeird wrote on 2024-09-21, 16:03:

crap, you're right, it's a VIA chipset... although it doesn't have integrated graphics

So one of 256MB modules is seen as 128. Afaik that was mainly 440BX problem, but also happened to early VIA chipsets? is it 693?
500mhz V3 is good for anything up to Q3/UT

There are two reasons a DIMM might only be detected as half its nominal capacity:

1) the DIMM has a higher density than the controller supports, eg. DIMMs with 256Mb chips, onlt 128Mb will be usable on i440BX - the same applies to Via693A (ApolloPro133) and 693 (ApolloPro+)
2) the motherboard does not support double-sided DIMMs in all slots - commonly not in 3rd or 4th slot, and DIMMs in those slots are double-sided, in which case only one side of the two will be usable. This is independent of chipset so is specific to the motherboard. Even some high-end boards with 4 DIMM slots will have this, either only accepting single sided DIMMs in slots 3 and 4, or supporting max 2 ranks (i.e. one double-sided or two single-sided) in both slots together.

None of this is specific to i440BX, any other 1998-era chipset will have the same limitations. The Via 694X (ApolloPro133A) was the first to allow 256Mb chips, but even there some boards have the second limit.

But... if the third DIMM was being detected at 50%, OP would be getting 640MB (2x 256MB + 1x 128MB), not 600MB. So there's something else going on here.

dionb wrote on 2024-09-21, 18:11:

There are two reasons a DIMM might only be detected as half its nominal capacity: […]
Show full quote

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-09-21, 18:04:

AlienWeird wrote on 2024-09-21, 16:03:

crap, you're right, it's a VIA chipset... although it doesn't have integrated graphics

So one of 256MB modules is seen as 128. Afaik that was mainly 440BX problem, but also happened to early VIA chipsets? is it 693?
500mhz V3 is good for anything up to Q3/UT

There are two reasons a DIMM might only be detected as half its nominal capacity:

1) the DIMM has a higher density than the controller supports, eg. DIMMs with 256Mb chips, onlt 128Mb will be usable on i440BX - the same applies to Via693A (ApolloPro133) and 693 (ApolloPro+)
2) the motherboard does not support double-sided DIMMs in all slots - commonly not in 3rd or 4th slot, and DIMMs in those slots are double-sided, in which case only one side of the two will be usable. This is independent of chipset so is specific to the motherboard. Even some high-end boards with 4 DIMM slots will have this, either only accepting single sided DIMMs in slots 3 and 4, or supporting max 2 ranks (i.e. one double-sided or two single-sided) in both slots together.

None of this is specific to i440BX, any other 1998-era chipset will have the same limitations. The Via 694X (ApolloPro133A) was the first to allow 256Mb chips, but even there some boards have the second limit.

But... if the third DIMM was being detected at 50%, OP would be getting 640MB (2x 256MB + 1x 128MB), not 600MB. So there's something else going on here.

there's something funky with the 3rd DIMM slot. If I put two 256MB DIMMs, POST detects the expected 512MB. If I put in the 3rd slot, the PC will either crash, lock up randomly, refuse to POST, or read the wrong value.

since I don't particularly care about going over 512MB (hell, I won't go over 256MB) I'll just pretend I didn't see any of that 🤣

I'll probably just re-cap the board, just to be safe.

dionb wrote on 2024-09-21, 18:06:

Via boards have a bad rep because their memory performance was quite a bit slower than contemporary Intel chipsets - and because […]
Show full quote

AlienWeird wrote on 2024-09-21, 16:03:

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

crap, you're right, it's a VIA chipset... although it doesn't have integrated graphics

welp

suppose it's time to cut my losses and dump the entire thing (I'm only partially sarcastic)

Via boards have a bad rep because their memory performance was quite a bit slower than contemporary Intel chipsets - and because people too often managed to mess up installation of chipset drives (install your 4-in-1 driver FIRST THING after installation of OS, before VGA, and you should be fine). Yes, a P3-500 with ApolloPro+ chipset will probably perform comparably to a P3-450 on an Intel i440BX, but in this era of Core i9s and Ryzens, that difference is negiligible.

More concerning is that the quality of motherboards with early Via P2/P3 chipsets tended to be subpar. Could you try to ID the specific board you have? So370 and Slot 1 reeks of PC-Chips, although even top-line brands like Tyan had a few boards like that.

AlienWeird wrote on 2024-09-21, 16:17:

[...]

I do want to go faster, though. And I'm assuming the Voodoo 3 is going to start being a bottleneck the further away from 500MHz I move.

From the looks of it, I should be able to get all the way up to an 800MHz Pentium 3 in Slot 1 (apparently the socket in this one is reserved only for Celerons...)

Not so fast... there's a big rabbit hole to dive down when it comes to Slot 1 / So370 compatibility.

Your P3-500 is probably a 'Katmai' P3 which runs at max 1.8V. P3-800 CPUs will be 'Coppermine' which run at max 1.75V. Early P2/P3 boards can't supply lower than 1.8V so won't be able to run a Coppermine CPU without some tomfoolery (and more stress to the voltage regulators on the board than many a PC-Chips board can handle).

As for So370 - there are three versions of So370: PPGA, FC-PGA and FC-PGA2. If something is 'Celeron only' that means it has the PPGA pinout, as the only CPU released for PPGA was the 'Mendocino' Celeron. Later (>533MHz) Celerons are FC-PGA too and won't work on this either. FC-PGA was used for 'Coppermine' CPUs and FC-PGA2 for the very last 'Tualatin' So370 CPUs >1GHz. Aside from pinout, the same voltage constraints apply as with the slot. There are interposers to convert from PPGA->FC-PGA->FC=PGA2, but they are a lot rarer than Slocket adapters to use a socket 370 CPU in a Slot 1.

But before listing every possible corner case, let's ID that board so we know what we are talking about and what options you have.

Btw the 600MB RAM makes no sense at all. It's common that DIMMs are only recognized at half size (again, lots of theory, but exact situation depends on your board), but that would lead to 2x 256MB and 1x 128MB = 640MB total. Integrated VGA (which you say you don't have) could take a two-power out of that, i.e. 4, 8 16 or 32MB. So 608MB I would have understood. But 600MB doesn't make any sense. I suspect your board has a BIOS which simply hasn't been programmed to deal with this amount of RAM. I'd check with a software tool to see how much RAM it detects.

It's an ECS P6BAT-A+ rev 2.0 motherboard with a VIA Apollo Pro 133. As luck would have it I did install the 4in1 driver first, so I suppose it'll be smooth sailing, I hope.

Since by now I've got most drivers down (even USB) I'll just throw some games at it and decide if the whole PC is going straight back where it came from or not.

ISA sound card for DOS games?

AlienWeird wrote on 2024-09-21, 20:04:

[...]

It's an ECS P6BAT-A+ rev 2.0 motherboard with a VIA Apollo Pro 133.

Then its memory behaviour will be pretty much the same as with the i440BX (just significantly slower)

The manual is pretty hilarious when it comes to memory, referring to 128K and 256K sizes. That's a couple of orders of magnitude out, so I'd take any other statements with a pinch of salt too.

Looks like the rev 2.0 does support Coppermine CPUs, so you should be able to upgrade to that P3-800E or EB. If using a slocket, make sure that the slocket is FC-PGA, not PPGA.

As luck would have it I did install the 4in1 driver first, so I suppose it'll be smooth sailing, I hope.

Should be 😀

Since by now I've got most drivers down (even USB) I'll just throw some games at it and decide if the whole PC is going straight back where it came from or not.

So long as the build quality is decent, this is a pretty good versatile motherboard. It even has SB-Link in case you want to use PCI sound cards with DOS.

AlienWeird wrote on 2024-09-21, 16:17:

ODwilly wrote on 2024-09-21, 15:25:

For that speed of CPU the Voodoo 3 is what you want.

I do want to go faster, though. And I'm assuming the Voodoo 3 is going to start being a bottleneck the further away from 500MHz I move.

From the looks of it, I should be able to get all the way up to an 800MHz Pentium 3 in Slot 1 (apparently the socket in this one is reserved only for Celerons...)

Iirc the Voodoo3's performance scales all the way up to a 1.4ghz CPU. I haven't seen them in ages but there are some threads about the Voodoo3 around here with graphs, tested all the way up to P4's.

The sloket rabbit hole is a fun one if you like hardware modding.

Currently running a 1.2GHz celeron socket 370 cpu in slot 1 440bx

Have a pentium 933 (I think) as well which was an easier mod as was coppermine rather than tualitin

https://krick.3feetunder.com/370mod/

https://digilander.libero.it/grandecigno/Tua_BX.htm