predator_085 wrote on 2025-03-19, 06:58:Thanks for the info. Like I said was not aware of t hat flaw of the irongate mobo. In that case I will just keep using my […]
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Thanks for the info. Like I said was not aware of t hat flaw of the irongate mobo. In that case I will just keep using my Voodoo 3 and my Elza card.
Maybe I will get another righ as a super late win 98 gaming machine with geforce fx card.
A later athlon mobo perhabs or Socket 370 board with fast pentium 3.
Are socket 370 boards also picky with higher end geforce cards like the geforce fx?
Starting to plan a new build is probably a good way to go as you don't need to struggle with compatibility issues or other limitations of your current system. It is a neat system for what it is.
I've never heard of such compatibility issues with s370 in general. However, there are several chipsets available as well as different s370 MBs, so there certainly are duds among that crowd. With s370 you also need to think if you need ISA slot or Tualatin support. Some early boards may even support only Mendocino Celerons AFAIK, so all s370 MBs certainly aren't build the same. They have different kind of AGP slots too, some only AGP 2x and newer have universal AGPs. Some boards don't have AGP at all.
Socket A is another fine option, but it has some things you need to think also beforehand. One is the PSU issue, you need heavy 5V rail if MB doesn't have 12V VRM for CPU, which pretty much all earlier MBs and AMD or VIA chipset boards lack. Many modern PSUs simply won't work well with these systems, unless they are some ridicilously overpowered beasts. There are also countless of chipsets and motherboards available for socket A spanning from something like VIA KT133 to nVidia nForce2 and VIA KT600. There are bad MBs and really good ones and with different specs and features. Earlier boards may not have support for later and faster Athlon XP processors.
Then there is of course the capacitor plague that riddled late 90s and early 2000s MBs and PSUs. Completely functional stuff can be found, but the issue is still real and recapping may be needed. For example my SlotA EpoX 7KXA required recapping, as did my Epox 8rga+ nForce2 mobo, but my Abit KG7 RAID still works perfectly with original caps. It really depends and there are no absoluteluy "safe" brands or MBs.
My beefier win98 rig is an "all AMD high end system from autumn 2001". It has AMD Athlon TB 1400MHz, aforementioned Abit KG7 RAID socket A MB with AMD 760 chipset, 2x256MB DDR Cas 2, Ati Radeon 8500 and Audigy1. GPU was of course still ATi by that point, but that is probably the joke here. It has perhaps twice if not more the oomph that my SlotA system has and it pretty much provides everything I need for later 98 era stuff and my watercooled socket A winXP nForce2 "high end summer 2003" rig deals with the rest when I need to go deeper to the XP era gaming and I want even more performance. I have really no interest with later stuff than 2003-04 at best, so that late socket A system is and most likely will be the end of the line of my retro systems.
