As a side effect I discovered the correct BIOS settings for AMD760 motherboards in order for bridged AGP cards to work just fine; I found that nforce1 can support 1 GB memory modules; tests revealed that the acclaimed sound storm chip has an equal in the much less known VIA VT1616 that performs just as good.
I confirmed that nforce2 ultra was, is and will be the best chipset available for the platform.
All tests were run under Windows XP because I think that XP is the best suited OS for this chipset and for all socket 462 chipsets supporting DDRAM.

Did I make mistakes? Of course I did. I welcome any critique or opinion as I am sure that there are many people on this forum far more knowledgeable about socket A that I am and did far more tests that I did.

That's huge amounts of useful data - thanks for sharing it. Conclusions are interesting too - it is nice to know nforce2 actually lived up to all the hype around it back then.

Also while SoundStorm (and alternalives) was no doubt useful back then i find its usefulness nowadays quite limited - most builds will include a sound card anyway, which makes it redundant.

One curious thing to know would be win98 compatibility. Yes, i absolutely agree that winXP makes the most sense on this platform, but it also represents for 98 the same thing as LGA1155 for XP - the newest hardware to have drivers and work without major issues/limitations/hassle. It makes quite nice "overkill win98" builds, but not all chipsets/boards are good for this.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-06-11, 09:22:

That's huge amounts of useful data - thanks for sharing it. Conclusions are interesting too - it is nice to know nforce2 actually lived up to all the hype around it back then.

Also while SoundStorm (and alternalives) was no doubt useful back then i find its usefulness nowadays quite limited - most builds will include a sound card anyway, which makes it redundant.

One curious thing to know would be win98 compatibility. Yes, i absolutely agree that winXP makes the most sense on this platform, but it also represents for 98 the same thing as LGA1155 for XP - the newest hardware to have drivers and work without major issues/limitations/hassle. It makes quite nice "overkill win98" builds, but not all chipsets/boards are good for this.

Thank you very much.

Windows 98 should work just fine on any socket 462 board with any AGP card up to 2004 without any problems. I tested only nforce2 ultra, KT880, KT600 - which performs worse under 98 - and KT133 which performs better.

In the end I believe that the only purpose for anyone building a socket A/462 system is retro gaming. Therefore I will try to present a few recommendations for everyone wanting to build a socket A PC.

Socket A covers a period of 5 years from 2000 up to 2004 (2000 is overlapping with the 98 era): if you build your machine “correctly” you will be able to enjoy all games of the period at very high/maximum settings. Windows XP is the operating system of choice. I did not encountered a single game that refused to run on my socket 462 system – waiting input from forum colleagues on this one – and furthermore all games run with their settings as high as they would go!

There are 3 ways to build your dream socket 462 machine: the first is to build again the same machine that you had back in the day; the second is the “best price to performance ratio” where you take easy to obtain and cheap enough components; the third is the ultimate socket 462 PC.

nd22 wrote on 2025-06-11, 10:12:

In the end I believe that the only purpose for anyone building a socket A/462 system is retro gaming.

While i generally agree - i am actually using one of my socketA machines, the older one, quite often for not game-related things. Mainly working with media - writing DVDs, audio CDs, etc or reading/archiving/copying them. I just like old nero (6, the last version to not be extremely bloated mess) more, old IDE drives tend to be better built/more reliable than modern cheap ones and there are no benefits in using faster system as speeds are limited by CD/DVD itself. I also still use office2003 to open some old stuff, particularly things made using Access are practically impossible to use on modern system. Then there are old canon laser printer and old benq scanner, both without x64 drivers.... i mean if i want to print some text on a piece of paper it does not really matter if i use word2003 or modern web stuff, apart from 2003 being faster that is...

nd22 wrote on 2025-06-11, 10:18:

There are 3 ways to build your dream socket 462 machine: the first is to build again the same machine that you had back in the day; the second is the “best price to performance ratio” where you take easy to obtain and cheap enough components; the third is the ultimate socket 462 PC.

And the fourth, my favorite: the most flexible socket A machine 😁

This has been an absolute blast to follow since you started the testing. This was a true labor of love and thank you for all your hard work. Socket A has to be my favorite retro socket and this has been fun.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2025-06-11, 12:08:

This has been an absolute blast to follow since you started the testing. This was a true labor of love and thank you for all your hard work. Socket A has to be my favorite retro socket and this has been fun.

Thank you very much! Socket A is also my favorite platform, in fact all my gaming is done on my dream socket 462 PC.

bloodem wrote on 2025-06-11, 12:04:

And the fourth, my favorite: the most flexible socket A machine 😁

So what do you think would be the most flexible socket A system?
Keeping in mind max performance for all games 2000 - 2004.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-06-11, 10:42:

While i generally agree - i am actually using one of my socketA machines, the older one, quite often for not game-related things. Mainly working with media - writing DVDs, audio CDs, etc or reading/archiving/copying them. I just like old nero (6, the last version to not be extremely bloated mess) more, old IDE drives tend to be better built/more reliable than modern cheap ones and there are no benefits in using faster system as speeds are limited by CD/DVD itself. I also still use office2003 to open some old stuff, particularly things made using Access are practically impossible to use on modern system. Then there are old canon laser printer and old benq scanner, both without x64 drivers.... i mean if i want to print some text on a piece of paper it does not really matter if i use word2003 or modern web stuff, apart from 2003 being faster that is...

I also use Office 2003. I bought it back in 2005 and payed an arm and a leg for it!I learn to use pretty well and because I keep multiple copies of my data including on DVD's I use office 2003 and Nero on my LGA 775 Windows 7 system. That one runs circles around any socket A machine and can still be used on the net and for productivity today.

The first option – to find the same components that you used back than – will result in a machine that caries a lot of nostalgia for you.
I still got the system I bought in 2002: Duron 1300 + Abit KR7A + 256mb of ram; even back than it was a low end system so performance was not at all great. I dreamed of building the” money is no object PC” and today I got it; for me this is the improved” retro experience – building a system with parts that I could not afford back than.
Performance: only you can ascertain its performance.
Cost: unknown, you and only you can say how much it costs.

The second option - In the second case you want to build yourself a socket 462 system with good performance within a reasonable budget. So going for top of the line parts is out of the question, you are interested in components with excellent price to performance ratio. You will have a system that has 80% of the performance of the ultimate socket 462 system for 20% of the price.

I will try to split the components required in several tiers based on the performance and I will use eBay prices as of 2025 for each of them.

nd22 wrote on 2025-06-12, 04:51:

So what do you think would be the most flexible socket A system?
Keeping in mind max performance for all games 2000 - 2004.

I should mention that, in my case, I only use this platform for DOS/Win98. For WinXP there are better alternatives out there.

Anyway, the ideal system in terms of flexibility would look something like this:

CPU: fast Barton (2800+ -> 3200+), converted to mobile with all multipliers unlocked up to 24x (allowing you to both find the overclock sweet spot and also downclock the CPU, in software, to as low as 3x multi).
MB: VIA KT133A motherboard with an ISA slot (Abit KT7A, Biostar M7VKD, etc). My favorite is the M7VKD, because it's a very solid, stable board + its BIOS already sets the 55h register to the correct value needed for controlling the mobile Athlon XP multiplier in software.
GPU: GeForce 4 Ti (the faster, the better). GeForce FX 59xx would also be fine (if you want even more speed in newer games), but it does have some issues with certain games in both DOS and Win98.
Audio 1: Audigy 2 ZS PCI
Audio 2: ESS ES1688 non-PNP ISA or similar.

Anyway, this type of system is simply amazing in terms of flexibility, you can basically play 99% of games released between 1980 - 2002.
Now, of course, if you are not interested in DOS at all, then there are much better options out there.

That's a very good DOS machine with amazing performance; however all my tests and all my recommendations are about the 2000 - 2004 years which no longer represent the DOS era.

That's a great overkill dos/win98 machine and IMO yes, socketA is amazing for this, but it has to be a separate build from socketA for winXP.

That said socketA for winXP... while period correct is a bit of a weird thing. Basically it does not make sense, there are better options. Only makes sense for "personal reasons", for example simply wanting to build a high-end system on this platform. Which is why i have whole bunch of socketA hardware and have built such a system. But it loses compatibility with dos/98 stuff, so has to be XP...

bloodem wrote on 2025-06-12, 06:36:

I should mention that, in my case, I only use this platform for DOS/Win98. For WinXP there are better alternatives out there. […]
Show full quote

nd22 wrote on 2025-06-12, 04:51:

So what do you think would be the most flexible socket A system?
Keeping in mind max performance for all games 2000 - 2004.

I should mention that, in my case, I only use this platform for DOS/Win98. For WinXP there are better alternatives out there.

Anyway, the ideal system in terms of flexibility would look something like this:

CPU: fast Barton (2800+ -> 3200+), converted to mobile with all multipliers unlocked up to 24x (allowing you to both find the overclock sweet spot and also downclock the CPU, in software, to as low as 3x multi).
MB: VIA KT133A motherboard with an ISA slot (Abit KT7A, Biostar M7VKD, etc). My favorite is the M7VKD, because it's a very solid, stable board + its BIOS already sets the 55h register to the correct value needed for controlling the mobile Athlon XP multiplier in software.
GPU: GeForce 4 Ti (the faster, the better). GeForce FX 59xx would also be fine (if you want even more speed in newer games), but it does have some issues with certain games in both DOS and Win98.
Audio 1: Audigy 2 ZS PCI
Audio 2: ESS ES1688 non-PNP ISA or similar.

Anyway, this type of system is simply amazing in terms of flexibility, you can basically play 99% of games released between 1980 - 2002.
Now, of course, if you are not interested in DOS at all, then there are much better options out there.

Audio 3: Aureal3D 2 card, pipe the output through he Audigy 2 card so you can have EAX and A3D for games.

Optional GPU: Voodoo2 SLI for full Glide compatibility in both DOS and Windows.

this is 4 PCI slots which shouldn't be an issue for most 462 boards, this multi GPU and Audio setup should pretty much cover a huge range of games with a wide range of compatibility.

It makes perfect sense for those 5 years: 2000 to 2004. Yes, you can build far more powerful XP machines with Sandy bridge that can play all those games and many more but for those addicted to socket A and remember that era such as myself a socket 462 system with XP is a dream come true! That why I have my ultimate socket A PC and play exclusively on it.
For me Windows 98 era ends in 2000 with Pentium 3 and classic Athon T*bird. I have yet to encounter a game from 2000 onward that refuses to run on my Athlon 3200. Of course everyone is free to build each system as he wishes - maybe someone wants an overkill LGA775 Windows 98 system, or maybe he wants a 3770K XP system.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-06-12, 07:35:

Optional GPU: Voodoo2 SLI for full Glide compatibility in both DOS and Windows.

Indeed! I only have a single Voodoo 2 in my Socket A rigs, because that's more than enough for old Glide only games. Games that would take advantage of SLI usually work and look great on nVIDIA cards (albeit, sometimes with some small visual glitches - like those seen in Unreal).

bloodem wrote on 2025-06-12, 08:24:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-06-12, 07:35:

Optional GPU: Voodoo2 SLI for full Glide compatibility in both DOS and Windows.

Indeed! I only have a single Voodoo 2 in my Socket A rigs, because that's more than enough for old Glide only games. Games that would take advantage of SLI usually work and look great on nVIDIA cards (albeit, sometimes with some small visual glitches - like those seen Unreal).

I'm in the other camp, I love how Glide games look, especially Unreal based ones which for that period work amazing on Glide hardware. The only exception here is games that were developed for D3d first and then got Glide as an afterthought, they tend to look pretty terrible on Glide hardware and don't take advantage of its capabilities very well.