One thing you could do with those cards on a system like this is explore CPU scaling. If you throttle the P4 down as low as it will go (msred.com...) you'll be about period correct for mid 1990s. Then you could increase CPU step by step and see how the performance changes. In DOS I'd expect it to be pretty linear until the PCI bus is bottlenecking you, but in Windows 9x things could be more interesting.

Danger Manfred wrote on 2025-07-14, 07:28:

I built a system around this board:

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ipox-tech-ip-4gvi83

What would you do with this?

no "1x ADD (add-on card AGP)" possible ?

without that it could be something interesting for a non gaming PC - i'd be tempted with a 98se and xp dual boot, with 98 giving options for older cards and some interesting retro programming and old software generally and XP for 'new' software and development tools, of the early 2000's. So a kind of 90's and 2000's dual retro systems focussed on non game stuff

and of course testing things, as dionb suggested, can also be interesting

Honestly IMO from retro gaming perspective such system is kind of useless. I mean you could use the fastest PCI card you can find and make it W98 machine, but there are no real advantages to it.

If you have any other use though, unrelated to GPU, it can likely do that just fine.

At the end of the day I guess it might just not be the system for me.

The only "ADD (add-on card AGP)" it would accept is some DVI video output card for the IGP, but not actual AGP graphics cards.

And since I'm not that old, I don't really have any nostalgia for 90s programming.

It's cool that this allows the use of 3 ISA sound cards, but so do my Slot-1 and Socket 7 boards. And I also have a socket 370, Slot-A and socket 462 board with an ISA slot each, which isn't perfect, but in my opinion still way better for my actual use case - retro*gaming*.

I guess I'll look for someone who'd actually use this and make a fair trade that makes two people happy.

The P4 HT probably deserves to be on a more capable board

I don't get it, there is clearly an AGP slot in the picture at your link so what gives

maxtherabbit wrote on 2025-07-14, 12:29:

I don't get it, there is clearly an AGP slot in the picture at your link so what gives

ADD slot, not AGP

Matth79 wrote on 2025-07-14, 13:17:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2025-07-14, 12:29:

I don't get it, there is clearly an AGP slot in the picture at your link so what gives

ADD slot, not AGP

From site: 1x ADD (add-on card AGP)

Which is the weirdest way of saying AGP ever, but it is totally an AGP slot:

So I started doubting myself, looked into the whole ADD thing, and well, I was wrong! Despite the AGP1 label on the board, that is indeed not a normal AGP slot! It's for adding a digital display (DVI?) output from the integrated graphics. I had no idea such a thing existed. 😅

I'd like to share my thoughts on this motherboard.

I think that, even without an AGP slot, the card is excellent for retro gaming.

The integrated Intel graphics offer sufficient VGA and SVGA performance for most older DOS games (especially games released in the 1990s).

Given the available PCI slots, it's possible to use a 3D accelerator such as Voodoo1 or Voodoo2 to improve 3D gaming performance in DOS and Win9x. In addition, you can replace the integrated graphics with a more powerful PCI graphics card (3dfx, nVidia, ATI, Matrox, and more) for a better experience in Windows 9x.

The ISA slots (thanks to the ITE IT8888F bridge chip) ensure full compatibility with older sound cards.

Finally, with a little patience and the right software, you can create a truly impressive time machine.

Thanks for your time 😉

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2025-07-14, 15:10:

From site: 1x ADD (add-on card AGP) Which is the weirdest way of saying AGP ever, but it is totally an AGP slot: […]
Show full quote

Matth79 wrote on 2025-07-14, 13:17:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2025-07-14, 12:29:

I don't get it, there is clearly an AGP slot in the picture at your link so what gives

ADD slot, not AGP

From site: 1x ADD (add-on card AGP)

Which is the weirdest way of saying AGP ever, but it is totally an AGP slot:

The attachment Screenshot 2025-07-14 090827.png is no longer available

So I started doubting myself, looked into the whole ADD thing, and well, I was wrong! Despite the AGP1 label on the board, that is indeed not a normal AGP slot! It's for adding a digital display (DVI?) output from the integrated graphics. I had no idea such a thing existed. 😅

Is that a pic of your board?

I ask because there's a bulging cap right above the fake agp slot, I bet others will start to bulge soon.

EDIT - Never mind I see it's a screengrab from theretroweb.

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2025-07-14, 15:10:

So I started doubting myself, looked into the whole ADD thing, and well, I was wrong! Despite the AGP1 label on the board, that is indeed not a normal AGP slot! It's for adding a digital display (DVI?) output from the integrated graphics. I had no idea such a thing existed. 😅

Yeah, each time you see something that looks like AGP but is called something different by manufacturer - something is wrong. AGP connector was used for a bunch of junk, from fake AGP (PCI) slots on early pci-e boards to using the connector for totally unrelated reasons like RAM expansion board.

Pentium 4 socket 478 boards I dont quite know what to do with them either.
They make semi decent Win98 systems, but poor XP systems.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-07-15, 00:13:

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2025-07-14, 15:10:

So I started doubting myself, looked into the whole ADD thing, and well, I was wrong! Despite the AGP1 label on the board, that is indeed not a normal AGP slot! It's for adding a digital display (DVI?) output from the integrated graphics. I had no idea such a thing existed. 😅

Yeah, each time you see something that looks like AGP but is called something different by manufacturer - something is wrong. AGP connector was used for a bunch of junk, from fake AGP (PCI) slots on early pci-e boards to using the connector for totally unrelated reasons like RAM expansion board.

That's the thing though--the ADD slot is labelled "AGP1" on the motherboard itself! You'd have to look at the manual or board specs to know that it's not an AGP slot.
If I were to stumble upon one of these boards, I'd totally just install an AGP card without even giving it a second thought...and possibly damage the board and/or GPU as a result!

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2025-07-15, 21:57:

Archer57 wrote on 2025-07-15, 00:13:

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2025-07-14, 15:10:

So I started doubting myself, looked into the whole ADD thing, and well, I was wrong! Despite the AGP1 label on the board, that is indeed not a normal AGP slot! It's for adding a digital display (DVI?) output from the integrated graphics. I had no idea such a thing existed. 😅

Yeah, each time you see something that looks like AGP but is called something different by manufacturer - something is wrong. AGP connector was used for a bunch of junk, from fake AGP (PCI) slots on early pci-e boards to using the connector for totally unrelated reasons like RAM expansion board.

That's the thing though--the ADD slot is labelled "AGP1" on the motherboard itself! You'd have to look at the manual or board specs to know that it's not an AGP slot.
If I were to stumble upon one of these boards, I'd totally just install an AGP card without even giving it a second thought...and possibly damage the board and/or GPU as a result!

ive got a 478 IBM netvista board thats the same, its down to the useless chipset which is an 845GL or 845GV i forget, i plugged in a few AGP cards no damage occured, turns out its only for an AGP DVI card for the onboard intel extreme graphics for dual monitors.

heres a post on a few of these gimped chipsets
Re: Why 478 and not 775?

supposedly there are variants which do support AGP, i wonder whether its possible to just swap the northbridge, apparently the bios can detect if the chipset is AGP compatible.

sse2 on this board is the significant advantage that i perceive. no advantage under pure dos, but if you run games in dosbox, ntvm + vdmsound or early windows games that still use midi you can employ softsynths that require sse2. namely svca & later releases of fluidsynth (although some sse1 builds are around). isa slots are nice though (and entirely the point).

If you're into retro operating systems that only have drivers for ISA cards, it can make an excellent retro rocket.

I have a similar DFI G4V620 (with a P4 3.0 HT) that I used for Windows 3.0 MME, Windows NT 3.1, OS/2 2.x, and early PC versions of Solaris. These only have drivers for ISA sound cards (Sound Blasters in particular).

I've since upgraded my retro rocket to a G7S620 to run faster Pentium D's. In some ways, the G4v620 had slightly better compatibility. I'm sticking with Pentium D for better multiprocessor performance when needed, though.

I'd argue adding AGP doesn't really expand the usefulness of the motherboard anyway.

ISA's main selling point is DOS sound.
Win9x and above your better off with PCI.

AGP is perfect for Win9x, with the bonus of most cards having good backwards compatibility for dos.
So it's a good base for a dos/win9x box but decent dos/win9x PCI cards do exist.

Thing is none of the above needs a P4 CPU.

I get that often the idea is to also install WinXP and have dos/Win9x/WinXP all in 1 computer.
Problem is even with AGP graphics card compatibility gets in the way. Do you pick something that works well in Win9x and hold XP back or a faster AGP card and have compatibility issues with Win9x?
And even then S478 with a faster AGP graphics card still only makes for a mid range AGP build.

For me this is more of a motherboard for tinkering or an "ultimate dos/win9x box" just for the sake of it.