If you want to see where cards pull their power from, I have measured it for a couple of cards, inclusing 9200s and a ti4200

https://tehsiggi.github.io/agp-power-monitor/

tehsiggi wrote on 2025-09-26, 20:05:

If you want to see where cards pull their power from, I have measured it for a couple of cards, inclusing 9200s and a ti4200

https://tehsiggi.github.io/agp-power-monitor/

That's incredible - thank you so much for sharing this!

It seems interesting that the GeForce 4 Ti seems to split its power draw over all three rails more than many in your comparison. I looked up the AGP connector pin-out - with only 1 x 12v pin, that's quite load going through it! I suspect my issue is the fact the BeQuiet PSU lumps together the 3.3V and 5V rails with a shared limit.

I hope I've found another way around the issue - I stumbled across the fact this motherboard supports the Geode NX 1750, which has a quoted power consumption of 14w compared the 57w of the Duron 1800, and presumably similar ball-park performance. I managed to order one at a reasonable price, so hopefully that will be happier coexisting with both the GeForce and the SB live.

Well the Geode NX 1750 turned up, and works beautifully! Faster 3DMark scores than with the Duron 1800 (I guess because more cache?) and so much cooler - both CPU heatsink much cooler and much less heat chucked out of the PSU, so presumably the lower power draw is having an effect.

I also swapped the PSU for a Seasonic 300w model that gives more stable voltages when monitored in HWInfo etc.

But I still can't get the system to work with both the GeForce and SBLive cards drivers installed - all kinds of dll related crashes and blue screens when they are.

I even tried with a much beefier ATX power supply on the bench next to it, but same result.

Swapped the SBLive for a Yamaha YMF724 and it worked absolutely fine first time. So it's not the PCI slot, or simply using more than one motherboard slot at once.

So all I can think is there must be a straight-up incompatibility or conflict with this particular combination of SiS chipset, GeForce and SBLive?

Or the SBLive might be exposing some motherboard problem that the Yamaha doesn't? Despite coming from the early 00s, the capacitors on the motherboard all LOOK absolutely fine - no bulging or signs of gunk underneath. But maybe they could still be bad?

I've had another play with this system, and tried some more sound cards, with weirdly similar results.

Now using ASRock K7S41GX SiS based Socket A board with really low power draw AMD Geode NX CPU, 768Mb DDR RAM, and Apacer SSD via generic SATA adapter.

Behaviour seems to be fine when using an AGP graphics card (GeForce 4 Ti or Radeon 9200) with either integrated AC97 sound or Yamaha XG 744 PCI sound card. It was also fine with the integrated graphics plus the SB Live!

But with an AGP card plus any other PCI card added I get chronic instability - sometimes full system freezes, sometimes HDD write errors, basically different each time!

To be begin with I assumed this was an incompatibility with the SB Live I was trying, but now I've tried an Aureal Vortex, exactly the same is happening with that as well!

I've tried different CPUs, PSUs, boot drives, only one or the other memory stick, etc. All with the same results.

Wonder if the more modern PCI cards are using voltage rails that the Yamaha doesn't use or something?

Starting to wonder if this might point to capacitor issues? All of the motherboard capacitors LOOK superficially fine though.

Just in case anyone is interested ... I tried re-capping all of the larger value capacitors (3300uf and 1500uf, plus one of the 1000uf). This made no difference, and when testing the old capacitors out of circuit with a normal multimeter, they actually all checked out OK (at least in terms of capacitance).

I happened to swap in an SSD which already had an install of WinXP on it though, and to my surprise, it detected and installed all the devices - including the Aureal Vortex - absolutely fine, and worked fine!

So I've isolated it isn't a hardware fault, but seemingly some compatibility issues with PCI cards under Win98 on this motherboard. Perhaps issues with the SiS 741 chipset and Win98?

If it works fine in XP, but not 98SE, I wonder if it is worthwhile trying with WinMe?

I've seen Win2K/XP be stable on hardware that is problematic with Win9x. XP is a much more robust OS, more stable for many reasons. With Win9x you could have a VXD driver that's not happy for some reason, or a problem with Win9x's ACPI support and your motherboard. I would also not bother going above 512MB RAM with Win9x. Win9x has memory management quirks.

You could try installing Win98 in APM mode (instead of ACPI mode). There's a setup.exe option for that.

Win9x also becomes less stable for games if you install a DirectX beyond 7.0a.

Personally I would not bother with WinME. It's more or less a prettier, heavier Win98SE and it doesn't have any of the benefits of 2K or XP. Also, Win2K is not super great either because XP has far more game compatibility patches included.

swaaye wrote on 2026-01-22, 00:50:

I've seen Win2K/XP be stable on hardware that is problematic with Win9x. XP is a much more robust OS, more stable for many reasons. With Win9x you could have a VXD driver that's not happy for some reason, or a problem with Win9x's ACPI support and your motherboard. I would also not bother going above 512MB RAM with Win9x. Win9x has memory management quirks.

You could try installing Win98 in APM mode (instead of ACPI mode). There's a setup.exe option for that.

Win9x also becomes less stable for games if you install a DirectX beyond 7.0a.

I just tried Win98 with the APM mode setup switch, and it did actually let me install both the GeForce and SB Live! (weirdly it said the Aureal Vortex driver - which I had used successfully on other systems - contained no information about my card, as if the PCI ID didn't match?).

HOWEVER, in APM mode with both GeForce and SB Live!, I was getting graphical glitches and an unresponsive system when running 3DMark 99, or even DXDiag. Does that say anything about the nature of the problem?

I've actually bought a VIA KM400 based board (AOpen vKM400) as a replacement. Disappointingly, it wouldn't boot with the Geode NX inserted at all, but it arrived with a Sempron 2600+ which works perfectly. I'm just setting up a fresh Win98 installation with this - assuming it shouldn't be any problem to set up the GeForce and a PCI sound card on this one ...

Disappointing I can't seem to get any success with the ASRock SiS board - it seems like it is the only common Socket A board to officially support the Geode? I'm sure I remember when it was in its original use in a club library it had a WinME installation that worked well enough for years and years - no add-on cards at all though, of course ... Before I give up on it altogether I will try it properly with WinXP.

Still curious whether this sounds more like a hardware issue, or simply a compatibility issue with Win98?

justin1985 wrote on 2026-01-24, 16:49:

I just tried Win98 with the APM mode setup switch, and it did actually let me install both the GeForce and SB Live! (weirdly it […]
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I just tried Win98 with the APM mode setup switch, and it did actually let me install both the GeForce and SB Live! (weirdly it said the Aureal Vortex driver - which I had used successfully on other systems - contained no information about my card, as if the PCI ID didn't match?).

HOWEVER, in APM mode with both GeForce and SB Live!, I was getting graphical glitches and an unresponsive system when running 3DMark 99, or even DXDiag. Does that say anything about the nature of the problem?

I've actually bought a VIA KM400 based board (AOpen vKM400) as a replacement. Disappointingly, it wouldn't boot with the Geode NX inserted at all, but it arrived with a Sempron 2600+ which works perfectly. I'm just setting up a fresh Win98 installation with this - assuming it shouldn't be any problem to set up the GeForce and a PCI sound card on this one ...

Disappointing I can't seem to get any success with the ASRock SiS board - it seems like it is the only common Socket A board to officially support the Geode? I'm sure I remember when it was in its original use in a club library it had a WinME installation that worked well enough for years and years - no add-on cards at all though, of course ... Before I give up on it altogether I will try it properly with WinXP.

Still curious whether this sounds more like a hardware issue, or simply a compatibility issue with Win98?

Classic retro troubleshooting man. There are lots of possibilities. You just have to experiment....for hours on end 🤣

I didn't see you mention whether you installed a SiS AGP driver in WIn98. Corruption with 3DMark99 makes me think of an AGP issue of some kind and that can be related to the AGP driver or AGP instability. I would update that driver and also try reducing AGP speed in the BIOS or with Rivatuner. Windows XP should have a SiS AGP driver for your board included in the OS but you could likely find a newer one too.

I also suggest using NVidia driver 45.23 at the newest with Win9x and only update beyond DirectX 7.0a if you absolutely must do so. With a GF4Ti you might want to run an even older driver. You can run DirectX 8+ games in Windows XP which is where they belong anyway.

swaaye wrote on 2026-01-28, 20:42:

Classic retro troubleshooting man. There are lots of possibilities. You just have to experiment....for hours on end 🤣

I didn't see you mention whether you installed a SiS AGP driver in WIn98. Corruption with 3DMark99 makes me think of an AGP issue of some kind and that can be related to the AGP driver or AGP instability. I would update that driver and also try reducing AGP speed in the BIOS or with Rivatuner. Windows XP should have a SiS AGP driver for your board included in the OS but you could likely find a newer one too.

I also suggest using NVidia driver 45.23 at the newest with Win9x and only update beyond DirectX 7.0a if you absolutely must do so. With a GF4Ti you might want to run an even older driver. You can run DirectX 8+ games in Windows XP which is where they belong anyway.

Tell me about it!

I spent this evening experimenting more with a fresh installation of XP to rule out a hardware issue with the same config I had under Win98. It hadn't occurred to me that the working WinXP disk I'd happened might itself give different results to the mSATA to IDE adapter I was using today ... I got all kinds of errors and scandisk bad sector errors. Swapped out the mSATA drives (tried two different generic JM 44-pin adapters with two different mSATA disks) to an actual spinning HDD, and miraculously everything was fine. (at that point I was experimenting with a WinME Quick Install CD).

The really weird thing is that the mSATA to IDE adapters I was using used the same JM20330 chip as the full size SATA to IDE adapter I'd used with the full size SATA SSD that had XP on originally. So this motherboard seems to work perfectly with a spinning HDD (Seagate 2.5") or a full size SATA SSD via a JM20330 generic 40-pin adapter, but it wouldn't boot at all with the same SSD mounted on the StarTech Marvell IDE adapter that usually gets recommended! And it gets weird corruption and stability issues with the generic 44-pin versions of the JM20330 adapters ... Really doesn't make any sense, but I guess that is hardware of this era !

With WinME quick install working I installed a Radeon 9000 and an SB Live, with their drivers, absolutely fine (previously it was installing any sound card driver when an AGP card was installed that seemed to create issues). I installed the SiS USB2.0 and SiS AGP driver (1.17), and it all continued to work fine. So I guess that either narrows it down to an issue with Win98 but not WinME, OR it had been an issue with the IDE controller hating the SATA adapters all along ... either way though, I think I'll be sticking with the AOpen VIA KM400 board for the main build of this "fast Win98" system now!

justin1985 wrote on 2026-01-29, 22:52:

I spent this evening experimenting more with a fresh installation of XP to rule out a hardware issue with the same config I had under Win98. It hadn't occurred to me that the working WinXP disk I'd happened might itself give different results to the mSATA to IDE adapter I was using today ... I got all kinds of errors and scandisk bad sector errors. Swapped out the mSATA drives (tried two different generic JM 44-pin adapters with two different mSATA disks) to an actual spinning HDD, and miraculously everything was fine. (at that point I was experimenting with a WinME Quick Install CD).

The really weird thing is that the mSATA to IDE adapters I was using used the same JM20330 chip as the full size SATA to IDE adapter I'd used with the full size SATA SSD that had XP on originally. So this motherboard seems to work perfectly with a spinning HDD (Seagate 2.5") or a full size SATA SSD via a JM20330 generic 40-pin adapter, but it wouldn't boot at all with the same SSD mounted on the StarTech Marvell IDE adapter that usually gets recommended! And it gets weird corruption and stability issues with the generic 44-pin versions of the JM20330 adapters ... Really doesn't make any sense, but I guess that is hardware of this era !

With WinME quick install working I installed a Radeon 9000 and an SB Live, with their drivers, absolutely fine (previously it was installing any sound card driver when an AGP card was installed that seemed to create issues). I installed the SiS USB2.0 and SiS AGP driver (1.17), and it all continued to work fine. So I guess that either narrows it down to an issue with Win98 but not WinME, OR it had been an issue with the IDE controller hating the SATA adapters all along ... either way though, I think I'll be sticking with the AOpen VIA KM400 board for the main build of this "fast Win98" system now!

Oh yeah SATA to PATA adapters can be trouble. 3rd party SATA/PATA onboard controllers/cards are also a frequent source of problems. Over time I've decided I prefer to just use a hard drive if a motherboard lacks SATA. I still have a few 2003-2005 PATA HDDs around, 80-160GB 7200RPM WD drives with fluid bearings and 8MB cache, and these are pretty fast and quiet. They are much faster and quieter than what would have been in a typical Win98/WinME machine.

I do still use PATA/SATA adapters when modding old XBox consoles.