A couple of general pointers:

In that era, the most popular motherboard chipset was Intel's i440BX. Your motherboard uses the competing (and popular) ViA Apollo which, while competitive, had some issues and quirks. With ViA based boards you would have to be more careful with BIOS settings, driver selection, etc. to get the optimal outcome.

#1 head-ache (after your BIOS settings are optimal) is the ViA 4-in-1 motherboard chipset driver package. Before you install any other drivers on Win95/98, you have to install this. Apparently the best version is 4.35 (4in1435v.zip) Why v. 4.35? See here.

#2 nVidia driver packages were fairly reliably optimized for the newer hardware and seemed to degrade in performance for older cards with every successive release. I remember when I got my hands on a TNT2 back in the day, and to try it out simply installed whatever driver was included on a cd-rom that came with a computer magazine I was subscribed to at the time. After the initial trial, I decided to do a clean install and download the latest drivers for an optimal setup. To my shock, after the reinstall games ran noticeably worse. I eventually traced the problem back to the video driver. It turns out the "outdated driver" from the CD-ROM was a much better fit for a TNT2 and Win98. That driver was Detonator 3.68. On AGP-based systems, I usually default to that one for TNT2s still, with DirectX 7.

#3 Your TNT2 M64 is a neutered TNT2. The performance is roughly on par with a first-gen TNT, so don't expect miracles out of it.

#4 Even early Pentium 4s are over 1 GHz in clock speed. Despite the Pentium 4 being less efficient per-clock than a Pentium 3, that is still at least a 2x speed differential between the platforms, not to mention your Pentium 4 probably ran on an Intel-chipset instead of ViA.

I wouldn't know where to start with on guiding you, but you should probably start from the BIOS (go over each setting and its meaning to make sure you're actually set up for best performance), then make sure you have the right expansion cards in the right slots on your motherboard. Only after that, would I do a perfectly clean install of Win98SE (no unofficial service packs), followed by the 4-in-1 drivers and then the video card, sound card, etc. drivers.

leonardo wrote on 2026-04-23, 08:36:

A couple of general pointers: […]
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A couple of general pointers:

In that era, the most popular motherboard chipset was Intel's i440BX. Your motherboard uses the competing (and popular) ViA Apollo which, while competitive, had some issues and quirks. With ViA based boards you would have to be more careful with BIOS settings, driver selection, etc. to get the optimal outcome.

#1 head-ache (after your BIOS settings are optimal) is the ViA 4-in-1 motherboard chipset driver package. Before you install any other drivers on Win95/98, you have to install this. Apparently the best version is 4.35 (4in1435v.zip) Why v. 4.35? See here.

#2 nVidia driver packages were fairly reliably optimized for the newer hardware and seemed to degrade in performance for older cards with every successive release. I remember when I got my hands on a TNT2 back in the day, and to try it out simply installed whatever driver was included on a cd-rom that came with a computer magazine I was subscribed to at the time. After the initial trial, I decided to do a clean install and download the latest drivers for an optimal setup. To my shock, after the reinstall games ran noticeably worse. I eventually traced the problem back to the video driver. It turns out the "outdated driver" from the CD-ROM was a much better fit for a TNT2 and Win98. That driver was Detonator 3.68. On AGP-based systems, I usually default to that one for TNT2s still, with DirectX 7.

#3 Your TNT2 M64 is a neutered TNT2. The performance is roughly on par with a first-gen TNT, so don't expect miracles out of it.

#4 Even early Pentium 4s are over 1 GHz in clock speed. Despite the Pentium 4 being less efficient per-clock than a Pentium 3, that is still at least a 2x speed differential between the platforms, not to mention your Pentium 4 probably ran on an Intel-chipset instead of ViA.

I wouldn't know where to start with on guiding you, but you should probably start from the BIOS (go over each setting and its meaning to make sure you're actually set up for best performance), then make sure you have the right expansion cards in the right slots on your motherboard. Only after that, would I do a perfectly clean install of Win98SE (no unofficial service packs), followed by the 4-in-1 drivers and then the video card, sound card, etc. drivers.

Thanks. So im not flash bios to newer does it effect performance

leonardo wrote on 2026-04-23, 08:36:

A couple of general pointers:

#4 Even early Pentium 4s are over 1 GHz in clock speed. Despite the Pentium 4 being less efficient per-clock than a Pentium 3, that is still at least a 2x speed differential between the platforms, not to mention your Pentium 4 probably ran on an Intel-chipset instead of ViA.

+ Katmai vs Willamette (at worst) - so 512kB L2 at 250MHz vs 256kB at full CPU speed (min 1.3 GHz)

Ford Lian BX-6VP2 has VIA VT82C693 chipset which is part of the problem. It has extremely slow memory access. It is possible to fix it with wpcredit by tweaking some chipset settings (In-Order Queue depth=4-level). You also need full Riva tnt2, not m64. They should be cheap. If you ever find cheap Katmai 600Mhz CPU, buy it.

AlexZ wrote on 2026-04-23, 20:00:

Ford Lian BX-6VP2 has VIA VT82C693 chipset which is part of the problem. It has extremely slow memory access. It is possible to fix it with wpcredit by tweaking some chipset settings (In-Order Queue depth=4-level). You also need full Riva tnt2, not m64. They should be cheap. If you ever find cheap Katmai 600Mhz CPU, buy it.

Not 600 but there are some 550mhz's around me. is it work too? Also do i need to upgrade ram (128 pc133) maybe 256 or 512? Thanks

cydvog wrote on 2026-04-23, 21:48:

Not 600 but there are some 550mhz's around me. is it work too? Also do i need to upgrade ram (128 pc133) maybe 256 or 512? Thanks

Biggest upgrade would be finding board based on 440bx/815.

The Apollo chipset is not *that* bad - there is a definite difference to a BX, but it is not like day and night.

I run a Katmai 550 and a V2 12MB on one and UT99 pulls smooth.

Different bioses set up the chipset differently though, some are not tuned for maximum performance. There is a memory interleave enabler tool that you can run at boot up in case the bios did not configure the chipset for that - in my board's case the bios already does that and it makes no difference, but in other cases it might help a little.

Perhaps it is, as already pointed out, a combination of much higher speed cache in P4's and high expectations, that causes the disappointment 😀

I would lose the M64 and treat it like a 2D accelerator for pentiums, just out of principle. But if you have seen it perform way better on P4's, well...

Maybe the drivers have an optimized SSE2 path it takes on P4 that is not available on Katmai. Maybe give that very old Detonator version mentioned a go.

st31276a wrote on 2026-04-24, 06:00:

The Apollo chipset is not *that* bad - there is a definite difference to a BX, but it is not like day and night.

its much worse than that

st31276a wrote on 2026-04-24, 06:00:

I run a Katmai 550 and a V2 12MB on one and UT99 pulls smooth.

so you arent using AGP at all, lucky you! 😀

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/tekram-p6bx-a

is this board run well with my p3 500?

It is a much better board - it has Intel 440BX chipset and supports Coppermine CPUs. You can run PIII 900 or 1000 (with slotket) depending on motherboard revision. It should be great for Carmageddon 2.

AlexZ wrote on 2026-04-24, 07:17:

It is a much better board - it has Intel 440BX chipset and supports Coppermine CPUs. You can run PIII 900 or 1000 (with slotket) depending on motherboard revision. It should be great for Carmageddon 2.

Ok. Thanks but im still not sure why bx run slow with games.. its not cpu not ram not drivers...

Read many threads about p3 and tnt2 good pair but not my mobo?

Put another gpu on mobo ( geforce4 mx440)

And get same behaviour . Low fps.

So yes. İts mobo chipset is a problem

You need to set some chipset options using wpcredit. Without it you will probably not see an improvement.

You should run 3dmark 99 to compare the score between different settings/gpus. Post your score so that we can compare. Use default settings, just run the benchmark.

AlexZ wrote on 2026-04-24, 08:47:

You need to set some chipset options using wpcredit. Without it you will probably not see an improvement.

You should run 3dmark 99 to compare the score between different settings/gpus. Post your score so that we can compare. Use default settings, just run the benchmark.

Dont know how to handle wpcredit
İs there any config file to insert program?

Btw flashing bios to latest affects performance?

cydvog wrote on 2026-04-24, 10:15:

Dont know how to handle wpcredit
İs there any config file to insert program?

See Re: Let's destroy the 440BX myth :-)

Google for "wpcredit braindrainlan" for downloading it from an ftp. You need wpcredit and pcr files for your chipset.

I could swear there was a thread on Vogons about tweaking tits out of VIA chipset
cydvog do you have USB 2.0 controller card in the system by any chance?

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-04-24, 19:14:

I could swear there was a thread on Vogons about tweaking tits out of VIA chipset
cydvog do you have USB 2.0 controller card in the system by any chance?

You mean external port?

No there is not only onboards usb's

hi again. is there any other fixes for this system ?

simply this system should work well older d3d games but in reality its not.

thanks.