Yes, with older Via chipsets, you generally want older Via drivers... even 4.35 is a bit new, I'd try 4.25a. The reason is mainly for performance, but the older drivers do also give better stability on my KX133 Athlon system, so maybe you'll get similar results on the even older MVP3?

Ah, thanks! 😀 Actually, I am wondering something - I think someone's mentioned this in the past, but because I enjoy testing lots of hardware, I sometimes lose track of "what's what". I wonder if I should simply stick to the Windows 98 SE CD-ROM "built in" drivers? Also, please if possible, can you upload or point to a link for 4.25a? I would be interested in testing this, out of curiosity, but it would be very useful to have, because some of my VIA hardware is old.

I've just OC'd the board again, to 600 MHz using 2.1 volts. I ran the crazy stress test as before. No problems to report, other than a few minor and isolated graphical glitches - on Sandra's multimedia test, the fractal image was slightly corrupted. When SuperPi + Prime95 + Sandra tests were running, I also ran 3DMark 2000! Hehe, it works, but unfortunately as I type this message, it's got stuck on the high detail adventure test. I'll try 2.2 volts, and run this crazy test again...

It's possible that the isolated graphical glitches has something to do with the Leadtek Winfast GF3 Ti200 I am using. I did notice in the VIA 4.43 read me notes that there is a special mention for Leadtek hardware. It recommends that you install the Leadtek driver first, and then the VIA service pack. I didn't do that, because I wanted to use the nVidia 43.x driver, and not an outdated Leadtek driver.

Edit: Regarding 4.25a, I just found it on DriverGuide. I'm downloading it now. Hopefully it's the right package...

Success! My crazy stress tests now work. I increased the CPU volts to 2.2. I ran SuperPi + Prime95 + Sandra 2002 Pro tests + 3DMark 2000, all at the same time. I saw no graphical glitches, and all tests passed. That's using 4.35 AGP + mini port driver components only.

The BIOS timings were completely maxed out. CPU multi set to 6, running at 600 MHz. Sandra thinks the CPU temp is 26C. That's quite low, after that "work out"! However, the heatsink is a very good one, and there is paste on it and the CPU.

I successfully flashed the board! I used UniFlash. I found the BIOS file on DriverGuide. The file on that site is called DFI20P5BV320rev.B.zip. This is for the revision B board. Apparently, there are 3 revisions of this board: A, B, and C. The old BIOS string was 01/03/2000-VP3-586B-CD-2A5LED4CC-00. The new BIOS string is 11/30/2000-VP3-586B-CD-2A5LED4CC-00.

BTW, is there a utility that can read/display/save this BIOS string for me? I find it difficult to write it down during the BIOS POST stage. If anyone wants a working but slightly older (01/03, as opposed to 11/30) BIOS file for this DFI P5BV3+ rev 3 board, I have included it as an attachment. You will need to rename this .txt file to .bin in order to use it.

When using UniFlash, I find it useful to make a back up BIOS save file first. If something goes wrong with the flash operation such as a verify failure, you are given the chance to use the back up BIOS file.

Returning to the original topic of conversation, which is the Asus P5A mainboard, rev 1.06. I am not going to try the K6 + chip. Instead, it came with a K6-2 chip, 550 MHz speed. The fastest K6-2 chip, perhaps? I am wondering what kind of overclock this thing can tolerate? Also, I am going to do a fresh Windows 98 install on this board, and then use VIA's service pack version 4.25A with it. Begin Edit: Oops, this board uses the ALi chipset, so naturally I will not be using the VIA chipset driver. End Edit. I will then do some crazy stress tests, as mentioned earlier...

Edit (2): My "crazy stress tests" work on the Asus P5A 1.06 mobo, with the K6-2 550 MHz CPU.

Man I hated the Via MVP3. I had chaintech 5agm2 with a K6/2 500mhz and it sucked. Well, to be perfectly honest, K6/3 + P5A (ali chipset) also sucked (but not that much!). I also never bothered to install Via 4-in-1 on a MVP3 system - does it really do something? I mean, does it really matter - do you notice any performance increase or change?

There was also a 'george's memory patch' for the MVP3 which I used to use a long time ago to make the system a bit faster. Since you are playing with that junk, you may want to try it just for the kicks:
http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/
(memory interleaving patch)

Edit: I cant find the old georges memory tweak 🙁 The link above offers something similar, but I never tried it. The above seems to be a driver for windows, mine was a DOS version.

retro games 100 wrote:

I successfully flashed the board! I used UniFlash.

UniFlash...interesting.

And about those VIA drivers, would there be any problem by just using the MS standard drivers? Btw RG100, you gonna give ME a go on that board, just for comparison? 😉

BTW, is there a utility that can read/display/save this BIOS string for me? I find it difficult to write it down during the BIOS POST stage.

I just use the pause/break key 😜

And even if that doesn't work (but it has for me) then you could just film the boot process for a couple seconds 😉

I didn't realise there was a memory patch for DOS. That sounds interesting. Hopefully someone will have a copy, somewhere. Regarding the 4-in-1 driver package, I wonder if it has a slightly updated AGP driver component, compared to the MS W98 CD? VIA's version 4.35 has an installation option for standard AGP and "turbo" AGP. I wonder if "turbo" enables 2x speed? Version 4.43 doesn't offer this particular option, but I think it supports the AGP 3.0 standard.

Regarding ME, I may give this a go sometime in the future. BTW, I like the idea of trying the pause/break key, and if that fails, then to film the BIOS POST sequence, when attempting to "capture" the BIOS identification string for documentation purposes. Good thinking. Thanks.

retro games 100 wrote:

I didn't realise there was a memory patch for DOS. That sounds interesting. Hopefully someone will have a copy, somewhere. Regarding the 4-in-1 driver package, I wonder if it has a slightly updated AGP driver component, compared to the MS W98 CD? VIA's version 4.35 has an installation option for standard AGP and "turbo" AGP. I wonder if "turbo" enables 2x speed? Version 4.43 doesn't offer this particular option, but I think it supports the AGP 3.0 standard.

Regarding ME, I may give this a go sometime in the future. BTW, I like the idea of trying the pause/break key, and if that fails, then to film the BIOS POST sequence, when attempting to "capture" the BIOS identification string for documentation purposes. Good thinking. Thanks.

Np mate, just trying to make life less hard then it really needs to be, right? ;D

And about the MVP3 chipset, I never build a rig around one before, even though I have motherboards with both these chipsets. I purposefully used ali since it seemed to be less troublesome.

I used ME on the ali board (a GA-5AX 4.1) and can't remember if I even bothered to install any special drivers on it, apart from the driver for the Voodoo 2.

retro games 100 wrote:

I wonder if "turbo" enables 2x speed?

If you mean AGP x2 - then the answer is no. x2 works either way, at least on KT133a and V5 5500 (not that x2 brings any performance gains on 3dfx though). Otherwise, I never really noticed any difference in using turbo vs normal mode. Meh. 😒

A google search revealed version 4.35 was released in 2002? It's very much possible this is a feature not supported on your board anyway 😉

Having said that, I don't really have a clue what it's supposed to do.

I did find this:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search? … e=www.google.nl

I have been reading the release notes for VIA's 4-in-1 service pack, version 4.43. They can been seen here. There's a previous release date column in this table. Two 4.35 versions were released in 2001/10/25 and 2001/11/08. 4.43 was released in 2002/9/11.

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