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SS7 cpu choice.

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First post, by ODwilly

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I recently acquired a pcchips m577 in working order and a k6 2-350afr installed. Now on hand I have a k6 2-500afx and a k6 3-333afk. Out of these cpu's which one would be the best choice for general 9x usage? I have a 1.1ghz Athlon machine running 2k that does well for the more intensive stuff and a Pentium 166 pc for slower games.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 1 of 25, by PhilsComputerLab

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Is this board capable of running at 100 MHz FSB?

The K6-III has more cache, which gives it a speed advantage, but the clockspeed of your K6-2 is likely to make up for that.

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Reply 2 of 25, by ODwilly

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Ya the board can run at 100mhz fsb, but my k6-3 is limited to 95mhz. I have played around with voltage settings and multipliers and it will boot at 366mhz no problem on stock 2.2v. Have yet to play around with the 500 but from all accounts it should OC to 550 easily.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 3 of 25, by PhilsComputerLab

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A higher FSB will give you a nice performance boost.

You can always run it at 100x3=300 MHz. That should be quite fine. But the K6-2 at 100x5 will for sure be faster.

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Reply 4 of 25, by ODwilly

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I will try to get the k6-3 to run at 100mhz FSB and maybe bump up the voltage and see if I cant get it to run at least 400mhz. Otherwise the k6-2 it is! 😀 my only complaint with this motherboard so far are the terrible ram slots and the lack of 2.3 or 2.4v settings. It jumps from 2.2 to 2.5 and higher 😒

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 5 of 25, by ODwilly

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SUCCESS!!! vcore set to 2.5, fsb set to 100 and multiplier at 4x. Now to decide on gpu that wont fry the agp 1x slot/motherboard.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 6 of 25, by PhilsComputerLab

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2.5V?

That's a lot of voltage. My K6-III+ is rated at 1.6V. You might be pushing it a bit hard. In general I don't like overclocking old hardware, but that's another story 😀

What voltage is your CPU rated at? It should be written on the processor.

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Reply 7 of 25, by ODwilly

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My k6-3 is rated at 2.2 volts stock, same with the k6-2's. The funny thing is that according to cpu world my k6-3 was supposed to be in a laptop, I pulled it out of a matx MSI desktop board that was full of rotten caps! I agree with you on overclocking old hardware. I will reset it to 2.2v and see if it boots

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 8 of 25, by ODwilly

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Reset the voltage to 2.2, boots fine. Would a Savage2000 work in this AGP 1.0 slot ok? or does it pull to much power?

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 9 of 25, by PhilsComputerLab

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Not sure, sorry. But I doubt it.

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Reply 10 of 25, by ODwilly

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I could have sworn there was a thread or two on here about video cards and SS7 boards.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 11 of 25, by Skyscraper

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Nice scrore!

The M577 is probably PC-chips best socket 7 board, I have two and both works perfectly. The K6-3 @400 is best paired with a Voodoo Banshee, a Voodoo 3 or a Geforce 2 MX 400 combined with a single Voodoo 2. If you find a K6-3+ and manage to run it at 6x100 then a full Geforce 2, Geforce 4 MX or even a Geforce 3 ti 200 makes sense.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 12 of 25, by ODwilly

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Skyscraper wrote:

Nice scrore!

The M577 is probably PC-chips best socket 7 board, I have two and both works perfectly. The K6-3 @400 is best paired with a Voodoo Banshee, a Voodoo 3 or a Geforce 2 MX 400 combined with a single Voodoo 2. If you find a K6-3+ and manage to run it at 6x100 then a full Geforce 2, Geforce 4 MX or even a Geforce 3 ti 200 makes sense.

Thanks! I snagged it off ebay for $16 as-is untested. Do you know if this particular board has the problem providing power through the AGP slot? I am paranoid since this is the first SS7 board I have ever gotten that was not fried.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 13 of 25, by Skyscraper

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ODwilly wrote:
Skyscraper wrote:

Nice scrore!

The M577 is probably PC-chips best socket 7 board, I have two and both works perfectly. The K6-3 @400 is best paired with a Voodoo Banshee, a Voodoo 3 or a Geforce 2 MX 400 combined with a single Voodoo 2. If you find a K6-3+ and manage to run it at 6x100 then a full Geforce 2, Geforce 4 MX or even a Geforce 3 ti 200 makes sense.

Thanks! I snagged it off ebay for $16 as-is untested. Do you know if this particular board has the problem providing power through the AGP slot? I am paranoid since this is the first SS7 board I have ever gotten that was not fried.

No but Im not sure I have tested any demanding cards in my M577 boards. I run an AGP Voodoo Banshee in the board Im using and it works great at least, I think I have used a Geforce 2 MX 400 with a Voodoo 2 aswell. I would just test the cards and see if its stable or not, avoid Geforce 2 Ultra and Geforce 3 Vanilla/500.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 14 of 25, by ODwilly

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Thanks for the info! I have so many stacks of agp cards it is getting pathetic. People just keep throwing them out and I scoop them up 😀

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 15 of 25, by dr_st

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I have a similar setup with a Super Socket 7 board. The CPU it came with is a K6-2, which may originally have been rated 450MHz or 475MHz, but it runs at 100*5=500MHz rock solid at the stock 2.2V voltage.

It wouldn't do 550MHz at 2.2V (it would POST fine, but most of the time lock up in the middle of the boot). The board I happen to have in that system is so bad that it jumps from 2.2V to 2.8V. I wish I at least had a 2.5V setting like yours. 2.5V may still be OK for a K6-2, or so I heard, but 2.8V is a definite no-no.

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Reply 16 of 25, by ODwilly

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Mine goes all the way up to 3.5v O.0 can you imagine how fast the poor little k6 would fry? It can run Cyrix 6x86 chips so that may be the reason why. EDIT: Yep Cyrix 6x86 PR200 runs at 3.3 volts. No wonder why those thing run so hot.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 17 of 25, by dr_st

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Come to think about, it (Super) Socket 7 is an amazing thing. A relic of an old era in computing, before CPU technology diverged so much that it could not physically stay compatible. Can you imagine today being able to run CPUs from Intel, AMD, Cyrix, and a few obscure ones - all in the same board?

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Reply 18 of 25, by ODwilly

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Heck there are not even that many cpu manufacturers any more!

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 19 of 25, by meljor

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From falconfly:

AGP voltage regulator notes: There is a problem with the combination of older motherboards and newer AGP graphic cards. This is due to the fact that some of the early AGP motherboards used a linear regulator to control the power supply to the AGP slot. Linear regulators can supply at most 2.5A of current, while the switching regulator used on newer motherboards can supply up to 6A at 3.3V. When these motherboards with linear regulators were produced, the average consumption of a graphics card was 1 to 2A, making a supply of 2.5A more than sufficient. Since then, graphic cards have developed and currently the average consumption is between 4 and 5A. This is no problem for motherboards using a switching regulator, but older boards with a linear regulator may run into issues such as overheating, burnouts, and lockups.

So try to find out what type of regulator is on that board. If it's a late revision board it should be fine i think.

Safe cards for the older linear regulators should be: Geforce2 MX, MatroxG200, TNT1/TNT2 M64, Voodoo Banshee. Voodoo3 3000 will be too much, don't know about the 2000 but i wouldn't risk it.
Banshee is a perfect match for a fast k6-2 anyway, v3 comes to life with p3.

In my experience Nvidia cards are a hit and miss on ss7 boards when it comes to stability. I have a GTS in my asus p5b but a gf2Ti or MX will not run stable. So matrox and 3dfx are your best choices.

If you want absolute trouble-free operation and take no chances with voltage regulators: Use a PCI card.

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