First post, by boxpressed
- Rank
- Oldbie
I think I have settled on my go-to late-DOS / Win98SE machine. I have been trying to decide between an Intel SE440BX-2 with a Tualeron 1300MHz and a Soyo K7VTA Pro with an Athlon XP 2400+. I have finished my bench testing on the latter and have chosen it.
I really like the stability of the Intel platform (especially when I am using a 1000MHz Slot 1 P3 instead of the Powerleap Tualeron), but the Soyo and its VIA drivers have been surprisingly stable after testing with Quake, Duke 3D, Quake 2, Unreal Gold, UT99, and Deus Ex. I tested with a Geforce 4 Ti4600 and a Voodoo 3 3500. The only program that crashes is SiSoft Sandra 99, but I assume that it has problems with the newer VIA chipset. Also, weird things happen when I use 512MB of CAS2 PC133 SDRAM, so I stuck with 256MB.
Also, I like what the Athlon 2400+ turns into with this system when you disable its internal cache: a 486DX2-66. This is a perfect speed for Epic games such as One Must Fall, Jazz, Epic Pinball, and Tyrian. Speedsys gives it a score of 26.61.
I am using the heatsink/fan combo that came with a retail Sempron, and it is quiet. Even with the Soyo fan over the chipset, the system is a LOT quieter than the Intel board. The fan on the 1000MHz P3 is loud, and the Powerleap fan on the Tualeron is very loud.
So there you have it:
SOYO K7VTA PRO 1.0 (4-in-1 4.43v)
AMD ATHLON XP 2400+
256MB CAS2 PC133 SDRAM
GEFORCE 4 TI4600 OR 3DFX VOODOO 3 3500
AUREAL VORTEX 2
SB AWE64 GOLD
ANTEC TRUE POWER 480 PS (NOT SHOWN)
I'm toying with the idea of using a GUS and relying on the Vortex's SB Pro emulation for games that don't support the GUS natively, but I think this setup is better. There's always SoftMPU and the MT-32 too.
I've got a brand new beige Antec case for it that the Seattle is occupying right now, so the Seattle will be a bench board for now.