VOGONS


Best Socket A (462) Motherboard?

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Reply 141 of 223, by Radical Vision

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Im collecting all the 462 socket boards, i have most of the high end

ABIT NF7-S V2
Soltek SL 75FRN2-RL
EPoX 8RDA3+
Chaintech Zenith CT7NJS
DFI Infinity Ultra (same board as LanParty, only thing lack are the better visuals and the start/restart buttons)
GIGABYTE GA-7N400 Pro (same as 7NNXP, only lack is the secondary VRM)
ASUS A7NBX-E Deluxe
MSI K7N2 Delta 2 ILSR (about the same as Delta 2 Platinum, only the color and minor changers)

Still missing AOpen board, SOYO Dragon, and specially MSI K7D Master-L for dual insane 462 set up...

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088

Reply 144 of 223, by Radical Vision

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I did heard from a fellow overclocker that the MSI dual AthlonXP board is capable of modding to get support for bartons, instead of the geodes, and that will be the ultimate 462 machine, just need to find one, also my 400W EnermaX will need replacement....
Guess how it will run dual Mobile Bartons on about 2.6GHz real speed pared with Radeon HD3850 now i call that a monster 462 system. My 462 is even now as 1 socket a monster but x2 processors well that will be insane....

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088

Reply 146 of 223, by deleted_Rc

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Radical Vision wrote:

I did heard from a fellow overclocker that the MSI dual AthlonXP board is capable of modding to get support for bartons, instead of the geodes, and that will be the ultimate 462 machine, just need to find one, also my 400W EnermaX will need replacement....
Guess how it will run dual Mobile Bartons on about 2.6GHz real speed pared with Radeon HD3850 now i call that a monster 462 system. My 462 is even now as 1 socket a monster but x2 processors well that will be insane....

How are you going to power a dual barton? Barton's use around 60 watt alone add a decent gpu and your PSU is nearly capped as it is 😵

Reply 147 of 223, by Radical Vision

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Well my 462 system is 110% stable tested on 2.6GHz (real speed) with that HD3850 under Primer 95, so it is ok, as that EnermaX have max 450W total power, and after all is EnermaX..

Now for the Dual Barton setup there will be needed stronger PSU, i have that

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40 amps on +5V, but funny is this PSU was unable to handle my system even with Radeon x1950 Pro, so i did not even try the HD3850 with this one, so maybe it will not work for me, at least till i change the caps inside as they all are junk..

Jupiter-18 wrote:

if you ever do find how to do that mod, please share. I'd love to get a similar setup running.

First need to find the MSI dual 462 board, as they guy with this board did tell me he did try the ASUS, Tyan boards and others, and they was not good for that.

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088

Reply 148 of 223, by marquisor

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I have K7D Master here, but I think it might need (re)work, I also have no XP/MP to test, also no regged ECC RAM anymore.
Just curious: Are there Socket A Dual boards for Duron/Thunderbird? up to 1400/133?

EDIT cnet.com tech specs say for the K7D Master-L <- What's the L?: Athlon, Duron. They're supported just OOTB? While XP they wanted to buy the more expensive MP version? (I modded my XP to an MP btw. back in the days)
Along with Win2k3 Server it was the most stable system I had in the early/mid 2000s.

Reply 149 of 223, by Radical Vision

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Good for you, as i look for that board for cheap, some day i will find it..

Original/stock of that board is Athlons, not even the Thoroughbred core is supported i think. Only the early processor right after thinderbird, like palomino core, but with some modding/hacking it is capable of running dual bartons..

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088

Reply 150 of 223, by marquisor

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I had it running with Thoroughbred XP/MP 2400+ without modification of the board.
I even believe it was 2600+ but that would require 333 FSB cnet.com sez, can't remember.

Reply 151 of 223, by Radical Vision

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What Thoroughbred the first core or the Thoroughbred B.
Interesting, well you can try to run Barton to see what will happen, so if that board is Thoroughbred capable of running then seems the BIOS modification is not so big.
Well then i will just need to find a board, as i have Mobile Bartons and they will run on it, and some PSU.
Dual Bartons running on 2.5GHz or even faster will demolish dual Pentium IV....
Post some good pictures of your boards want to see the quality of that MSI board, bcuz it seems every single MSI board have different capacitors and other element.

Seems like i found what i did want to know by luck...
Seems that board can run bartons without any problem, just need to find one then i will make the best possible dual AthlonXP that exists, same as my single 462 is the best out there..

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tp … 45#post-3347303

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088

Reply 153 of 223, by Tetrium

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Radical Vision wrote:
Well my 462 system is 110% stable tested on 2.6GHz (real speed) with that HD3850 under Primer 95, so it is ok, as that EnermaX h […]
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Well my 462 system is 110% stable tested on 2.6GHz (real speed) with that HD3850 under Primer 95, so it is ok, as that EnermaX have max 450W total power, and after all is EnermaX..

Now for the Dual Barton setup there will be needed stronger PSU, i have that

12345789.jpg

40 amps on +5V, but funny is this PSU was unable to handle my system even with Radeon x1950 Pro, so i did not even try the HD3850 with this one, so maybe it will not work for me, at least till i change the caps inside as they all are junk..

Jupiter-18 wrote:

if you ever do find how to do that mod, please share. I'd love to get a similar setup running.

First need to find the MSI dual 462 board, as they guy with this board did tell me he did try the ASUS, Tyan boards and others, and they was not good for that.

It's possible your 12v rail of 18A isn't enough to provide power to either your x1950 or your HD3850. These require good enough 12v lines.

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Reply 154 of 223, by gdjacobs

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Radical Vision wrote:

First need to find the MSI dual 462 board, as they guy with this board did tell me he did try the ASUS, Tyan boards and others, and they was not good for that.

Your limitation here is going to be FSB. Beyond that, you can always do the nail polish/conductive pen trick to turn your Athlon XP chips into Athlon MPs.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 155 of 223, by appiah4

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I used a lot of VIA boards back in the Socket A days, from the KT133 up to KT600, never used an NF2 board though.

Now I have in my possession an Abit AN7 Guru NForce 2 board, and hope to do a Sempron 2800+ build with it some day.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 157 of 223, by Radical Vision

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Tetrium wrote:

It's possible your 12v rail of 18A isn't enough to provide power to either your x1950 or your HD3850. These require good enough 12v lines.

Well the EnermaX have x2 +12V on 20 amps, and +5V is only 28 amps, as im not sure from what rail the AGP cards are pulling. When they are pCI express they use +12V, but when they are AGP i think they are on the +5V rail as well...
Interesting thing is that ThermalTake 500W PSU did behave really stable and no problems at all on my Opteron-LanParty Ultra-D system pared with OC on the CPU of 2.7GHz and Radeon HD4670 on stock did run Windows 10 32 bit and WoW Legion 7.1.5 no problems (only problem was the only 2GB of memory that did low sometimes the things way too much)...

gdjacobs wrote:

Your limitation here is going to be FSB. Beyond that, you can always do the nail polish/conductive pen trick to turn your Athlon XP chips into Athlon MPs.

The limit is still BUS speed, as now im using DDR400 speed but on 1T, that counts like 230 BUS speed, also the BIOS is really upgraded and have some enhancements, so the memory run at faster speed no matter that is still on 400. The real limitation on that platform is the old chipset, that does not support the newer socket 939 DDR500 and DDR600 memory, with that memory it can fly, but is not possible on 2GB kits..

appiah4 wrote:

I used a lot of VIA boards back in the Socket A days, from the KT133 up to KT600, never used an NF2 board though.

Now I have in my possession an Abit AN7 Guru NForce 2 board, and hope to do a Sempron 2800+ build with it some day.

As far as i know VIA chipset sucks, as they lack the AGP/PCI lock and this is important, also they was less stable then nForce. Only chipset im not sure about how it is is the VIA KT880 as it is newer then the NF2 and it is possible to maintain 2GB on faster speed then 400-440... But i think this chipset was not good as well on that.
Damn AN7 as im looking for this board, not sure for the LED if does anything, but the GURU chip is 100% useless i heard from other people..

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088

Reply 158 of 223, by swaaye

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VIA isn't the end of the world. If you have a Voodoo5, KT333 is a nice option. I like the ECS K7VTA3 v6.0 in particular because of its simplicity and relatively modern features (USB 2.0, 166 MHz Tbred/Barton support). There are games you can play on Voodoo5 that benefit from a lot of CPU power.

But if you don't care for 3.3v AGP support, then move along because yeah nForce 2 is tangibly faster in various cases than even KT880. Especially for GUI performance for some reason.

Reply 159 of 223, by Radical Vision

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Yeah VIA chips are way better in terms of supporting Voodoo 5 with AGP universal slot..
Still Voodoo 5 5500 on PCI is way better, but way harder to get...

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088