VOGONS


Ultimate Intel 2004-2005 PC Pentium Build WIP

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First post, by Warlord

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Basically done.

This is the ultimate 2004 Build. It's what the P4 should of been. These PM overclock beastly and can easily beat the fastest AMD offerings of 2004-2005 when overclocked. This CPU would be what Conroe evolved from. It owns its linage not from the P4 architecture but from the Pentium III.

In hinds site this is very much a big boys build... It's not like the typical retro build. My 486 VLB build was less involved than this one. The ct-479s are ultra rare to get anymore and so is the case. You need to be comfortable with overclocking. And be prepared to either spend a fortune or be extremely patient and lucky like I was.

The Nightmare Build. The case describes it all perfectly.
file.php?mode=view&id=105946
file.php?mode=view&id=105975
I search for years for this. It's something I've always wanted. Then one day it appeared. So it begins.
file.php?mode=view&id=105970

2 Gigs of DDR400 Overclocked 3-3-3-8 T1 @ 533 Mhz. 2.65v
file.php?mode=view&id=105457
BFG 6800 GT OC, 100% rebuilt thermal pads and Noctua paste overclocked to Ultra Speeds. 60c full load.(Fan 35% Throttle)
file.php?mode=view&id=105950

Sparkle ATX-450PN
file.php?mode=view&id=105622
Intel 1000MT. Maximum CPU Offload.
file.php?mode=view&id=105949
Zalman Fan Mod ( with fan controller on super low speed setting)
file.php?mode=view&id=105847

Typical Vogons User sound card
file.php?mode=view&id=106041
Cable Management still a bit rubbish
file.php?mode=view&id=106038
🤣 my multiple different size thumb screws
file.php?mode=view&id=106040
All my mismatched holy blanks
file.php?mode=view&id=106039
Not retro without CD and floppy
file.php?mode=view&id=106042
file.php?mode=view&id=106043
Nightmare PC build even looks like one.
file.php?mode=view&id=106044

Last edited by Warlord on 2021-07-05, 22:07. Edited 34 times in total.

Reply 1 of 97, by chinny22

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Used the same M/B for my own 98/XP build. Research at the time came to the conclusion the P4P800 series was pretty much the best 865 based board.
P4P800 End of Win98 Support Build

For a stupid fast Win98 PC it's great as long as you don't put a stupid amount of ram in like i did!

Must admit though it's my least used system. Newer games run fine if not better on my S775 XP build and older games are more fun on my P3.
That said I can't bring myself to part it out or put it in storage.

Reply 2 of 97, by Cobra42898

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i haven't gotten to try it myself, but in theory if you create a ramdisk that leaves ~500mb ram available, it should then be able to run win9x okay. XP would of course run without the ramdisk and use the full amount. I've done the vcache and maxphyspage mods, and gotten 98se to run on 1gb ram, but haven't had time to try the ramdisk. This was on my d865gbf MB.

Searching for Epson Actiontower 3000 486 PC.

Reply 3 of 97, by Warlord

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Cobra42898 wrote on 2020-07-27, 13:02:

i haven't gotten to try it myself, but in theory if you create a ramdisk that leaves ~500mb ram available, it should then be able to run win9x okay. XP would of course run without the ramdisk and use the full amount. I've done the vcache and maxphyspage mods, and gotten 98se to run on 1gb ram, but haven't had time to try the ramdisk. This was on my d865gbf MB.

Id just use rloew patchmem patch. RIP rloew.
https://archive.org/details/rloewelectronics.com

Reply 4 of 97, by Warlord

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chinny22 wrote on 2020-07-27, 11:28:
Used the same M/B for my own 98/XP build. Research at the time came to the conclusion the P4P800 series was pretty much the best […]
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Used the same M/B for my own 98/XP build. Research at the time came to the conclusion the P4P800 series was pretty much the best 865 based board.
P4P800 End of Win98 Support Build

For a stupid fast Win98 PC it's great as long as you don't put a stupid amount of ram in like i did!

Must admit though it's my least used system. Newer games run fine if not better on my S775 XP build and older games are more fun on my P3.
That said I can't bring myself to part it out or put it in storage.

That's a beautiful rig you made. I like the darkside look. Thanks for advice on ram. I'll probably just do 2 sticks of ram. 2 puts less stress on the northbridge. I haven't decide if i'll do 2x 1gb or 2x 512.

Theres other asus boards like the p4p800 SE. Same research led me to pick that one. It has less integrated components than the others. Which mean more stability, and less stress on the VRM.

Reply 5 of 97, by pete8475

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Are you using the Asus CT-479 adapter to get that pentium m in that board?

I occasionally search ebay for that part but I've never seen one come up, I'd love to buy one.

EDIT - Upon closer inspection I do see CT-479 on the fan sticker.

Were you lucky enough to find one on ebay?

Reply 6 of 97, by Warlord

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pete8475 wrote on 2020-07-27, 20:51:
Are you using the Asus CT-479 adapter to get that pentium m in that board? […]
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Are you using the Asus CT-479 adapter to get that pentium m in that board?

I occasionally search ebay for that part but I've never seen one come up, I'd love to buy one.

EDIT - Upon closer inspection I do see CT-479 on the fan sticker.

Were you lucky enough to find one on ebay?

I passed up a few opportunities to get one years ago. They became scarce later and I regretted.
There was this guy who hoarded a few. Unknown reasons. He wasn't trying to make money off them.
He sold one in the middle of the night buy it now. I had been asking about these adapters in another thread when it happen.
I messaged that guy and found out he had more. Then every day I check his listing for like 4 months and I jumped on it the second I see it.
So it's not really luck on my part. Only Luck that this guy existed. And luck that someone else notice him.
I had been searching hardcore for one for a long time though. So I find out bcuz of that.
Anyways I do consider myself lucky to have one. Since I do not want to go through that long agonizing search again.

Reply 7 of 97, by matze79

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If you can`t find Adapters look for MSI Speedster FA4

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 8 of 97, by Standard Def Steve

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matze79 wrote on 2020-07-28, 07:03:

If you can`t find Adapters look for MSI Speedster FA4

The Speedsters are great little boards. I bought two of them 10 years ago when they were dirt cheap. Both are still working just fine. I use one as a file server (Pentium M 745 @ 2.4GHz/533FSB, with around 26 TB of storage), and another as a WinXP gaming/fool-around box (Pentium M 755 @ 2.72GHz/544FSB, with a GTX 260 revB and X-Fi Titanium).

Really cool thing about these boards is that they were designed as workstation boards, so they have dual gigabit NICs, optical audio, FireWire, bullet proof AHCI support on the SATA ports (which is actually quite rare for first-gen SATA 150 chipsets like the i915), and they fully expose the Dothan's PAE and NX bit to the OS. These boards actually work with Win10!

P6 chip. Triple the speed of the Pentium.
Tualatin: PIII-S @ 1628MHz | QDI Advance 12T | 2GB DDR-310 | 6800GT | X-Fi | 500GB HDD | 3DMark01: 14,059
Dothan: PM @ 2.9GHz | MSI Speedster FA4 | 2GB DDR2-580 | GTX 750Ti | X-Fi | 500GB SSD | 3DMark01: 43,190

Reply 9 of 97, by Warlord

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I promised myself I'll get back to building this thing today. So I'll post more pics later.
I have also a Aopen 915 socket 479 board. It's just like the speedster.
Problem for me with it is it's pci express. This here is AGP.
WIth PCI express that reduce a lot of compatibility with grahpics.
With this, I can down clock it to 600 mhz if i wanted and run a geforce 2.
The it becomes very retro. Can't do that with my aopen board.

Reply 10 of 97, by pentiumspeed

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I had P4P800 with my pentium m adapter running XP. Very nice, and best of all, I still have the adapter and bought P4P800 and P5P800 boards to choose from last year. I had to graciously give away the P4p800 and some P4 processor to a guy's friend who needed PC built (carefully by me!), due to friend not smart to buy parts which ended up gotten broken or junk by his not so nimble hands. I used spare parts that no longer needed back in the late days back then. Nothing vitally critical.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 11 of 97, by God Of Gaming

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A CT479 adapter, nice, I also want one and have been looking for one for several years now... why are these so rare?

1999 Dream PC project | DirectX 8 PC project | 2003 Dream PC project

Reply 12 of 97, by pentiumspeed

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Oddly the cost of Asus CT-479 kit is not that expensive back in the day but funny thing people wasn't thinking of using much better pentium-M but I think the fsb could be the reason that holds this back on overall performance?

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 13 of 97, by God Of Gaming

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I have a pentim M 765 (2.1ghz) in my ibm thinkpad t42p and performance is alright but certainly held back by the chipset with single channel ddr memory, on ct-479 adapter and dual channel ddr mobo it seems to be pretty comparable to 939 athlon 64s clock for clock

1999 Dream PC project | DirectX 8 PC project | 2003 Dream PC project

Reply 14 of 97, by Warlord

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Small update. Still in testing phase of the build.
Decided to go with 1024 MB of ram. At least until I can find a set of 2gb (2X1gb) with good timings.
The best ram I have is this winbond BH5. It's running stable at 2-2-2-5. (2x512mb)
Sandra 2001 Ram benchmark 98se.

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Reply 15 of 97, by Katmai500

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Warlord wrote on 2020-07-27, 21:25:
I passed up a few opportunities to get one years ago. They became scarce later and I regretted. There was this guy who hoar […]
Show full quote
pete8475 wrote on 2020-07-27, 20:51:
Are you using the Asus CT-479 adapter to get that pentium m in that board? […]
Show full quote

Are you using the Asus CT-479 adapter to get that pentium m in that board?

I occasionally search ebay for that part but I've never seen one come up, I'd love to buy one.

EDIT - Upon closer inspection I do see CT-479 on the fan sticker.

Were you lucky enough to find one on ebay?

I passed up a few opportunities to get one years ago. They became scarce later and I regretted.
There was this guy who hoarded a few. Unknown reasons. He wasn't trying to make money off them.
He sold one in the middle of the night buy it now. I had been asking about these adapters in another thread when it happen.
I messaged that guy and found out he had more. Then every day I check his listing for like 4 months and I jumped on it the second I see it.
So it's not really luck on my part. Only Luck that this guy existed. And luck that someone else notice him.
I had been searching hardcore for one for a long time though. So I find out bcuz of that.
Anyways I do consider myself lucky to have one. Since I do not want to go through that long agonizing search again.

I'm glad to see you've made good use of your CT-479! I also have a P4P800SE and a boxed CT-479 that I got from the same seller. I think I may have been the person who posted about it in the thread where you were discussing wanting a CT-479 here: Re: 479 Motherboards

I'll be watching this build for inspiration!

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Reply 16 of 97, by Warlord

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Thanks. More coming soon. Small update.
My video card.
It's not ready yet for the build but heres a teaser.
As far as I know it's real gold plated.

Last edited by Warlord on 2021-03-23, 19:38. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 18 of 97, by dr_st

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Warlord wrote on 2020-07-27, 02:13:

This to me is the ultimate single core 98se AGP build. That is 100% compatible with zero hacks. This build to me, is like a Pentium 3/Tualatin build on steroids. It is like a 2ghz PIII with SSE 2 and DDR, with AGP 8x

Is compatibility better with a P-M, compared to using a normal Socket478 P4 and disabling HT in the BIOS?

https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/ - Random content on hardware, software, games and toys

Reply 19 of 97, by Warlord

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dr_st wrote on 2020-08-04, 11:54:
Warlord wrote on 2020-07-27, 02:13:

This to me is the ultimate single core 98se AGP build. That is 100% compatible with zero hacks. This build to me, is like a Pentium 3/Tualatin build on steroids. It is like a 2ghz PIII with SSE 2 and DDR, with AGP 8x

Is compatibility better with a P-M, compared to using a normal Socket478 P4 and disabling HT in the BIOS?

"The Pentium M coupled the execution core of the Pentium III with a Pentium 4 compatible bus interface, an improved instruction decoding/issuing front end, improved branch prediction, SSE2 support, and a much larger cache."

TLDR
It uses less power, it's faster, and it has unlocked multiplier.