Yeah! I remember the LAN Party series with the fluorescent pci slots and the handle to carry your case to the party. Too bad those bad caps from the new millenium 🙁 I still have my 1998 DFI P2XBL with zero bad caps, but anything after that can have that problem.

It would be a fine contender for Win98 gaming (1998-2002) but the mother board is the heart of the system and unless you can and like to substitute those caps yourself...
You can always try to find another mboard.

Athlon systems are cool 😎 :
My Windows 98 Dream Machine: El Cheapo Comeback.
ATHLON 64 DUAL BOOT WIN98SE/WINXP SYSTEM

if the caps are all about to blow, replace the board. if its a real nice board you like, then you can re-cap it. just make sure the uF rating is the same, voltage doesn't matter.

Voltage does matter, the rating needs to be the same or higher than the originals. Also you'll need low ESR caps... it's not such a big deal on PII/PIII boards, but starting with the Athlon and P4 boards it's critical.

The LanParty NFII is definitely worth recapping, it's one of the better Socket A boards.

3DfxNerd wrote:

if the caps are all about to blow, replace the board. if its a real nice board you like, then you can re-cap it. just make sure the uF rating is the same, voltage doesn't matter.

NOT true.

if you put a 6.3v cap in a place where it will see 12v. you might as well put firecrackers on your motherboard. if you do the opposite, its okay, but often the cap will be too big. more volts = bigger caps.

With the relative cheap prices of caps, get the right ones.

I might try to recap it one day. After all, capacitors aside, this is probably the nicest Socket A board I've seen. For now though, I'm kind of curious as to just how much longer the thing will run and just how much further I can push it.

Running with bad caps can cause damage in the long term. It usually won't blow anything up immediately (unless one of the caps goes shorted, which does happen sometimes), but it does put considerably more stress on the VRM circuitry.

old thrashbarg is right, it can cause irreversable damage to the CPUs voltage circuitry, which is 1 thing you don't want unstable. if it gets too high, no more CPU. if too low, it will perform like crap/not at all.

@luckybob what I meant to say was as long as its same/higer it doesn't matter, my mistake for wording that wrong.

There is two ways of doing it and the other I have not had any problems replacing caps with the same voltage but different UF. It all comes down to the circuit and what it will tolerate. I have seen people use caps that were twice the voltage of the ones that they replaced.

No, there's only one right way to do it. Replace caps with the same capacitance value and equal or greater voltage. The voltage rating is just the maximum voltage the cap can stand without blowing. Since the voltage applied to the cap is determined by the circuit, and won't change, you can use a higher rating.

The capacitance however is what caps are all about, and if you use a different rating the effects will depend entirely on what the cap is actually doing in the circuit. It may not matter, it may not work at all. If you don't understand the circuit enough to be certain that a different capacitance value is not going to matter, don't mess with it.

I don't think of Athlon XP as that old - my fastest computer is an athlon xp2400+ 😳

ncmark wrote:

I don't think of Athlon XP as that old - my fastest computer is an athlon xp2400+ 😳

🤣, yes I know what you mean, only a decade ago. It was a very interesting time in terms of tech evolution, so that is one point, and for the ones of us that have good memories associated with the beginning of the new millenium is good to relive it.

IMO, it the Athlon XP itself is a great chip but it feels like the majority of motherboards and many chipsets that support it are pieces of crap. Also, for daily use, while the Athlon XP might have had an edge back in it's day, it feels like NetBurst aged a little more gracefully.

I do remember back in 2002 building a brand new Athlon XP system. It's the first system I played any serious games on. I never realized the performance potential back then because the motherboard I used took PC133 SDRAM. It wasn't until years later I got a few motherboards that used DDR. That was also my first experience with a SiS chipset which I found to be very nice. It's too bad they never became very popular; they made a much nicer product than VIA.

I think AMD itself had a chipset that was very decent, never got my hands on any motherboard though, but your right the Athlon was a good cpu, but that's no good if chipsets screw it up. That's why we have to thank nVidia for the nForce!

I still use a P4 today, they don't show their age if you upgrade them to 2GB of RAM and a 128MB vid card, it can still do more than my new laptop can. and the main computer I use was made in 2004, and re-built by me in 2008.

Netburst hardware is also a lot easier to source! Tons of machine were sold. AMD gear is quite a lot harder to find.

I play the Non-BFG edition of Doom 3 on my Barton core Athlon XP. I use an NVidia 5900 XT AGP card, still looks terrific. Ironically I have two 12MB Voodoo 2 cards in there, but I have yet to get that 3dfx Doom 3 patch working. I thought the screenshots looked kinda ugly texture-wise, but it was still a cool thing to try.

"Oh noes, my noez!!"
http://www.hwsetup.it/images/screenshots/3dfx … 15193533_35.jpg

Yea it's funny how console gamers get excited about Doom 3 in HD when us PC gamers have been able to play it at 1200P many many years ago 😁

The reason consoles dominate is because they provide a dedicated platform with minimal overhead specially optimized for games whereas computers have to do a number of tasks. High end computers and even many mid range will always provide better graphics than contemporary consoles. However, between the fact most computers in use are low end systems designed for spreadsheets and internet, and the fact consoles provide a consistent platform from user to user without deviation in specs, it's safe to say it will still be a couple more years before computers are able to kill the console market.

On top of that, there's a certain edge to be had from minimal boot times and not having to install and activate every game you play. It's much easier to bring a playstation game to a friends house to have fun than it is with a PC game.

On top of that, there's a certain edge to be had from minimal boot times and not having to install and activate every game you play. It's much easier to bring a playstation game to a friends house to have fun than it is with a PC game.

An edge that has been completely lost with the current generation of consoles.