Nice motherboard, a rock solid product.

Ok, so now that the system is up and running with Windows 98se, I gave Half Life 1 Uplink demo a try but the performance seem's off... or maybe it's normal? I'm testing the system on a 17" LCD @1024, however it'll be used on a 17" CRT, and Half Life demo was run at 1024 using OpenGL.
What I noticed was the FPS must have been around 15-20... nothing super smooth. It was playable... but noticeable lag.

For drivers, I installed VIA's 4in1 version 4.35, and for the TNT2 Pro I used the Nvidia Detonator's version 43. So why the lag? Because HL should run butter smooth on this system no? Is is the drivers? AGP driver? The fact it's on a K6-2, or Via chipset?

I haven't run anything else, going to install Swat 3 soon.

Our memory often tricks us in believing games ran better than they did.

For anything 3D in Windows I go straight to a Pentium III Slot 1 system.

The K6 is awesome in combination with a Voodoo 2 however. Got one lying around?

No, I wish, I've been keeping my eye out for voodoo card at a reasonable price without too much luck. I almost won a PCI V3-3000 the other day until the seller ended it early for some reason and another user had already outbid me. I'm not sure I want to go with a Voodoo 2 though, I prefer the all in one cards. This TNT2 should be strong but back in the day I stuck purely with the 3DFX card's myself, mainly 2000 and 3000 AGP.
You're probably right about the performance though, it's been 15 years since I've played Half Life and when I did I had a P2-350 on a 440BX with the V3-3000 AGP so... no performance issues there.

And back in the day I avoided Via Chipset's like the plague. Used the Intel 440BX for many years, Abit BH6, BE6-II. I just remember issue's back then with Via Drivers.

This article features HL benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/211/4

Seems it needs a good CPU.

Can you post some synthetic benchmark scores such as sisoft sandra, 3dmark etc? Performance can be tweaked in via chipsets if the BIOS doesn't do it properly. However I'm not sure about that in the case of a Aopen board, whose bios might have already tweaked it to the maximum by default.

Well, after seeing that HL Benchmark seem's like a strong Pentium II or III makes more sense for this line of gaming. I did originally run it on my own P2-350. The thing about this system is I'm trying to keep it with an era, and so I didn't want something super fast, nor Pentium 75. It's going to run all the VGA Sierra games, FMV games like Tex Murphy, Gab Knight 2, and then extent to Swat 3, and HL. For the later games that's why I needed the extra power, but seem's like maybe I"m trying to stretch things too far.

You should be able to get decent gaming experience on a k6.2 550 in half life. def something wrong with your setup, although you can get cheap k6.3+ 400mhz cpus off ebay these clcok easily to 500 or 550mhz. They are rated at 400mhz because of the low low laptop voltage.

Ok, here's a benchmark with SiSoft Sandra 99. I'm using 128mb PC100 memory and the memory benchmark score is slower then even a Pentium MMX with EDO... though on a TX Chipset. VIA chipsets aren't exactly known for their performance. I installed 3DMark 99 but I can't seem to get it running yet. First run it quit to desktop, 2nd launch it said it needed a DX 6.0 card installed. (I have the TNT2-Pro 16mb)

MEMORY Benchmark
------------------------
[CPU 89]
[FPU 94]

CPU Benchmark
-------------------
CPU 1378 MIPS
FPU 673 MFLOPS

MULTIMEDIA Benchmark
-----------------------------
MMX 1455 it/s
FPU/3D Now 1094 it/s

Also, I played HL 1 Uplink demo for 45min and it was dog slow. Lag fest, maybe 15-20fps all the time, and in heavy fire fights it would drop to 10.
Something must be wrong because this K6-2 550 should be ok. Maybe AGP drivers? The Nvidia Detonator 43 driver? Via chipset itself? Or just crappy FPU on the K6-2? The TNT2 Pro should be able to handle HL1 smoothly.

Your sissoft benchmarks looks about right. You can compare them with mine with my K6-2 400mhz here...

IBM Aptiva - K6-300 Revival

AMD K6-2 450 @ 400mhz (66x6)

MEMORY Benchmark
------------------------
[CPU 89]
[FPU 90]

CPU Benchmark
-------------------
CPU 928 MIPS
FPU 465 MFLOPS

MULTIMEDIA Benchmark
-----------------------------
MMX 1051 it/s
FPU/3D Now 787 it/s

Looks like your memory is running at 66, assuming this is not a Super Socket 7 motherboard. The K6 really see big benefits from the higher FSB in benches/games. Really need to see your 3DMark score. I think the 1024 resolution is a tad ambitious, esp with a 16mb card. Try to lower to 800x600.

This is a super socket 7 motherboard, fully supports the 100mhz bus. My ram is also running at 100mhz and is certified for 100mhz so I doubt the bottleneck is there. I've checked and re-checked all the jumper settings for this board, all the bios settings are correct. HDD doesn't thrash, no bad secotrs, running 128mb ram, cpu is cooled properly and has adequate thermal paste, case also has good ventilation though it doesn't matter since I leave the side off anyways. I'm thinking it's the via chipset drivers...

dave343 wrote:

No, I wish, I've been keeping my eye out for voodoo card at a reasonable price without too much luck. I almost won a PCI V3-3000 the other day until the seller ended it early for some reason and another user had already outbid me. I'm not sure I want to go with a Voodoo 2 though, I prefer the all in one cards. This TNT2 should be strong but back in the day I stuck purely with the 3DFX card's myself, mainly 2000 and 3000 AGP.
You're probably right about the performance though, it's been 15 years since I've played Half Life and when I did I had a P2-350 on a 440BX with the V3-3000 AGP so... no performance issues there.

And back in the day I avoided Via Chipset's like the plague. Used the Intel 440BX for many years, Abit BH6, BE6-II. I just remember issue's back then with Via Drivers.

IIRC, Nvidia+Via MVP3 was a recipe for disaster back in the day.

I ran ALI Alladin V for my Super7 rig back then.

The link to the Anandtech test results tell you everything you need to know. There's no magic tweaking that will make a K6-2/3 a speed demon for 3D games.

I will never understand why ones build so many k6/k6-2/k6-3 retro systems for 3d accelerated games (for curiosity it's ok, but for playing...) 😐 Apart from a couple of games using the 3dNow + 3dfx combo (only way for k6 cpu's to offfer similar or just a little better fps than pII with the same clock speed) it completely screw/cripple your graphic card speed. Now that you can bought hardware for nothing, why ones doesn't just use pII with BX or Athlon on Slot A instead ? Damn, my first computers were k6 233 and k6-2 350 (trying to play games on the k6-2 until 2003 was a complete pain) and that's only a lot of years after that I was able to test the intel equivalent cpu's... and whaaaat? Intels cpu's were clearly dominating k6's cpu's 🤣 (Ok k6-2/3 were cheap and letting you keep your old socket 7 or super7 MB for a costless upgrade but that's definitely the only good point I can find 😵 )

The way I see it, a lot of people are misguided into thinking that K6 CPUs are just as fast as Intel's counterparts. But, there are actual benefits to using K6 CPUs. I used to toy around with countless setups, but the last couple of years I have settled with my K6-3+ 400 which I've ran at 550MHz since day 1.
The extra cache and clock is more than enough for most things I want to play and that is late 90's games, be it 3D, 2D, Windows or DOS games. I've found that this CPU gives me almost no trouble in DOS games, where as Pentium 2/3 may produce faults. For example, System Shock crashes all the time on such a machine. There may be a workaround I'm not aware of, obviously!
Also, turning off different Cache levels gives you nice scaling. I played through Wing Commander 1 on this machine 😀.

So it is fast enough for the job and can be quite flexible for a few things. That's your answer I guess. I really love this machine I've built, I just wish I could go back in time and give it to my younger self. It reminds me of myself trying out demos that I found on a random CD-ROM, back in the multimedia age.

Obviously, this is not a machine I would recommend for stuff like Quake 3 or UT, but then again I'd probably play these on my main PC.

There is one massive advantage in a Super Socket 7 machine with a fast K6-2+ or K6-III+ and that is the ability to manipulate the multiplier via software and, through disabling caches, turn it into a 386DX and 486DX2.

No other machine can cover games such as Wing Commander all the way to Quake 2.

I explain this in great detail here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzxnB2CD6aw

Having finished my Voodoo 2 benchmarks for Super Socket 7, a very fast K6-2+ or K6-III+ is a great match for single Voodoo 2 card. In all games I tested such a system achieves 60+ fps at 800 x 600 resolution.

There are almost no benefits in going with SLI on such a machine however...

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

There are almost no benefits in going with SLI on such a machine however...

1024x768 resolution which is only enabled if you have SLI is a huge benefit in the games that supports it IMO

Forgot about that 😊

As for SLI performance scaling, I can share this from my Voodoo 2 project:

It shows the performance boost in percent when adding a second card.

Compared to Tualatin 1400:

I should have had insisted more on the "3d accelerated games" 😁 Like I said before, games that supported 3dNow + 3dfx optimsations run quite well but for some late 90's games or early 2000's era games the poor k6's will crumble to death. 😵

Tried for fun some times ago to replace a P166MMX by my first K6 233 (no 3dNow here) on a Voodoo 1 win95 rig and well... the pentium 166MMX completely ate it 😵

F2bnp wrote:

Obviously, this is not a machine I would recommend for stuff like Quake 3 or UT, but then again I'd probably play these on my main PC.

Yeah that's the point it was overall good processors for their time for anything... except 3D hungry games 😵

Also the fact it could run a wide variety of dos era games is a good thing (and be able to use old isa sound cards with it), but using a 99 cpu for that is a bit disturbing for me 🤣
In that case, it sound easier to use dosbox with your main computer (ok opl 3 emulation is not so great, but you can always use a real mt-32 or SC55 hooked with usb midi cable for music or use some munt or other program).