Very nice and versatile system!

What drivers does the 6800 use under Windows 8? And do they have a complete control panel? I've been curious about using 6800 Ultra for a similarly wide-ranging setup. 😊

Neat use of that motherboard too. 😀

The biggest problem was 2gb ram with 98.
6800's latest driver for 8.1 is from... February 2015.
So you have control panel and the stuff. 😀 You can get the driver from nvidia's site directly.

Very nice, I have similar build myself - the same board but only with c2d e6400 and Radeon 8500 at the moment. 😀
I'm considering to buy faster cpu - how far does the e6500k overclock on this mb?

Cool! Nice concept and execution. High end W98, mid range XP and low spec W8, yet completely serviceable for the intended use.

If you ever feel the need for greater W8/XP performance you *could* load more ram by using R. Loew's "RLOEW W98 memory patch" [you have to buy it from him] and plug in a 7900GTX/512mb with the unofficial modded W98 drivers floating around out there...

I'm not terribly surprised 8.1 runs fine on such hardware. The 6xxx chips will stick around for a while due to the cheap nForce chipsets with 6150SEs that spring up everywhere. Core 2 is still competent, even with anachronistically slow RAM and disk I/O. The 8xx, among most chipsets of the time, is sane and supported by Windows' very large integrated driver library.

Windows is very backward compatible, especially the 32-bit version, and it often gets faster on old hardware. 8.1 only really shook things up by requiring NX. On my P3 running 7, a lot of drivers are from ~2003 (that is, USB 11b adapter, EtherLink XL, and SB Live!) and it runs well. If it could run 8.1, I'd imagine it would run better, due to optimizations made for small ARM HW.

calvin wrote:

I'm not terribly surprised 8.1 runs fine on such hardware. The 6xxx chips will stick around for a while due to the cheap nForce chipsets with 6150SEs that spring up everywhere. Core 2 is still competent, even with anachronistically slow RAM and disk I/O. The 8xx, among most chipsets of the time, is sane and supported by Windows' very large integrated driver library.

Windows is very backward compatible, especially the 32-bit version, and it often gets faster on old hardware. 8.1 only really shook things up by requiring NX. On my P3 running 7, a lot of drivers are from ~2003 (that is, USB 11b adapter, EtherLink XL, and SB Live!) and it runs well. If it could run 8.1, I'd imagine it would run better, due to optimizations made for small ARM HW.

RAM raw throughput in MB/s is low, but overall latency/response is good and the system doesn't feel slow even in WIn 8.1. Dual channel definitely helps on that fact.
The SSD helps a lot too. With 8.1 up and running, only ~450MB ram get used. Even with Chrome and 3-4 tabs, I cannot reach above 1GB. Youtube full hd is definitely a no-go, though.
I did install the 32bit version. With up to 3GB of RAM there is absolutely no point in installing 64bit Windows versions.

havli wrote:

Very nice, I have similar build myself - the same board but only with c2d e6400 and Radeon 8500 at the moment. 😀
I'm considering to buy faster cpu - how far does the e6500k overclock on this mb?

The board vcore supply cannot be changed, so you are limited to FSB (limit 300MHz) and multiplier changes.
Something like 3,3-3,4 GHz stable is obtainable. Yet impressive for a 2003 chipset!

tincup wrote:

Cool! Nice concept and execution. High end W98, mid range XP and low spec W8, yet completely serviceable for the intended use.

If you ever feel the need for greater W8/XP performance you *could* load more ram by using R. Loew's "RLOEW W98 memory patch" [you have to buy it from him] and plug in a 7900GTX/512mb with the unofficial modded W98 drivers floating around out there...

I actually bought RLOEW's patch. I tried it first, and found to be the only thing that fixed memory corruption!
I still don't think I can find 2GB DDR1 DIMMS easily, and if I find them, I don't think Win 98 will live with 4GB well. What do you think?
Actually, was there a 7900GTX for AGP? I thought only 7800GS (and some rare 7900GT variant) were available for AGP.

How slow can you clock the CPU?

Wow this is impressive and totally weird! Possibly one of the best boards one could get for AGP cards?

idspispopd wrote:

How slow can you clock the CPU?

A Prescott is basically the slowest you can go on LGA775 if he wants to manually swap.

calvin wrote:

idspispopd wrote:

How slow can you clock the CPU?

A Prescott is basically the slowest you can go on LGA775 if he wants to manually swap.

There are also lga775 Celeron p4's IIRC

...which would also be Prescott. They're oddly named Celeron D, despite not being dual cores.

GeorgeMan wrote:

I actually bought RLOEW's patch. I tried it first, and found to be the only thing that fixed memory corruption!
I still don't think I can find 2GB DDR1 DIMMS easily, and if I find them, I don't think Win 98 will live with 4GB well. What do you think?
Actually, was there a 7900GTX for AGP? I thought only 7800GS (and some rare 7900GT variant) were available for AGP.

Yeah the RLOEW patch worked very well for me too and had I gone with it right off the bat it would have saved me a lot trouble and dead-end experimentation. But regarding the 7900GTX - my bad. In my haste to post I overlooked that you had an AGP based board and I think the 7900 only came in PCIe.. though I believe the 7900/7950 GS/512mb did...

There's a Gainward AGP card based on the GeForce 7900 (G71), but they were sold as 7800 in some markets. There is, or was, one on ebay quite recently. Found it: http://www.ebay.com/itm/131433926762 and XFX put the 7950 on AGP: http://www.ebay.com/itm/131446426534

I'm not sure they're worth the asking price in terms of performance (they're kind of oddballs though; I think part of the high pricing is due to the collector appeal), but either would be an upgrade over the 6800 for the most part (IME 6800 Ultra vs 7900GS, even on somewhat unequal CPUs, aren't terribly far apart in older benchmarks like 3DMark01 or AquaMark 3, but the 7900 uses less power and should do better in newer games/benchmarks). It does not have official Win98 driver support though, so you're using modified drivers to get it working with 81.98 or similar. It'd probably make more sense to stick with the 6800 and use a newer machine if you really need more robust SM3.0 (or higher) performance, since PCIe variants of these cards tend to be cheaper, and you can get newer/faster cards (like GeForce 8800, for example) as alternative options as well.

I'm not sure how the newer Radeon cards (X series and above) work with Windows 98, but X850 and higher should also offer a performance boost over the 6800, and they tend to cost less than the GeForce 7800 AGP cards.

calvin wrote:

idspispopd wrote:

How slow can you clock the CPU?

A Prescott is basically the slowest you can go on LGA775 if he wants to manually swap.

I meant how far the actual E6500K could be underclocked. I see in the BIOS screenshot a minimum multiplier of 6 so with the set frequency of 266 MHz this would make 1.6GHz. Can the frequency can be set lower?

Very nice time-machine you built there!

philscomputerlab wrote:

Very nice time-machine you built there!

Thanks Phil! 😁 I'll try your DOS tests the following days. Please bring the link back to your signature. 😀

idspispopd wrote:

calvin wrote:

idspispopd wrote:

How slow can you clock the CPU?

A Prescott is basically the slowest you can go on LGA775 if he wants to manually swap.

I meant how far the actual E6500K could be underclocked. I see in the BIOS screenshot a minimum multiplier of 6 so with the set frequency of 266 MHz this would make 1.6GHz. Can the frequency can be set lower?

Yes, lowest possible is 95x6 = 570 Mhz.

obobskivich wrote:

There's a Gainward AGP card based on the GeForce 7900 (G71), but they were sold as 7800 in some markets. There is, or was, one on ebay quite recently. Found it: http://www.ebay.com/itm/131433926762 and XFX put the 7950 on AGP: http://www.ebay.com/itm/131446426534

I'm not sure they're worth the asking price in terms of performance (they're kind of oddballs though; I think part of the high pricing is due to the collector appeal), but either would be an upgrade over the 6800 for the most part (IME 6800 Ultra vs 7900GS, even on somewhat unequal CPUs, aren't terribly far apart in older benchmarks like 3DMark01 or AquaMark 3, but the 7900 uses less power and should do better in newer games/benchmarks). It does not have official Win98 driver support though, so you're using modified drivers to get it working with 81.98 or similar. It'd probably make more sense to stick with the 6800 and use a newer machine if you really need more robust SM3.0 (or higher) performance, since PCIe variants of these cards tend to be cheaper, and you can get newer/faster cards (like GeForce 8800, for example) as alternative options as well.

I'm not sure how the newer Radeon cards (X series and above) work with Windows 98, but X850 and higher should also offer a performance boost over the 6800, and they tend to cost less than the GeForce 7800 AGP cards.

I don't think I'll try an ATi on this setup.
If I ever find a 7950GT cheap enough, I'll buy and try it, but I think that for the next couple of years this is going to be a happy running PC with the hardware already fitted.

Yep, it's a nice rig..

Love it! Really versatile setup, and your build is very clean too 😀 your family will love it 😉

Just picked up an ASROCK 775 with AGP board myself, the 4Core Dual SATA, waiting for it to arrive at the moment. Focusing on XP gaming though.

If you do go down the XFX 7950 route, just be aware that the cooler needs to be watched carefully, it's a common point of failure and when it goes it takes the board with it. I bought one new and this happened to me several years ago - by the time I made a warranty claim XFX's distributor could only give me a GT240 PCI-E as a replacement 🙁 have a couple of Radeon AGP 3850s but I can only imagine that driver support under Win98 would be a right pain.