4Gb is no Overkill 😀

Nice Build!

specially if you also run Windows 7 32bit.

Motherboard with KT880 chipset? Nice. Not something you can come across often. The fastest Socket A chipset if reviews from the time are to be believed.

Nice rig, I got the Abit version of that board.

That is a fantastic Socket A build. Once you get it all finished up it'll be quite the speedster.

Very nice system you got there! Without a doubt once you got an Athlon XP 3200 in it will be the second fastest socket 462 system possible! The Athlon XP 3200 will be sufficient for testing any GPU up to Geforce4 and Radeon 8000 series if you go with 1024*768 resolution or Geforce FX and Radeon 9000 series if you crank up the resolution and details!
How much RAM is actually recognized by the board? In my Abit KW7 only 3.25gb out of 4gb is "seen" by Windows! I completed 49 out of 50 tests on a wide variety of socket 462 platforms - form VIA KT400A to nforce2 ultra 400 - and never encountered a situation where more than 2gb would be required!

Thanks guys!
It's time for a little update 😊
I got my new Athlon 3000+ 400FSB and I also put Gail PC3200 4GB instead of Kingston, and Pentagram QC-80 Cu cooler. So everything looks a bit nicer inside 😊 I just need to work on some cable management. Second change is returning to IDE drives instead of SATA, purely for practical reasons. SATA connectors on the board where making problem with longer card, for example Radeon HD3850 and GF4 Ti4600.

And know about performance. This is my 3rd revision of the rig, and I have some interesting results on different cards. The test rig was:

Rev1
MB: ECS K7VTA3 KT333 V5.0
CPU: Athlon XP 2500+
Ram: 2GB PC2700

Rev2:
MB: Gigabyte GA-7VT880
CPU: Athlon XP 3000+ 333FSB
Ram: Kingston 4GB PC3200

And current Rev3.
MB: Gigabyte GA-7VT880
CPU: Athlon XP 3000+ 400FSB
Ram: Gail 4GB PC3200

I started from my GF2 and GF4 cards, on 3dMark2001SE, on WinXP SP3. What I can see, is that on slower card like GF MX, the gain was marginal. For example:
1. InsideTNC GF2 MX400, w/64MB
a. Rev1: 2911
b. Rev2: 2939
c. Rev3: 2941
2. Unknown GF2 MX400, w/64MB
a. Rev2: 1346
b. Rev3: 1348
3. InsideTNC GF4 MX440, w/64MB
a. Rev1: 3896
b. Rev2: 3983
c. Rev3: 4023
4. ProLink GF4 MX440, w/64MB (this is the highest gain in my MX family)
a. Rev1: 4890
b. Rev2: 5302
c. Rev3: 5585
But when we look at better cards, all the result had really improved:
1. Palit GF2 PRO, w/32MB
Rev1: 4418
Rev2: 4803
Rev3: 5065
2. ProLink GF2 Ti, w/64MB
Rev2: 5014
Rev3: 5293
3. MSI GF4 Ti4200 8x, w/128MB
Rev1: 8146
Rev2: 9137
Rev3: 10068
4. MSI GF4 Ti4600, w/128MB
a. Rev2: 10605
b. Rev3: 11983

But I have 2 anomalies. The PNY GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8x, is definitely slower on Rev3 config. On Rev2 it had 3650 points, and now 3315. That is more then 300 points less. And another one is the same card, but from MSI, and this one is down from 3745 to 3666. And unfortunately both my GF4MX on AGP 8X, are slower to theirs brothers on AGP4x. But probably is because their slower clocks on GPU and memory.

For example:
MSI GF4 MX440 8x, GPU 261MHz, Memory 64-bit DDR 64MB and 159,8MHz got 3666 points.
InsideTNC GF4 MX440, GPU 270Mhz, Memory 64-bit DDR 64 and 166,5MHz got 4023 points.

nd22 wrote on 2021-01-21, 08:48:

Very nice system you got there! Without a doubt once you got an Athlon XP 3200 in it will be the second fastest socket 462 system possible! The Athlon XP 3200 will be sufficient for testing any GPU up to Geforce4 and Radeon 8000 series if you go with 1024*768 resolution or Geforce FX and Radeon 9000 series if you crank up the resolution and details!
How much RAM is actually recognized by the board? In my Abit KW7 only 3.25gb out of 4gb is "seen" by Windows! I completed 49 out of 50 tests on a wide variety of socket 462 platforms - form VIA KT400A to nforce2 ultra 400 - and never encountered a situation where more than 2gb would be required!

Yep, i'm waiting until one 3200+ shows up on my sight, and testing will start again 😀
The board on POST screen shows 3670016kb, WinXP in DxDiag 3584MB.

rain_nr wrote on 2021-01-21, 11:36:

Thanks guys! It's time for a little update 😊 I got my new Athlon 3000+ 400FSB and I also put Gail PC3200 4GB instead of Kingsto […]
Show full quote

Thanks guys!
It's time for a little update 😊
I got my new Athlon 3000+ 400FSB and I also put Gail PC3200 4GB instead of Kingston, and Pentagram QC-80 Cu cooler. So everything looks a bit nicer inside 😊 I just need to work on some cable management. Second change is returning to IDE drives instead of SATA, purely for practical reasons. SATA connectors on the board where making problem with longer card, for example Radeon HD3850 and GF4 Ti4600.

And know about performance. This is my 3rd revision of the rig, and I have some interesting results on different cards. The test rig was:

Rev1
MB: ECS K7VTA3 KT333 V5.0
CPU: Athlon XP 2500+
Ram: 2GB PC2700

Rev2:
MB: Gigabyte GA-7VT880
CPU: Athlon XP 3000+ 333FSB
Ram: Kingston 4GB PC3200

And current Rev3.
MB: Gigabyte GA-7VT880
CPU: Athlon XP 3000+ 400FSB
Ram: Gail 4GB PC3200

I started from my GF2 and GF4 cards, on 3dMark2001SE, on WinXP SP3. What I can see, is that on slower card like GF MX, the gain was marginal. For example:
1. InsideTNC GF2 MX400, w/64MB
a. Rev1: 2911
b. Rev2: 2939
c. Rev3: 2941
2. Unknown GF2 MX400, w/64MB
a. Rev2: 1346
b. Rev3: 1348
3. InsideTNC GF4 MX440, w/64MB
a. Rev1: 3896
b. Rev2: 3983
c. Rev3: 4023
4. ProLink GF4 MX440, w/64MB (this is the highest gain in my MX family)
a. Rev1: 4890
b. Rev2: 5302
c. Rev3: 5585
But when we look at better cards, all the result had really improved:
1. Palit GF2 PRO, w/32MB
Rev1: 4418
Rev2: 4803
Rev3: 5065
2. ProLink GF2 Ti, w/64MB
Rev2: 5014
Rev3: 5293
3. MSI GF4 Ti4200 8x, w/128MB
Rev1: 8146
Rev2: 9137
Rev3: 10068
4. MSI GF4 Ti4600, w/128MB
a. Rev2: 10605
b. Rev3: 11983

But I have 2 anomalies. The PNY GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8x, is definitely slower on Rev3 config. On Rev2 it had 3650 points, and now 3315. That is more then 300 points less. And another one is the same card, but from MSI, and this one is down from 3745 to 3666. And unfortunately both my GF4MX on AGP 8X, are slower to theirs brothers on AGP4x. But probably is because their slower clocks on GPU and memory.

For example:
MSI GF4 MX440 8x, GPU 261MHz, Memory 64-bit DDR 64MB and 159,8MHz got 3666 points.
InsideTNC GF4 MX440, GPU 270Mhz, Memory 64-bit DDR 64 and 166,5MHz got 4023 points.

nd22 wrote on 2021-01-21, 08:48:

Very nice system you got there! Without a doubt once you got an Athlon XP 3200 in it will be the second fastest socket 462 system possible! The Athlon XP 3200 will be sufficient for testing any GPU up to Geforce4 and Radeon 8000 series if you go with 1024*768 resolution or Geforce FX and Radeon 9000 series if you crank up the resolution and details!
How much RAM is actually recognized by the board? In my Abit KW7 only 3.25gb out of 4gb is "seen" by Windows! I completed 49 out of 50 tests on a wide variety of socket 462 platforms - form VIA KT400A to nforce2 ultra 400 - and never encountered a situation where more than 2gb would be required!

Yep, i'm waiting until one 3200+ shows up on my sight, and testing will start again 😀
The board on POST screen shows 3670016kb, WinXP in DxDiag 3584MB.

Seeing that GeiL ram makes me kinda sad, I have a 4 dimm kit of that (well in 512mb) and 1 or 2 of the sticks died out of nowhere.

Well, Geil sticks look fantasic inside, mostly by maching colour with MB.

And now I'd like to present my blesing and my curse. I just can't get it work on this machine. And i haven't yet tested it on any other. Working just fine until I install any driver and restart. Always BSOD. I tested 14 diffrent drivers with AGP HotFix, and Omega drivers also. No luck. I'll try on diffrent machine later.

I don't know what happen but I there is some strange HW problem. I was testing the Ati 9800XT i i Was unable to properly install driver, it happened before so i Was prepered to reinstall WinXP. Normally it Was good solution. But during installation i get IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL BSOD error. So my first thought was that the VGA card is faulty. But i put perfectly good Ti4200 and the result was the same.

Same issue I had with another GA-7VT880, before i killed it by putting a faulty CPU.

So for now I'm running a MSI K7N2 Delta2 Platinum. Same CPU, Radeon 9800XT and everything is OK for now.

PS, I checked ram with MemTest+. It is ok.