I guess the weak link there is the graphics card. Some late DOS games support acceleration through Glide or other propertary APIs, and your Geforce 2MX doesn't help there. If you like its analog output you could add a Voodoo2 there (or Voodoo for even better compatibility, but it has issues with machines way faster than it was inteded to run in, like yours, probably). If not, you could swap it for a Banshee/Voodoo3 for a single-card solution (that can use the AGP slot, even).

EDIT: Also, you might want to consider K6-2+ or K6-3+ if your board supports it. Faster, might be cooler and you can set the multiplier through software, so you can slow it down for games that might run a bit too fast (like Warcraft II)

Well. The CPU is going to be the K6-II-500. As it really is that sollution that I have found to be the best with this motherboard and setup.
The K6-III is perhaps a bit overkill as I have not seen any significant gain, when running stuff like Blood and other FPS games like that.
Glide would possible be a plus. So I will probably grab a Banshee if I can find a really cheap one.
For games, it actually runs pretty nice as of now. I have yet to find a dos-game released from 1995 to 1999 that this can not handle.
Well... Beside games that are Glide-only and only run on Dos. (if any exists)

I might get a V2 instead if banshee draws too much power (the mobo has one of "those" AGP slots)

You're asking for ways to improve it. Upgrading to a K6-III+ and clocking it at 550-600MHz would give a small boost, mostly due to the on-die cache.

GPU wise you're fine, since this is DOS only. The GeForce2 MX is very speedy and certainly more compatible with 3Dfx cards in DOS. Unless you want to play some DOS Glide games, I wouldn't really go 3Dfx, as long as you keep this strictly a DOS machine.

Other than that, you may be able to increase performance somewhat by using one RAM stick instead of two. I've seen this help memory performance on some boards.

That's one nice, massive, cooler you have 😀

I found that none of my larger coolers fit on Super Socket 7 boards.

The advantage of going K6-3+/2+ wouldn't be an increase in speed, but broader compatibility (as it can be easily slowed down in software), though AFAIK late DOS games aren't speed sensitive (Warcraft II being a weird exception... the Battle.Net version apparently doesn't have this issue).
Also, the advantage of having Glide isn't necessarily about speed, but because some games look better with it than in software mode.

Then again, if you do not plan on playing games that would benefit from Glide or slower processors, your machine is borderline perfect as it is. You could also put a NIC in there to play a few games on a LAN (but you'd need more people to play with and more retro-PCs) and maybe transfer a few things through FTP (mTCP) or HTTP (Arachne).

Btw I noticed you have two devices connected to the FDD cable. Are you using two floppy drives or you've got one of those Gotek/HxC emulators?

A K6+ CPU is always good to consider, specially because these run much cooler than K6-2's. A quieter computer is definitely an improvement.

F2bnp wrote:

You're asking for ways to improve it. Upgrading to a K6-III+ and clocking it at 550-600MHz would give a small boost, mostly due to the on-die cache.

GPU wise you're fine, since this is DOS only. The GeForce2 MX is very speedy and certainly more compatible with 3Dfx cards in DOS. Unless you want to play some DOS Glide games, I wouldn't really go 3Dfx, as long as you keep this strictly a DOS machine.

Other than that, you may be able to increase performance somewhat by using one RAM stick instead of two. I've seen this help memory performance on some boards.

Not exactly upgrading my rig. Just asking for ways to improve this baby. Faster does not allways spell better regarding pure Dos games.
As I wrote previously, the K6-III does not really give any advantage in games from the era that this is ment to be running.

I was rather thinking of thing's such as components that make better compatibility and such. Not really faster. Hence the "improve" not "upgrade". 😀

I might find one 128mb stick, or just install one stick of eighter 16/32/64mb. Depends on what will run the best in Ms-DOS-6.22

philscomputerlab wrote:

That's one nice, massive, cooler you have 😀

I found that none of my larger coolers fit on Super Socket 7 boards.

Yes. It's quite nice, and can cool K6-III beautifully. That CPU how ever, is going into my Win98SE box that I am going to build.
And this cooler can not fit on an Asus P5A board, so I have ordered a new fan to go on that machine.

Have not tried this cooler on my Epox MVP3-C board, and I do not own a Gigabyte GA-5AX board. So I can not say if this is
going to fit on those boards. 🙁

Alexanrs makes a good point, K6-2+/III+ has an unlocked multiplier which is pretty handy. It all depends on what you want to play though.

alexanrs wrote:

The advantage of going K6-3+/2+ wouldn't be an increase in speed, but broader compatibility (as it can be easily slowed down in […]
Show full quote

The advantage of going K6-3+/2+ wouldn't be an increase in speed, but broader compatibility (as it can be easily slowed down in software), though AFAIK late DOS games aren't speed sensitive (Warcraft II being a weird exception... the Battle.Net version apparently doesn't have this issue).
Also, the advantage of having Glide isn't necessarily about speed, but because some games look better with it than in software mode.

Then again, if you do not plan on playing games that would benefit from Glide or slower processors, your machine is borderline perfect as it is. You could also put a NIC in there to play a few games on a LAN (but you'd need more people to play with and more retro-PCs) and maybe transfer a few things through FTP (mTCP) or HTTP (Arachne).

Btw I noticed you have two devices connected to the FDD cable. Are you using two floppy drives or you've got one of those Gotek/HxC emulators?

Yeah...
I am running two floppy drives, and that might be way overkill. On the other hand, it's just something that I like to do.
It's really something that have stuck with me since the dawn of times, when 286/386's ruled as the supreme machines.
Don't know why I still do it. Just that I did not have 2 drives in a computer at that time, and I envied those who did have. 😁

F2bnp wrote:

Alexanrs makes a good point, K6-2+/III+ has an unlocked multiplier which is pretty handy. It all depends on what you want to play though.

Yeah... 😀 Actually a good point there. I might do it because of the heat/fan-noise issues.
On the other hand. My Fic has 1mb L2 cache, and if I disable both L1 and L2, I can run those early games on this rig.
Just that those games, are what I have my P133 machine for. You know... Civ1 being one of the youngest of those.

You can do the same with K6-III+.

Let's call the caches rather CPU cache and motherboard cache.

L1 BIOS setting = CPU Cache, L2 BIOS setting = motherboard cache.

Because the K6-III+ has L1 and L2 cache, L1 BIOS setting will turn off L1 and L2 CPU cache, and L2 BIOS setting will turn of L3 motherboard cache.

End result: Same slowed down speed 😀 But with the benefit of more performance with caches, lower voltage, less heat and no catchable area limit.

And guess what? I happen to have a video about this 😁

AMD K6-2 vs K6-2+ vs K6-III+ Comparison

Nice... Hmmm... Without any cache enabled, it is too slow for the era it's build or rather have evolved to cover.
With all cache enabled, it just rund perfectly fine in Dos. The way it should be running.
Based on that, I would rather not mess with too much swapping of CPU's That might be done when other stuff have been tried out.

philscomputerlab wrote:

You can do the same with K6-III+. […]
Show full quote

You can do the same with K6-III+.

Let's call the caches rather CPU cache and motherboard cache.

L1 BIOS setting = CPU Cache, L2 BIOS setting = motherboard cache.

Because the K6-III+ has L1 and L2 cache, L1 BIOS setting will turn off L1 and L2 CPU cache, and L2 BIOS setting will turn of L3 motherboard cache.

End result: Same slowed down speed 😀 But with the benefit of more performance with caches, lower voltage, less heat and no catchable area limit.

And guess what? I happen to have a video about this 😁

AMD K6-2 vs K6-2+ vs K6-III+ Comparison

Ohh.... THAT's why my cache settings are not shown as L1+L2+L3 in the BIOS, when running K6-III cpu's
I really thought that it was some defect on the P5A board, as I have tested this out running the K6-III on that mobo.
Not tested my K6-III out this way on the FIC board. Nor on my Epox board. Only my P5A.
Then again. The K6-III is running fine on the P5A board, and going to be my SS7 Win98SE box.
It's going to have V3-3500 and AWE64-Gold installed. The only part I am missing for that build, is the PSU.
Yet no need to rush and build that darn rig.

You can use SETMUL to disable L1 cache exclusively on K6 CPU's, and use it to set the multiplier as well. On BIOS caches are identified by Internal and External settings, Internal being all CPU caches and External motherboard cache.

carlostex wrote:

You can use SETMUL to disable L1 cache exclusively on K6 CPU's, and use it to set the multiplier as well. On BIOS caches are identified by Internal and External settings, Internal being all CPU caches and External motherboard cache.

Yeah. I know. Just that this is really no issues at all, because I am running this as a machine for pure MS-DOS titles from 1995 to 1999 exclusively.
There might be one or two titles of those few that I use, out of the whole bunch of games from that timeframe. That really need caches disabled.
Yet, that can just be done by rebooting, entering BIOS settings and fiddeling with the cache. That's the way I like to do these kind of things.
Personally I prefer jumper/dipswitch-settings over software-settings at any time. Yet hard to come by on hardware from circa 1994/95 and onwards.

My Socket 7 build is also a pure DOS machine and i find it is really useful to do things on the fly.

I've had this idea to use reset button cables as to replace jumpers so i could change FSB on the fly, this combined with a motherboard that allows lower FSB via undocumented clock generator settings should be really powerful for DOS gaming.

Running a K6+ CPU at 15MHz should give performance around 486DX-33 i think, and disabling internal caches should give something like a slow 286. Disabling all the caches could potentially give a system speed of an 8088 CPU. In fact, i think j^aws has been experimenting something similar.

Opening my system everytime to change jumpers around is a pain in the freakin' butt so in my opinion doing things on the fly is much nicer, specially if you're building a DOS machine. I'm looking for ways to improve mine all the time.

brostenen wrote:

It's going to have V3-3500 and AWE64-Gold installed. The only part I am missing for that build, is the PSU.
Yet no need to rush and build that darn rig.

Very nice. I've used a very similar setup for the video I'm working on at the moment. While it has nothing to do with K6 or SS7, it was a wonderful setup and I had zero issues playing games from Wing Commander, Monkey Island ear to Descent, Doom or Duke 3D.

carlostex wrote:

My Socket 7 build is also a pure DOS machine and i find it is really useful to do things on the fly. […]
Show full quote

My Socket 7 build is also a pure DOS machine and i find it is really useful to do things on the fly.

I've had this idea to use reset button cables as to replace jumpers so i could change FSB on the fly, this combined with a motherboard that allows lower FSB via undocumented clock generator settings should be really powerful for DOS gaming.

Running a K6+ CPU at 15MHz should give performance around 486DX-33 i think, and disabling internal caches should give something like a slow 286. Disabling all the caches could potentially give a system speed of an 8088 CPU. In fact, i think j^aws has been experimenting something similar.

Opening my system everytime to change jumpers around is a pain in the freakin' butt so in my opinion doing things on the fly is much nicer, specially if you're building a DOS machine. I'm looking for ways to improve mine all the time.

Jumpers to switches ay??? Wonderfull idea. I had same idea back in the 90's regarding soundcards and perhaps a turbobutton and reset switch on the keyboard. Never submerged myself into this kind of venture though.....

philscomputerlab wrote:

brostenen wrote:

It's going to have V3-3500 and AWE64-Gold installed. The only part I am missing for that build, is the PSU.
Yet no need to rush and build that darn rig.

Very nice. I've used a very similar setup for the video I'm working on at the moment. While it has nothing to do with K6 or SS7, it was a wonderful setup and I had zero issues playing games from Wing Commander, Monkey Island ear to Descent, Doom or Duke 3D.

I know from the videos you have on youtube. Hmmm.... I am still missing that illusive GA-5AX board.
I had one of those back in the late 90's and have only managed to obtain an P5A.
Even though I had an rev 4.X board, the best seem to be you'r board. The 5.X revision.

If and only if I can obtain that Gigabyte. Then I can actually build what I amed at in the late 90's.
A SS7 Win98SE system, just the way a SS7-Dreamsystem was to me back then.
I never managed to build it, as I never had the money for the right hardware.
I only ever managed to drool over those lovely hardware add's and review's. Sadly.