acutally its rather common for the plus version of the K^ to be buggy.

here is a page with a bunch of patched bios files that fix this problem. Some even add 32gb hdd support!
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm

I might do some test for this. What processor should we agree on? K6-III+ at 100x5.5? What if someone has a K6-2+? Results should be pretty close.

Could me remove the sound card, so it's easier for everyone to have a similar system?

Luckybob, I don't see how this will fix the problem. This is an issue that comes and goes and I'm already running the latest (it's available on Jan's site as well) BIOS.

Phil, I think it won't really matter if anyone is running at 500MHz or 550MHz or even 600MHz, the difference is rather small. Same about K6-2+ or K6-III+. I'd preferably like K6-III+ 550 to achieve parity as much as possible. We could remove the sound card, but I have no idea how certain games might react, either boosting performance significantly or maybe not running due to the absence of one. I think SoundBlaster 16 or any AWE card will give the same results as mine, but PCI cards could also be used. I don't think the sound card is an the issue.

I also found a great little website with benchmarks for a few of these games. Here's Dethkarz for example:

http://thandor.net/benchmark/14

So K6-2+ or K6-III+ is a must? I only have non plus versions of K6-2 & 3. But have a few Aladdin V and MVP3 boards.

Well, I guess K6-III is fine if you can do 450MHz at least. It could be an issue tied to K6+ only, but I can't be sure at the moment. So yeah, you can join if you want 😀 !

I have K6-3 450 and also runs @500. K6-2 is 500MHz but didn't tried to OC it.

OK... I'll do some test over the weekend 😁

I think it would be a good idea to test the K6-2 aswell, Im not convinced the L2 cache in the CPU has anything to do with the issue. I think some Aladdin V chipset motherboards just hates some Voodoo cards, especially my PCI Voodoo 3 which performs at between 50% and 70% of the expected level.

Installed Windows ME now and am seeing performance pickup somewhat.

Forsaken pulls off 177FPS at 640x480 and 93FPS at 1024x768. Will see if the trend continues.

I ran 3dmark 99,2000 and dethkarz and i got this results:

3dmark 99: 640x480-3522
-8076 cpu
800x600-3504
-8157 cpu

3dmark 2000:640x480-1930
800x600-1918
1024x768-1884

Dethkarz:640x480-62.35 fps
800x600-61.64 fps
1024x768-54.04 fps

Will test shogo and unreal gold edition tommorow,i don't have the rest of the games.

Just a thought here, may mean nothing. On my MVP3 board, there's a BIOS setting for "Write Cache Pipeline" that causes all sorts of problems when it is enabled and you have an AMD CPU.

Your BIOS is a lot different, and I'm not sure if there is any corresponding setting. Maybe "SDRAM Pipe Function" or "AMD K6 Write Allocate"? Have you tried changing all of these settings to the most conservative option?

Yeah, these are tons better already. I've been toying around all afternoon with WinME and Win2000. I've managed to get Forsaken to work properly, but most other benchmarks perform pretty much the same as Win98SE.

Nahkri, thank you for testing, these results are pretty much how the system should be behaving. If you don't mind, besides Shogo and Unreal, could you try the MDK2 Demo (can be easily found online) and the Incoming Demo (included in the benchmark archive on the first post) ?

boxpressed, I'll see if I can go with the more conservative options, although I'm pretty sure I did so in the past as well.

K6-3+@550, p5a rev. 1.04, 128mb, win98se, voodoo2 sli, geforce2 gts, awe32`

using the voodoo's:

Forsaken 640x 480 178 fps, 800x600: 154 fps
3dmark99 max 800x600: 3730 3dmarks, 8200 cpu marks (about same score at 640x480)

Shogo: 640x480 - 57.224 fps
800x600- 56.074 fps
1024x768- 47.829 fps

Unreal gold: 640x480 - 55.424 fps
800x600 - 53.021 fps
1024x768 - 47.064 fps

Incoming: 640x480 - 75.04 fps
800x600 - 76.37 fps
1024x768 - 70.69 fps

Mdk 2:640x480- 37.605 fps
800x600-38.014 fps
1024x768-37.31 fps

I retested Dehtkarz with the settings u sugested,since the previous test was at extreme graphic settings and 30 framerate.
Dethkarz:640x480-72.53 fps
800x600-61.50 fps
1024x768-58.97 fps

These are great scores, exactly how the K6-III+ should be scoring and very much in line with my own scores from 2 years ago. Nahkri, would you mind sharing with us your BIOS settings (perhaps by taking a picture just like I did) and what drivers you're using for your motherboard and graphics card? Have you installed any other driver or utility for Windows 98SE?

K6-2+ 570 @ 600 MHz
-ASUS P5A-B Rev. 1.04 with BIOS 1011 Beta 005, 384 MB SDRAM
-Quadro 2 Pro
-3Dfx Voodoo2 SLI
-Terratec Base 1 + ActiveRadio
-Adaptec 2940UW + Quantum Atlas 10K2-TY184L
-Win98SE

3DMark99 Max Quadro 2 Pro 640x480x16 3DMarks/CPU Marks: 3958 / 7830
3DMark99 Max Quadro 2 Pro 800x600x16 3DMarks/CPU Marks: 3922 / 7758
3DMark99 Max V2 SLI 640x480x16 3DMarks/CPU Marks: 3288 / 7781
3DMark99 Max V2 SLI 800x600x16 3DMarks/CPU Marks: 2683 / 7747
3DMark2000 Quadro 2 Pro 640x480x16 3DMarks/CPU Marks: 2933 / 184
3DMark2000 Quadro 2 Pro 800x600x16 3DMarks/CPU Marks: 2830 / 182
3DMark2000 Quadro 2 Pro 1024x768x16 3DMarks/CPU Marks: 2976 / 186
3DMark2000 V2 SLI 800x600x16 3DMarks/CPU Marks: 1638 / 91
3DMark2000 V2 SLI 1024x768x16 3DMarks/CPU Marks: 1262 / 90

I'm using: Ali integrated driver vers 1.091.
Standard voodoo 3 drivers vers. 1.07.00(the last official,not beta,drivers for the v3) + 3dfx tool(for disable-ing vsync)
Montego A3Extreme 1187 driver for the sound card.
Except nusb to be able to use usb sticks,i don't have installed any other kind of drivers or utilities.

Here are my bios settings

I can't thank you enough Nahkri! It was a BIOS setting after all, specifically "Frame Buffer Posted Write". Setting it to Enabled boosts performance to your levels.

Here's where it gets weird though. Back in August, I remember tinkering with that setting (I think it has to do with Write Combining?) and I even PM'ed Skyscraper about it, telling him to tweak anything similar looking on his GA-5AX. After trying it for a while though, the system seemed to return to its slower self, so I kind of dismissed that option. Weird 😖 .
I'm on Windows 2000 right now and saw MDK 2 performance jump from 27FPS to 33FPS. Pretty sure I'll hit 37FPS if I switch back to Win98SE, like everybody else. Quake 2 performance also jumped from 43FPS to 80FPS in Demo1.

Tomorrow morning I'm installing Win98SE again and see if everything is back to normal. I'll see if I can install my Voodoo 5 in there as well, see how that fares against a Voodoo 3 on a K6. I've heard people here say that the Voodoo 3 will perform somewhat better due to less driver overhead. Compatibility is also worse than Voodoo 3, unfortunately. On the other hand, with Voodoo 5 you're literally getting at least 2x sample AA for free and my card is sitting in an OEM Compaq Pentium III 1GHz system literally collecting dust 🙁. Anyway, I'll see if I can do all of the tests tomorrow! 😊

Update!

Performance has indeed jumped to the point where I've achieved pretty much complete parity with Nahkri's and my older scores. I installed a Voodoo 5 to check whether or not the driver overhead thing is a real thing and it doesn't seem like it. The Voodoo 5 performs just as... well bad, as the Voodoo 3 does in CPU bound scenarios (HINT: most of them 🤣 ) and can improve framerates somewhat in higher resolutions where the Voodoo 3 starts having an issue. Such scenarios include Quake III, Shogo, Dethkarz on Extreme settings and even Forsaken at 1024x768 and beyond.
You can always force 2xAA or even 4xAA, depending on the game, and performance will be the same. Again, I want to thank everyone that posted scores, but especially Nahkri that provided me with more details on drivers and BIOS settings!

Frame Buffer Posted Write? Nice, good to know!

Is this disabled by loading the BIOS defaults? Might check my GA-5AX with a V3 and check it out...