I'll address some of your points.

First, welcome to the VOGONS community!

Next, we'll get to business. For starters, you've clearly done your research, and that is always appreciated. AGP on the MVP3 boards can be fine, there are just some incompatibilities to be mindful of. Barring a FIC PA-2013 paired with a Voodoo3 AGP, you'll not cause any harm by trying other cards. I had a Radeon 9700 running in my SS7 rig for some time before I settled on the S3 Virge GX2. This exhibited no issues that I saw. Avoid TNT2 cards.

Some games do not have an OpenGL option. It will be limited to GLIDE or software rendering.

On to processor selection. The SETMUL application requires an AMD K6-2+ or K6-III+ to be fully capable. The K6-III will not, I believe, let you change the multiplier.

For sound, I recommend more than one card. SB Pro 2/16 or compatible for DOS, and a PCI based card for Windows. A Yamaha 724/744 or SB Live! could fit the bill. The Yamaha has a basic XG synth, and the Live! had SoundFont capability under Windows.

Finality, don't go overboard on RAM. Each chipset motherboard and processor combinationhas its own limitations for cacheable RAM. 128MB or 256MB will be plenty. Get PC133 CL2 if you can.

You are awesome, thank you!

I had no idea the setmul required a K6 + branded processor! You telling me that undoubtedly saved me tons of headache. Awesome! Also I appreciate the tip on the RAM. It seems like 128mb will give me the least troubles, so I'll do that.

If I buy two sound cards, is it possible to configure one to work in DOS and one to work in windows? How would you recommend using them?

It seems like the Vodoo 3 in particular is worth its premium. Do you have any experience using the card in windows 3.11? I found some threads on here about adopting a driver a different Vodoo card, but I haven't found any information about how well it actually works.

mothergoose729 wrote:

If I buy two sound cards, is it possible to configure one to work in DOS and one to work in windows? How would you recommend using them?

Assuming you don't want to separate sets of speakers/headphones, you can have the PCI card line-out pass through the line-in of the ISA card, and the line-out of the ISA card (which is available both in pure DOS and Windows) go to the speakers.

mothergoose729 wrote:

Hello all, [...] […]
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Hello all,
[...]

Super Socket 7 Board with a Via Apollo chipset
K6 2+ or K6 III CPU
256mb of 512mb of PC 100 or PC 133 memory

Note that Win98SE has problems with >512MB of RAM, and EMM386.EXE also hits issues with too much. I'd suggest 128MB, max 256MB for Win98SE.

Vodoo 3 2000/3000 graphics

That's going to be a significant part of the price of the system. But if you want GLide, it's the way to go. Note that if the Voodoo3 options are limited or vastly expensive, the unloved Voodoo Banshee basically does the same, if somewhat slower, and is generally the cheapest 3DFx card. The Voodoo4 is much rarer, but also underappreciated to the point of sometimes being cheaper than a Voodoo3.

Sound Blaster 16 sound card

There are huge numbers of different versions of SB16, from high-end (but buggy) early models to low-end crap later ones. There's a sweet spot in the middle with good quality components and no bugs, but those cards can be hard to find and seriously expensive as everyone is looking for them specifically.

Tbh I'd say you'd be better off with a decent quality SB clone. Exactly what would work and what's available is another matter, but I have good experiences with the Aztech AZT2316a (non-PnP) and AZT2320 (PnP) based cards. They have real Yamaha OPL3 synths built in and are completely hardware compatible with the SBPro 2.0. In the US they seem to command a premium but here in EU they are seen as cheap crap so can be picked up for very little indeed.

I have two main goals - the first is maximum compatibility with DOS games in particular, and my second is the most possible performance I can squeeze out for early windows games. I am also interested in windows 3.1 games. I plan to run windows 98SE set to boot to DOS by default and I'll be using setmul to emulate the 386,486, and pentium speed profiles.

Sounds like a plan. DOS means you need hardware compatibility (unless you want big, ugly, buggy TSRs, which no-one does).

When it comes to sound, what I really care about it compatibility. The greatest intersection of DOS and windows games. I am interested in midi, but I am not yet planning on getting something like an external roland. What sound card would you guys recommend? What is readily available on ebay and affordable?

Firstly, your location is very relevant here. As I already mentioned, there's a big difference in availability and price of a lot of things between US and EU. Secondly, shipping can be prohibitively expensive.
Secondly, ebay is generally rather expensive, if not extortionatly overpriced. amibay.com is a much better option, by and for enthousiasts, with about 2/3 of sellers in EU and 1/3 in US, and if you're in the US, vcfed.org's marketplace is good too. That's not to say you should ignore eBay - sometimes you find good deals, sometimes you find stuff simply unavailable elsewhere. But you have to be VERY aware of what you are exactly looking at and what things are worth.
As well as those international sites, there are local ones that are the best source for big lots of unsorted cards. Given you're new to the game, that's not the best place to start, but that is where you get by far the best deals if you can recognize the cherries in a big pile of crap.

I am also interested in different video cards. I know that the AGP on socket 7 boards aren't great, so if I want to go with AGP I really need to stick to Vodoo cards, and sense I don't want to hastle with a 2D and 3D accellerator I plan to use a Vodoo 3. I know that later Geforce cards are also compatible though, and offer much better performance. They are also much, much cheaper on ebay. How would a FX5XXX or a Geforce 4 PCI card pair with this system? Are there any glide games that wont' also work with openGL? How does all that work?

The compatibility issues can be reduced to three categories.

First up is purely electrical. Only the very oldest boards (FIC-PA2013 was already mentioned) have issues there - and some later cards with universal keying that still blow up if run on a 3.3V-only slot (so stick with period AGP 2x cards).
Secondly you get the flakey support of advanced AGP features by early chipsets. That's why people recommend Voodoo: 3dfx didn't use any of those. This is mainly an issue with ALi Aladdin V chipsets. However, the issues get mixed up with driver problems and I would be very interested to re-test some early AGP cards with an Aladdin V board today. It wouldn't surprise me if it was almost all driver problems...
Thirdly you have the drivers. Early AGP chipset drivers were crap and riddled with incompatibilities. Via eventually managed to sort most of that out in their later chipset drivers, ALi also made great improvements (and SiS probably did too, but given the low sales and other issues with the 5591 chipset nobody really bothered to look).

Basically So7+AGP is a two-horse race. Either go for Via MVP3 or ALi Aladdin V. The other two chipsets with AGP (Via VP3 and SiS 5591) can't reliably reach 100MHz operation so are not recmmended. Aladdin V is definitely the better performing of the two, and can be clocked higher. If you want maximum performance on the So7 platform, go for Aladdin V, in particular for the Asus P5A(-B) motherboard. However, you don't want max performance but max flexibility looking downwards. Then it's a complete waste to go for an Aladdin V. Plus the MVP3 gives you more options with cache and clocks to play with. And there are vastly more boards with it available. Just don't assume that because the chipset offers all these settings, any given board will give you access to them. I personally found DFI's MVP3-boards to be the best in terms of flexibility and stability, but as with anything else retro, beggars can't be choosers and you need to make do with what is available at an acceptable price.

One site to check:
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm

This lists boards with official and unofficial AMD K6+ (K6-2+ and K6-3+) CPU support. I'd recommend trying to get one of the boards listed here, both for maximum flexibility in terms of CPU, but also because that guarantees a modern BIOS with large HDD support and no Y2K issues.

Finally, if you want to clock down regularly, consider how you want to do it. If you want to do it from BIOS (i.e. no messing around with jumpers), choose a board where FSB and multiplier settings are done in BIOS, not with jumpers or dipswitches. However you may prefer (as I do) to make some external switches for the computer, letting you quickly do the relevant settings (possibly even on-the-fly). In that case you actively need jumpers, as the switches need somewhere to connect to. That's why I chose a Tekram P5MVP-A4 for my setup to do pretty much the same you are trying: K6+ support (+ big HDDs), nice clean ATX layout (so no need to find a decent AT case+PSU) and jumpers galore for me to fit to my switches. Not that it was the only option, but it was the first one I found for a good price (EUR 35) when I was looking.

fitzpatr wrote:

I'll address some of your points. 8><CUT Avoid TNT2 cards. 8><CUT […]
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I'll address some of your points.
8><CUT
Avoid TNT2 cards.
8><CUT

Why is that ?

PARKE wrote:

fitzpatr wrote:

I'll address some of your points. 8><CUT Avoid TNT2 cards. 8><CUT […]
Show full quote

I'll address some of your points.
8><CUT
Avoid TNT2 cards.
8><CUT

Why is that ?

The TNT2 was the first VGA chip that used all the AGP functionality. That was a challenge for early chipsets, particularly for the Ali Aladdin V.

Here again, both nVidia and ALi/Via drivers were very immature at the time and probably a bigger cause of problems than any actual hardware problems. I've had several TNT2s running flawlessly on my MVP3 board recently, and I wouldn't be surprised if it would also be OK on ALi chipsets, particularly given that a year after releasing the Aladdin V they used essentially the same AGP hardware for their ALiTNT2 P3 chipset with integrated TNT2 😜

This looks like it'll be a great setup. Just a few points.

The choice of sound card is tossed around in other threads, so you can do some further reading on the various pros and cons if you like. I'm a big fan of ESS cards, but there are viable options featuring Crystal, Aztech, Opti, and Yamaha chips (along with the genuine SB Pro). Much is determined by how much you want to spend. There's actually enough variability in audio hardware that you might want to pick up two or three sound cards (clones are usually quite cheap) to see what you prefer.

As for the CPU, SETMUL requires a K6-2+, K6-III+, or C3 CPU for multiplier manipulation. Out of all these, an AMD CPU will give you the most top end performance. Alternately, if you have a fast Win98 machine for high end performance, you can use a Pentium MMX CPU along with TR12 test registers for highly flexible DOS/Windows computing. This can be advantageous because TR12 registers are never reset by the extender used for Ultima 7 unlike the normal L1 cache enable bit.

gdjacobs wrote:

As for the CPU, SETMUL requires a K6-2+, K6-III+, or C3 CPU for multiplier manipulation. Out of all these, an AMD CPU will give you the most top end performance. Alternately, if you have a fast Win98 machine for high end performance, you can use a Pentium MMX CPU along with TR12 test registers for highly flexible DOS/Windows computing. This can be advantageous because TR12 registers are never reset by the extender used for Ultima 7 unlike the normal L1 cache enable bit.

My Ezra C3 exceeds my K6-III+ clocked at 550mhz (100x5.5) and it also has much smoother scaling. My K6 cannot hit 486 DX-66 speeds, either... it will jump from a DX-33 speed to Pentium 133. I can put a Pentium MMX 233 in there though and that can achieve those speeds as well as deal with games like Ultima 7. I also have a Nehemiah I just acquired which is even faster on the top end... and unlike my K-6/SS7, on my Slot 1 board I can make every speed adjustment (FSB, Cache, Multiplier, TRs) from in DOS -- no changing jumpers or BIOS settings.

The other benefit of a C3 is that in a Slot 1 system it is very easy to pop in a fast Pentium III allowing for an even wider range of games. The major downside of course is that getting the right board and worst of all, the right slotket, can be a major pain in the butt. The topic title does say affordable but really a lot of it comes down to how patient you are. I've payed ~98$ for my Slot 1 board and just recently acquired two additional ones (same board) for only $30-35.

Voodoos sadly will probably keep going up but at least with Voodoo 3s you can get one for a reasonable price if you're patient and constantly checking.

infiniteclouds wrote:

My Ezra C3 exceeds my K6-III+ clocked at 550mhz (100x5.5)

I have seen FPU heavy benchmarks where a fully clocked Ezra performs at around the same level as a Pentium Pro. It's not just a half-speed FPU, the low power architecture is just slow as a dog. Which in the case of underclocking is a very good dog indeed.

squiggly wrote:

I have seen FPU heavy benchmarks where a fully clocked Ezra performs at around the same level as a Pentium Pro. It's not just a half-speed FPU, the low power architecture is just slow as a dog. Which in the case of underclocking is a very good dog indeed.

Isn't Quake (software) FPU intense? I get 120 frames in Quake on my Ezra, and 30 frames at 640x480.

infiniteclouds wrote:

My Ezra C3 exceeds my K6-III+ clocked at 550mhz (100x5.5) and it also has much smoother scaling. My K6 cannot hit 486 DX-66 spee […]
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gdjacobs wrote:

As for the CPU, SETMUL requires a K6-2+, K6-III+, or C3 CPU for multiplier manipulation. Out of all these, an AMD CPU will give you the most top end performance. Alternately, if you have a fast Win98 machine for high end performance, you can use a Pentium MMX CPU along with TR12 test registers for highly flexible DOS/Windows computing. This can be advantageous because TR12 registers are never reset by the extender used for Ultima 7 unlike the normal L1 cache enable bit.

My Ezra C3 exceeds my K6-III+ clocked at 550mhz (100x5.5) and it also has much smoother scaling. My K6 cannot hit 486 DX-66 speeds, either... it will jump from a DX-33 speed to Pentium 133. I can put a Pentium MMX 233 in there though and that can achieve those speeds as well as deal with games like Ultima 7. I also have a Nehemiah I just acquired which is even faster on the top end... and unlike my K-6/SS7, on my Slot 1 board I can make every speed adjustment (FSB, Cache, Multiplier, TRs) from in DOS -- no changing jumpers or BIOS settings.

The other benefit of a C3 is that in a Slot 1 system it is very easy to pop in a fast Pentium III allowing for an even wider range of games. The major downside of course is that getting the right board and worst of all, the right slotket, can be a major pain in the butt. The topic title does say affordable but really a lot of it comes down to how patient you are. I've payed ~98$ for my Slot 1 board and just recently acquired two additional ones (same board) for only $30-35.

Voodoos sadly will probably keep going up but at least with Voodoo 3s you can get one for a reasonable price if you're patient and constantly checking.

Through underclocking on a C3, what levels of performance are you able to reach? You mentioned Ultimate 7, does running at 486-33 speeds make a big difference compared to the 66? Are there any other games that need a more specific 486 speed?

A socket 1 build would be great if it makes sense. They are much easier to find on ebay at affordable prices, and it is really easy to change out the CPU because the cooler and processor are both slotted.

mothergoose729 wrote:

infiniteclouds wrote:

Through underclocking on a C3, what levels of performance are you able to reach? You mentioned Ultimate 7, does running at 486-33 speeds make a big difference compared to the 66? Are there any other games that need a more specific 486 speed?

A socket 1 build would be great if it makes sense. They are much easier to find on ebay at affordable prices, and it is really easy to change out the CPU because the cooler and processor are both slotted.

It depends on the board you have, as well. My board can do FSBs of 50, 66, 75, 82, 100, 103, 113 and 133 with Multipliers from x3.0 to 16x, Branch Prediction On/Off, I-Cache On/Offf and L1/L2 Cache. On the bottom end it's probably the same as the K6... about a 386-25/33Mhz but it scales much better and with less jumps. It hits probably every performance point in between.

The reason people are mentioning Ultima 7 is because it needs to run at about a 386-33 speed... which you can achieve on an K6 by lowering the multiplier and disabling caches however Ultima 7 will always re-enable cache making it impossible to run on a K6 chip. You can still run it on a Socket 7 but you'll need to swap in a Pentium chip and use the TR12 options with SetMul.

You'll find a lot of games had a DX-66 suggested speed which is why I mentioned that.

To be clear though -- C3s are NOT Slot 1 CPUs.. you will need to find a compatible slotket adapter, which is not easy.

infiniteclouds wrote:

squiggly wrote:

I have seen FPU heavy benchmarks where a fully clocked Ezra performs at around the same level as a Pentium Pro. It's not just a half-speed FPU, the low power architecture is just slow as a dog. Which in the case of underclocking is a very good dog indeed.

Isn't Quake (software) FPU intense? I get 120 frames in Quake on my Ezra, and 30 frames at 640x480.

Carmack was kind of famous for using integer math instead of FPU, probably for performance reasons. I found this nice quote on the intertubes:

===
>
> >
> > Quake uses the FPU for nearly all the graphics stuff it does.
> >In fact, what it tends to do is bombard the FPU with instruction after
> >instruction pretty consistantly for some points.

This is complete crap. Qauke uses the FPU only to add two long strings in
the FPU registers since they (iD) could not be bothered to rewrite that
part of code for pentiums which can add long strings in the integer
registers. There is absolutely NO FPU processing bar addition that is
performed by Quake in the FPU!!! The reason why AMD is slower is because
it cannot move data in and out of those registrs as fast as the pentium
FPU.
===

The fact is many games don't rely heavily on the FPU and will probably run OK on a C3...but as soon as you hit the FPU it's good bye time.

infiniteclouds wrote:

It depends on the board you have, as well. My board can do FSBs of 50, 66, 75, 82, 100, 103, 113 and 133 with Multipliers from x […]
Show full quote

mothergoose729 wrote:

infiniteclouds wrote:

Through underclocking on a C3, what levels of performance are you able to reach? You mentioned Ultimate 7, does running at 486-33 speeds make a big difference compared to the 66? Are there any other games that need a more specific 486 speed?

A socket 1 build would be great if it makes sense. They are much easier to find on ebay at affordable prices, and it is really easy to change out the CPU because the cooler and processor are both slotted.

It depends on the board you have, as well. My board can do FSBs of 50, 66, 75, 82, 100, 103, 113 and 133 with Multipliers from x3.0 to 16x, Branch Prediction On/Off, I-Cache On/Offf and L1/L2 Cache. On the bottom end it's probably the same as the K6... about a 386-25/33Mhz but it scales much better and with less jumps. It hits probably every performance point in between.

The reason people are mentioning Ultima 7 is because it needs to run at about a 386-33 speed... which you can achieve on an K6 by lowering the multiplier and disabling caches however Ultima 7 will always re-enable cache making it impossible to run on a K6 chip. You can still run it on a Socket 7 but you'll need to swap in a Pentium chip and use the TR12 options with SetMul.

You'll find a lot of games had a DX-66 suggested speed which is why I mentioned that.

To be clear though -- C3s are NOT Slot 1 CPUs.. you will need to find a compatible slotket adapter, which is not easy.

Got it, thanks.

How does an application low MoSlow or CPU killer fit into the equation?

gdjacobs wrote:

This looks like it'll be a great setup. Just a few points.

The choice of sound card is tossed around in other threads, so you can do some further reading on the various pros and cons if you like. I'm a big fan of ESS cards, but there are viable options featuring Crystal, Aztech, Opti, and Yamaha chips (along with the genuine SB Pro). Much is determined by how much you want to spend. There's actually enough variability in audio hardware that you might want to pick up two or three sound cards (clones are usually quite cheap) to see what you prefer.

As for the CPU, SETMUL requires a K6-2+, K6-III+, or C3 CPU for multiplier manipulation. Out of all these, an AMD CPU will give you the most top end performance. Alternately, if you have a fast Win98 machine for high end performance, you can use a Pentium MMX CPU along with TR12 test registers for highly flexible DOS/Windows computing. This can be advantageous because TR12 registers are never reset by the extender used for Ultima 7 unlike the normal L1 cache enable bit.

I am internally debating that too. It would be much cheaper to get a DOS only machine with no Glide support, and then get a high end DOS + machine with glide. Seeing as I could use any old early athlon, p4, or pIII for the latter, and any of the widely aviable intel chipsets for the pentium mmx, it could end up being about the same price at the end of it. I just am not sure how I feel about having two towers when I could get 99% of the functionality out of one.

Sigh. Decisions.

squiggly wrote:

The fact is many games don't rely heavily on the FPU and will probably run OK on a C3...but as soon as you hit the FPU it's good bye time.

What are some examples? Do they exist in DOS? Windows 95? I'd like to see some examples of games that run better on a K6 than my Ezra-T. I should say, run well - if a game is barely running on a K6 it needs something better anyway. I'm not doubting they exist by any means -- I just want to see for myself!

I also have a Nehemiah I haven't tested yet but it supposedly is much improved over the Ezra in terms of FPU. It does not scale as smoothly for older games though, from what I've read.

infiniteclouds wrote:

squiggly wrote:

The fact is many games don't rely heavily on the FPU and will probably run OK on a C3...but as soon as you hit the FPU it's good bye time.

What are some examples? Do they exist in DOS? Windows 95? I'd like to see some examples of games that run better on a K6 than my Ezra-T. I should say, run well - if a game is barely running on a K6 it needs something better anyway. I'm not doubting they exist by any means -- I just want to see for myself!

I also have a Nehemiah I haven't tested yet but it supposedly is much improved over the Ezra in terms of FPU. It does not scale as smoothly for older games though, from what I've read.

I don't remember the name but there was some kind of space strategy sim that crawled to a halt every time a certain battle sequence initiated, only on the C3. The fact is because floating point math is so much slower than integer math, most games probably avoid it to start with, I don't know how widespread the problem actually is. Nehemiah has a full-speed FPU...but it's a Via FPU so even at full-speed it's like a crippled old man running a marathon.

infiniteclouds wrote:

The reason people are mentioning Ultima 7 is because it needs to run at about a 386-33 speed... which you can achieve on an K6 by lowering the multiplier and disabling caches however Ultima 7 will always re-enable cache making it impossible to run on a K6 chip. You can still run it on a Socket 7 but you'll need to swap in a Pentium chip and use the TR12 options with SetMul.

Been patched, find it by the name u7dcp in the vogons release announcements subforum. Running on an athlon 64: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2tyyWk766s.

infiniteclouds wrote:

My Ezra C3 exceeds my K6-III+ clocked at 550mhz (100x5.5) and it also has much smoother scaling. My K6 cannot hit 486 DX-66 speeds, either... it will jump from a DX-33 speed to Pentium 133. I can put a Pentium MMX 233 in there though and that can achieve those speeds as well as deal with games like Ultima 7. I also have a Nehemiah I just acquired which is even faster on the top end... and unlike my K-6/SS7, on my Slot 1 board I can make every speed adjustment (FSB, Cache, Multiplier, TRs) from in DOS -- no changing jumpers or BIOS settings.

I was specifically looking at socket 7 CPUs, although there's no reason to stick with that if the motherboard hasn't been picked up yet. I have an Ezra as well (the PMMX is on the shelf) and I really love it, although my rig doesn't support on the fly FSB adjustment. I make do with toggling FSB on my slotket before rebooting.

vvbee wrote:

Been patched, find it by the name u7dcp in the vogons release announcements subforum. Running on an athlon 64: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2tyyWk766s

U7DCP - Ultima VII DOS Cache Patch
Nice, although I still think TR12 registers offer smoother scaling than K6-2+.