Used it with 64, 128 and 256mb ram far.
Which utility can change agp speed ?

Try powertweak 2.02 or Riva tuner 2.0RC151 or Power strip

Oh, you mean set the 1/2/4x mode, but not overclock the bus. Heh.
Chipset supports only 2x and system is in that mode.
Also, no FastWrites on this board/chipset.

Cool thing you guys need to download is k6speed.exe

You can play with the multi in windows

My first reply to this thread was about this util. That's several posts ago.
Either it sets other parameters in addition to CPU multiplier or causes the system to react in such a way.
As a result - moving from 5.5 to 6x things get slower.

pshipkov wrote on 2021-11-09, 06:29:

My first reply to this thread was about this util. That's several posts ago.
Either it sets other parameters in addition to CPU multiplier or causes the system to react in such a way.
As a result - moving from 5.5 to 6x things get slower.

Set the multiplier with CTU and see if it helps

When i do it through jumpers all is good.
I think i noted this in previous posts, but i know that it is hard to keep track of who said what when.

Hi all,

@Skalabala
Congratulation to your 1 MiB Asus P5A! 👍

and @Roman555 and all others that are interested:
May I draw your attention to here?
I didn't want to post to much off topic here 😉.

Lotosdrache wrote on 2020-05-21, 09:48:

Hello to everybody here! […]
Show full quote

Hello to everybody here!

Nearly four month ago, Skalabala got in touch with me at my thread about my GA-5AX on overclockers.com and drew my attention to this contest here. I totally forgot that I also created an account here at vogons.org more than four years ago... 🙄

I read this thread and it's all about GeForce 3 (mostly) graphics card and most recently a Voodoo 5 on SS7 platform. I always preferred ATi cards because
1. after 8 years of working/playing on my AMD N80L286-16/S from 1990-1998, my second PC (Intel Pentium II 400 MHz) was equipped with ATi 3D Rage Pro AGP (8 MiB) "assisted" 😉 by Voodoo 2 (12 MiB)
2. ATi always had better support for DVD playback.

Now, led me introduce one of my Super Socket 7 systems first:
- Gigabyte GA-5AX [Rev. 5.2; ALi Aladdin V (Rev. H)]
- BIOS F4
alternatively: BIOS F5 Powered by Lotosdrache
- 512 kiB onboard Cache
- AMD K6-2+/570ACZ@600 (6*100 MHz)
- 2x 256 MiB Mircon Technology SD-RAM PC133U-222-542-Z (MT16LSDT3264AG-13EE3)
alternatively: 3x 512 MiB SD-RAM (vendor: Micron Technology or Xelo)
- 3Dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV incl. breakout cable
alternatively: Matrox G400 Max
- Matrox m3D
- 3Com 3CR990-TX-97
- Terratec EWS64 XXL (Rev 1.2)
- Gravis Ultrasound Max (Rev 2.1)
- IDE-HDD: Maxtor 6Y080P0 (80 GB), Maxtor 4R060J0 (60 GB)
- IDE-ODD: Kenwood UCR-421 True-X 72x, HP CD-Writer Plus (don't know the exact model number)
- 3.5" and 5.25" floppy disk drives
IMG_2100.JPG

That's how the system is intended to look like when it's finished. For this contest however, I will make a little change: I havn't got any GeForce 3 in my collection because GeForce is sooo mainstream. How boring! So, I looked through my stock and other systems and found a graphics card that should be equivalent to Geforce 3 considering time, features and performance:

ATi FireGL 8800 that found its way to me in an IBM IntelliStation M Pro (Pentium 4 with Rambus RAM) 😀

IMG_2142.JPG

As you can see, this combination is suffering some problems:
1. Although the chipset revision is H and supports internal tag RAM, Gigabyte still used an external one. The internal tag is deactivated. Therefore, it can only cache 128 MiB.
Solution: I reverse-engineered the BIOS and injected a patch that
a) disables external tag RAM,
b) enables internal tag RAM and now the board caches 512 MiB of RAM,
c) modifies a number of other chipset register settings:
- SDRAM Trc=7T (8T before) and Tras=4T (5T before)
- SDRAM Internal Page detection enabled
- SDRAM Enhanced Page Mode enabled
- LINEAR_WORD-Merge for Frame Buffer Cycle disabled
- Fast NAJ asserted in single write cycle enabled
- SDRAM tRP=2T@FSB100 (4T before)
- AGP Control Register II: Output delay control of AD_STB[1:0] : Default-1nsec=2,5nsec
The following chipset parameters were changed with modbin:
- Separate setting for Trcd and CL enabled
- Trcd=2T select when bit6 = 1 enable
These last two changes have no effect on RAM timings at all. They are just of cosmetic nature 😉

Now, the chipset programming of my Gigabyte GA-5AX resembles Asus P5A nearly 😀

2. ATi FireGL 8800 is a workstation card and there are no drivers for consumer Win98SE/2000/XP.
Solution: I modified the inf-file of Catalyst 6.2 Win98SE driver and installed the card via device manager:

😀

3. I saw that most of you had big problems to get ATi cards running on Aladdin V boards. My first trial on Thursday was a debacle, too. As soon as the system finished rebooting after driver installation, I could not open any program. Windows 98SE crashed immediately.
Solution: I had to limit Primary Frame Buffer Size to 16 MiB!
a) If you prefer using the original Microsoft Windows 98SE AGP driver then you must go into your BIOS-Setup -> Chipset Features Setup -> Primary Frame Buffer -> 16 MB
b) If you like to use ALi AGP driver (version 1.72, 1.82, 1.90, or 2.13 it doesn't matter) there is no need to change your BIOS setting. You can also use ALi AGP Control Center (aka ALi AGP Utility 1.40):
- click Smart Selection "Turbo" -> Apply
- go to "Manual"
- set "Frame Buffer Size" to 16M -> Apply
The other options (except AGP and SDRAM Delay Clock) have no effect on stability at least on my system. Frame buffer must be limited before Catalyst 6.2 installation. That's all. 😀

With this setting, FireGL 8800 runs absolutely stable albeit I only tested 3DMark2000 v1.1 with original BIOS F4, original MS Windows 98SE AGP driver, DirectX 8.1b, and ATi Catalyst 6.2 so far. The result was really disappointing:

BIOS F4
__________MS Win98SE____ALi AGP driver
___________AGP driver______1.72______1.82______1.90______2.13
128 MiB
DirectX 7.0a-------2900----------3019--------2845-------2979--------2837
-------------------------------------------------------------------(with 256 MiB: 2475)
-------------------------------------------------------------------(with K6-III+/400ATZ@550: 128 MiB=3441
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------256 MiB=3257)

---

512 MiB
DirectX 7.0a-------2439----------2513--------2445-------2440--------2489

---

128 MiB
DirectX 8.1b-------2940----------2883--------2987-------2801--------2881

---

512 MiB
Directx 8.1b-------2482 🙁--------2460--------2469-------2537--------2474
-----------------2410----------2400--------2496-------2461--------2512

---

BIOS F5 Powered by Lotosdrache
__________MS Win98SE____ALi AGP driver
___________AGP driver______1.72______1.82______1.90______2.13
128 MiB
DirectX 7.0a-------2891----------2822--------2856-------2807--------2912

---

512 MiB
DirectX 7.0a-------2834----------2858--------2866-------2872--------2811

---

128 MiB
DirectX 8.1b-------2823----------2873--------2906-------2846--------2930

---

512 MiB
DirectX 8.1b-------2879 ----------2820--------2923-------2910--------2911
-------------------------------------------------------------------(onbord L2=L3 cache off: 2527)
-------------------------------------------------------------------(1 GiB RAM with MS files: 2474
--------------------------------------------------------------------1 GiB RAM with Rudolph Loew patchmem: 2837)

---

You see there is lot's of work considering BIOS and chipset settings, AGP and graphics card drivers, RAM capacity, DirectX version...
I will continue to fill this "table" (How can I create a smarter one?) from time to time. First, I have to look for better cooling of AGP voltage converter (it's getting really hot) and CPU (there isn't even heatsink paste between cooler and cpu).

I've got absolutely no idea where this journey ends up. Stay tuned!

Last questions to you:
How often do you loop the benchmark with the aim of cache training?
Are your systems fully equipped with sound cards, network interface cards and so on or do you use minimal configuration with only a graphics card installed?

EDIT 1:
I finished benchmark run with original Gigabyte BIOS F4 (see table above). I did most of the runs only once and that with 512 MiB RAM and DirectX 8.1b twice. However, I think I can make/confirm following remarks/statements:
1. The result range is considerably high. My estimation for a given configuration is: average +/- 50 points. Therefore it's hardly possible to declare a winner.
2. The differences between both DirectX versions are small (128 MiB / 512 MiB):
- DirectX 7.0a: 2923.2 / 2465.2
- DirectX 8.1b: 2898.4 / 2470.1
- Δ..................... -24.8 / 4.9
3. The differences between all 5 drivers are small (128 MiB / 512 MiB):
- M 98SE: 2920 / 2443.7
- ALi 1.72: 2951 / 2457.7
- ALi 1.82: 2916 / 2470
- ALi 1.90: 2890 / 2479.3
- ALi 2.13: 2877 / 2491.7
4. 128 MiB RAM are much faster than 512 MiB RAM (256 MiB RAM gave similar results as 512 MiB):
- 2910.8 <-> 2468.48
- Δ -442.32
5. K6-III+/400ATZ@550 MHz (5.5*100 MHz) is much faster than K6-2+/570ACZ@600 MHz (6*100 MHz) albeit a little bit more unstable (128 MiB / 256 MiB):
- K6- 2+: 2837 / 2475
- K6-III+: 3441 / 3257
- Δ............ 604 / 782
Therefore, more on-die cache is more helpful than higher clock.
6. With K6-2+/570ACZ@600 MHz on GA-5AX, I hardly achieve 3000 points with FireGL 8800 and standard chipset configuration 🙁

To comments about ALi M1541 AGP driver that drove me crazy:
1. Version 1.72 doesn't enable SDRAM Internal Page Detection (Offset 49/ Bit 1) when set to Turbo Mode as newer versions do.
2. All versions disable Force Snoop INV (Offset 43/ Bit 7) upon installation on this board (it's enabled by default through Gigabyte's BIOS) and enable it again after installation of graphics card driver.

To be continued...

EDIT 2:
I finished testing of my BIOS patch:
1. Differences between both DirectX versions are small again (128 MiB / 512 MiB):
- DirectX 7.0a: 2857.6 / 2848.2
- DirectX 8.1b: 2875.6 / 2888.6
- Δ...........................18 / 40.4
3. The differences between all 5 drivers are small again (128 MiB / 512 MiB):
- M 98SE: 2857 / 2856.5
- ALi 1.72: 2847.5 / 2839
- ALi 1.82: 2881 / 2894.5
- ALi 1.90: 2826.5 / 2891
- ALi 2.13: 2921 / 2861
4. 128 MiB RAM are no longer faster than 512 MiB RAM:
- 2866.6 <-> 2868,4
- Δ 1.8
😀
From this I can conclude that
- the patch works and the board is now able to cache 512 MiB of memory with its internal tag RAM 😀
- decreased results with original BIOS F4 are possibly due to smaller cacheable area
5. Onboard L2 cache (= L3 cache with K6-2+) still impacts performance even with K6-2+ and its internal L2 cache
When switching onboard cache (=L3 cache with K6-2+) off, I only got 2527 points.
6. Upgrading RAM to 1 GiB decreased performance again:
- 2474 -> Here I am again out of the cacheable area with MS Win98SE original files.
Interestingly, using Rudolph Loew's patchmem files for systems with more than 512 MiB RAM kept the result high:
- 2837 -> Either the patch limits the system to the lower cacheable 512 MiB, or it reprograms Win98SE to fill the cacheable area first. I don't know.

All in all:
- DirectX 7.0a seems to be less stable on this system than DirectX 8.1b. At least, I got more abnormal terminations with version 7.0a than with 8.1b.
- With the new BIOS, the system seems to be a little bit slower than with the older one albeit of faster RAM timings. At least, I never reached 3000+ points as I did once before with 128 MiB RAM.
Therefore, I have to check whether SDRAM Enhanced Page Mode is really so enhanced. I tested 4 CPUCLKs here. Other settings are 8, 12, or 16 CPUCLKs. However, I never saw a board where this is enabled. Maybe I will disable it again. For this tests I'm going to use a Matrox G400 Max...

Do you think you might be able to apply any of your bios patching knowhow to a asus p5a bios?

Yeah, there is definitely something to this driver overhead thing you guys are talking about.

So quadro2 pro (is that a geforce 2?) and geforce 3 ti 200 (would a higher model gf3 be a good investment or only the ti200?)

seem to be the winners… crazy…

Btw, I seem to be having stability issues crashes during 3d

Anyone with a p5a willing to drop some screens of their bios settings?

Quadro 2 and gf3 ti 200, kings of k63+ but do you think they are kings of the 233mmx?

With my GeForce 3 Ti 200, the higher I set the clocks the higher my benchmark scores, so I'd have to believe that a Ti 500 would be a better starting point (especially if you had a good one).

Repo Man11 wrote on 2021-12-25, 15:47:

With my GeForce 3 Ti 200, the higher I set the clocks the higher my benchmark scores, so I'd have to believe that a Ti 500 would be a better starting point (especially if you had a good one).

So apparently there was a quadro dcc that was based on the gf3

But I can’t find any for sale

I see a few ti 500’s though but pricing is sub optimal. Lol

Interestingly these are basically original xbox gpus

Wonder if anyone has thought about pulling old xboxes apart and using the gpus for a card?

Is there a ATI counterpart to the awesome numbers you guys are getting to these geforce 3 and quadro 2s?

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-12-26, 09:44:

Is there a ATI counterpart to the awesome numbers you guys are getting to these geforce 3 and quadro 2s?

No. At least I haven't found any ATI drivers from 2000 / 2001 that were properly optimized for 3DNow!/weak SS7 CPUs.
Anyway, ATI had major issues with drivers during that period, so no point in digging further.

As a rule of thumb, when dealing with SS7 (from both performance and stability standpoints), it's better to either go with a Voodoo 3 or an nVIDIA GeForce 2 (a GeForce 2 MX/MX400 is usually the sweet spot, but a GeForce 2 GTS works too as an overkill GPU). Drivers are also important, based on my tests 7.76 seem to be the best for SS7 (for the majority of games).

Just as a warning, for potential future readers: regarding the GeForce 3 discussion (and especially the GeForce 3 Ti 500!), I would only go with GeForce 3 on boards that have good AGP power delivery (which is pretty rare on SS7). The Asus P5A (at least certain later revisions) is usually decent in this regard, but I still would NEVER use a GeForce 3 Ti 500 with it long term - besides the huge power requirements that can potentially damage the motherboard, it would be completely overkill for SS7 (unless you're after quick benchmarking records).

Some power consumption examples:
GeForce 2 MX: ~4 Watts
GeForce 2 GTS: ~8 Watts
Voodoo 3 3000: ~15 Watts
GeForce 3 Ti 500: ~35 Watts

So, it's obvious that the GeForce 2 MX is by far the safest for cheap SS7 motherboards, though a bit of fine tuning will usually be required to stabilize the AGP related problems.
I actually own two boards (both are Lucky Tech) that can't properly feed current even to the Voodoo 3 3000 (AGP version).

You could always use a riser that decouples the AGP power from the motherboard. Wouldn't be hard at all to do.

I have a 1.4 asus p5a will it handle a ti 500?

Do you guys have a recommend for best card for my dual 233mmx build? It’s pci only.

I want the fastest benchmarks with this purchance.

Btw, being a 5v compatible pci card would be handy. (Dual notch doesn’t guarantee this)

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-12-26, 22:35:

I have a 1.4 asus p5a will it handle a ti 500?

I would not risk using it long-term.

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-12-26, 22:35:

Do you guys have a recommend for best card for my dual 233mmx build? It’s pci only.

For the MMX (be it a single or dual build), Voodoo cards are both the fastest and most compatible with games that you can realistically hope of playing on such a slow platform. I prefer Voodoo 2 + S3 Virge as a good balance between speed and compatibility, but Voodoo 3 PCI can also be used as an overkill video card (it will be less compatible with early DOS Glide games, though).
The problem with Voodoo cards is the price, but if you are lucky to find them for a more decent price… go for it. 😀

Now, since you have a dual build, you’ll probably go with an SMP-aware operating system , and this might be a problem for the Voodoo cards (they work best under Win95/98).

bloodem wrote on 2021-12-27, 06:05:

I would not risk using it long-term. […]
Show full quote

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-12-26, 22:35:

I have a 1.4 asus p5a will it handle a ti 500?

I would not risk using it long-term.

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-12-26, 22:35:

Do you guys have a recommend for best card for my dual 233mmx build? It’s pci only.

For the MMX (be it a single or dual build), Voodoo cards are both the fastest and most compatible with games that you can realistically hope of playing on such a slow platform. I prefer Voodoo 2 + S3 Virge as a good balance between speed and compatibility, but Voodoo 3 PCI can also be used as an overkill video card (it will be less compatible with early DOS Glide games, though).
The problem with Voodoo cards is the price, but if you are lucky to find them for a more decent price… go for it. 😀

Now, since you have a dual build, you’ll probably go with an SMP-aware operating system , and this might be a problem for the Voodoo cards (they work best under Win95/98).

I really want to find a voodoo 5500 mac edition so I can have dual on my dual and dvi 🤣

No good under xp huh? Crap…

So then, gf2?

GeForce 2 MX is not really an option either. The PCI versions are rare (especially the ones with the full 128 bit memory bus), and usually as expensive as the Voodoo cards, while also being much slower on a Pentium MMX and A LOT less compatible.
The Hardware T&L (more specifically the Hardware Transform) will help a bit in OpenGL titles like GLQuake and Quake 2, but it will still be a lot slower than Voodoo & Glide.

Having said that, you seem to like Windows XP a bit too much. 🤣
I don't even want to imagine how a Pentium MMX would run XP. I remember trying Windows 2000 SP4 on a Pentium MMX, and the experience was... ugh... not that great. I don't think things would be much different with 2 x Pentium MMX CPUs. 😀
Even Windows 98 SE feels sluggish on an MMX (and that's when heavily overclocked, running at FSB 83 MHz).

bloodem wrote on 2021-12-27, 07:56:

GeForce 2 MX is not really an option either. The PCI versions are rare (especially the ones with the full 128 bit memory bus), a […]
Show full quote

GeForce 2 MX is not really an option either. The PCI versions are rare (especially the ones with the full 128 bit memory bus), and usually as expensive as the Voodoo cards, while also being much slower on a Pentium MMX and A LOT less compatible.
The Hardware T&L (more specifically the Hardware Transform) will help a bit in OpenGL titles like GLQuake and Quake 2, but it will still be a lot slower than Voodoo & Glide.

Having said that, you seem to like Windows XP a bit too much. 🤣
I don't even want to imagine how a Pentium MMX would run XP. I remember trying Windows 2000 SP4 on a Pentium MMX, and the experience was... ugh... not that great.
Even Windows 98 SE feels sluggish on an MMX (and that's when heavily overclocked, running at FSB 83 MHz).

You know, I tried 2k sp4 and it was a pretty bad experience.

Honestly windows XP sp3 runs fine on it… hell, more than fine! it is a dual after all. So I’m sure the experience is much better than on a single.

Windows NT is basically useless, I tried 2k sp4 and that wasn’t much use, but XP it just works and runs fine! 🤷‍♂️

Win 9x isn’t much of a option being a dual and whatnot.

The system has 512mb of ram.

Hell man I was playing halo CE on it with the 7500 the other day. The lag was real but it was actually playable haha.

Red alert 2 was a slow mo show but playable. And didn’t even crash. Which is saying something.

Realmyst runs but is kinda unbearable with the lag normal myst runs great though.

Stratosphere is quite playable. Could use a few more fps though. Something I’m hoping to pick up with a faster gfx card than the 7500.

I’m hoping you can point me in the direction of something that would give good results on it like these geforce 3/2 cards are on the k6

Geforce 1?