God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-12-09, 22:34:

I know FX 5000 series are supposed to be ideal for win9x game compatibility, and I already have one 5900 Ultra as well as one 5900 XT, but it feels like a bit of a waste to use such "weak" cards with such an overkill mobo, an Athlon XP build will probably run those just fine. So here I'm thinking something like the X850XT PE or 7800GS, or 6800 Ultra at worst (I don't have one and they're quite hard to find for reasonable price) and just go overkill in all ways. Probably not 7950GT AGP overkill tho, I've had enough of 82.69 driver, game compatibility is ass with that one.

FX5950U Is CPU limited in Win98SE up till about 3.2-3.3Ghz using a X6800 CPU.. at least in 3DMark.

I need to do some actual game testing.

At what resolution tho, would you be running 3dmark at like 640x480 or something? Because with such overkill graphics cards it's doing the hardware a dis-service not running 1600x1200 with forced AA and AF. I doubt the 5950u gonna be cpu bottlenecked at such settings

PARUS wrote on 2020-12-09, 21:55:

When DOS starting the multiplier is setting to x8 and ODCM is setting to 1/8, the CPU frequency in DOS is 200MHz (in autoexec.bat).

It is available to do also x6 and 1/8, the CPU frequency will be 200x6/8=150MHz. For DOS of course.

PARUS wrote on 2020-12-09, 21:55:

First is PCI card (and Primary adapter in BIOS setup) GeForce FX5200/5500 which used in Win98+DOS. Second is AGP card Radeon HD3850 or HD4670 which used in WinXP (and may in Win7).

I didn't say about one thing. If you boot Windows XP or Windows 7 in dual-cards mode and change Primary adapter from in-bios configured to in-windows configured you must install drivers for both cards. If you have not driver for 'first' PCI card you'll never start and set up the 'second' AGP card. If you use Windows XP you can take any PCI card which has winxp-driver. It can be PCI Voodoo 3-4-5, PCI Riva TNT-TNT2, PCI GeForce 2MX/4MX/FX, PCI Radeon 7500/9000/9250. But if you want add Win7 you can take only GeForce FX card, it has beta 96.85 driver for Vista which can be used in Win7.

OR: you can just do not worry about all these setups with drivers and primary card switching. Just go to BIOS setup every time when you want to boot 98/DOS and set it to PCI, or if you want to boot 2000/XP/7/8/Linux etc set it to AGP. I find this inconvenient and I never use BIOS presets. I prefer just push power button and choose OS from list. Without entering BIOS setup at all. Therefore I have made this complicated WinXP/7 booting with switching primary adapter during Windows startup directly.

God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-12-09, 22:34:

So, you're saying wolfdale is a no go. So the Pentium E5800 that's in my AsRock Conroe865PE won't do then. How about a C2D E4700? The fastest fsb800 conroe? Because afaik these i865 core 2 mobos like my old Conroe865PE and the popular 775i65g don't really like fsb1066 cpus? And this DFI is quite similar to them, ISA slots asside? So it probably has the same issues, with memory multipliers not working correctly with higher fsb cpus?

You can try E5800, no one forbids it. It wil work on FSB400 only (forget about 533-666-800), available multipliers in BIOS setup are 6-15. X16 you can reach in OS. And I do not guarantee E5x00 stable work. But you can try it. If you use only Win98 on this mobo the FSB400, CPU 1500MHz and Dual Channel DDR266 is absolutely enough! And: if you do not know 😀 - Wolfdale CPUs do appear in Windows 98 as Pentium 3 😀 Conroes do not.
I never had E4700 but think it seems best for G7S620-N (after X6800) because has max multiplier x13. All other 'regular' not extreme Conroes have less multipliers. You can not run FSB faster than 200MHz and therefore you very need multiplier as high as it possible. Yes, E4700 seems very good choice. I did want to try it but had not, then just bought X6800. Never tried E4700.
One more time: if you use Windows 98 only you need not all these Conroe/Presler/Smithfield and higher frequencies. Take Gallatin or Cedar Mill and have fun. By the way this mobo supports Gallatin and its L3 cache. Or try E5800 on lower FSB.

God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-12-09, 22:34:

just go overkill in all ways

😀 Play as you wish. It's very interesting to try different ways. I just said that single Windows 98 does not need all these X850, 6800 Ultra etc. Not advisable 😀

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-12-09, 22:37:

Ok, cool. I should try the Goldfinch and Gun PnP on one of my industrial S478 setups with ISA and the ITE 8888 PCI-ISA bridge.

I would be somewhat surprised if they didn't work. Or is it known that they will not work with ICH5?

It is true for sure about ICH5.

God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-12-09, 22:34:

ideally I wouldn't want to add a secondary pci graphics card, because I can see myself using up all pci and isa slots for multiple different sound cards, probably with separate windows install for each sound card to try to avoid driver conflicts

OK, I understand. For example now my setup is:

AGP - Radeon HD3850
PCI1 - Quadro FX500 (FX5200 Ultra analog)
PCI2 - empty
PCI3 - Aureal A3D AU8830 (not MX300)
PCI4 - Audigy1 SB0160
ISA - Terratec EWS64 XL SPDIF out + NEC XR385 SPDIF out mod
ISA - Audio Excel AV310 CMI8330A SPDIF out
ISA - GUS Ace
ISA - AWE 64Gold SPDIF out
SoftMPU with Roland MT-32
Roland SCB-55 in external box

All ISA sound cards are configured simultaneously at the same time and haven't conflicts:
EWS64 --- IO544 IO220 IRQ7 DMA1 FM100
AV310 --- IO534 IRQ11 IO240 IRQ5 DMA0 DMA5 FM398
GUS --- IO250 IRQ3 DMA7 FM-OFF
64Gold --- IO260 IRQ9 DMA3 DMA6 E640 FM-OFF
SoftMPU uses IRQ9 of AWE64 and it is equivalent IRQ2. ACPI is on IRQ10.

All sound cards and modules are routed to Audigy card via digital and analog tracts. Audigy mixes and outputs joint signal with very good quality. In Windows 98 Creative's VxD driver is used. In DOS there is Multichannel DOS mixer for DOS sound builds v0.49 for Live, v1.01 for Audigy, it is not resident, does not 'eat' RAM and does not need Creative's DOS driver, EMM386 etc.

God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-12-09, 22:45:

At what resolution tho, would you be running 3dmark at like 640x480 or something? Because with such overkill graphics cards it's doing the hardware a dis-service not running 1600x1200 with forced AA and AF. I doubt the 5950u gonna be cpu bottlenecked at such settings

Whatever the default resolution is in 3DMark 2001SE. Looks like it is 1024x768x32. I was testing the card after replacing the dead stock cooler. I need to do some testing with actual games like I said.

PARUS wrote on 2020-12-09, 21:55:

- you will not get proper and stable work with 45nm 'wolfdale' gen at all
- you should flash a last not beta BIOS for proper 65nm 'conroe' gen work and optimal other components work
- you should disable C1E and necessarily make physical VID mod for CPU, voltage value must be constant and optimal, otherwise you'll get sudden freezes, power off and even impossible next system start

I forgot to say one more detail about second point. Sorry, but I do not upload the final BIOS version anywhere. It is necessary for Conroe's normal proper work. I do not because hucksters may inflate their prices for Core2+ISA DMA motherboard. DFI is too much expensive even with Gallatin, Cedar Mill and Presler support.