Sphere478, If I were you I would rather spend my time to figure out how to make ATI Radeon cards work fast on SS7 😁
Its worth it trust me.

Another performance tip from my side. If you like Need For Speed Porsche then install the directX that came on the disc of Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 (DX8.1)
This gives about a 30% performance boost!

Driver for XP I think try 29.42.

Skalabala wrote on 2022-01-06, 09:06:

Sphere478, If I were you I would rather spend my time to figure out how to make ATI Radeon cards work fast on SS7 :D Its worth i […]
Show full quote

Sphere478, If I were you I would rather spend my time to figure out how to make ATI Radeon cards work fast on SS7 😁
Its worth it trust me.

Another performance tip from my side. If you like Need For Speed Porsche then install the directX that came on the disc of Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 (DX8.1)
This gives about a 30% performance boost!

Driver for XP I think try 29.42.

Most of the time I’m having issues just figuring out which drivers even work 🤣.

I’ve gotten to the point where if the windows driver works I leave it alone hahah

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-01-05, 15:19:

You guys are doing these runs under which os?
What’s the scoop on best gf3 ti 500 driver for xp?

With SS7 (and even with some later and more powerful platforms), the sweet spot for performance is Windows 98 SE.
I remember how back in the day I tried all possible operating systems (including Windows ME, 2000 and XP when it was launched), and after a few days of testing I would always go back to Win98.
I finally switched (permanently) to Windows XP in late 2002, after Win XP SP1 was launched (+ it also coincided with a major PC upgrade that I did: Biostar M7VIT PRO KT400, Athlon XP 2200+, 512 MB RAM).
There's just NO WAY that anyone in their right mind would've used a SS7 PC with Windows XP at that point in time 😁

Having said that, the best GeForce 2/3 driver for slow platforms on Windows 98 is 7.76

I think I've hit the highest I ever will. For some reason, it's slightly faster with this pair of 128 meg sticks than it was with a single 256 (actually it was 512, but the chipset could only see half o the memory). This was with a fresh install of Win98, the only update being Direct X 7 (I even left the default Via chipset drivers). My Ti200 doesn't like being overclocked, so it's going back to stock speed. I cannot best this without a better K6-3 - my 1.6 volt 400 needs 2.4 volts to be stable at 560 MHz, and there's no way I'll try buying another.

I think the VIA motherboard is faster with the two ram sticks because of 4 way bank interleave.
Your CPU does not want to do 112*5.5? How big is your CPU cooler? And did you try to set it at 112*5 and then in windows use CTU tweak to set it on 5.5?
That is not a bad score for that clock speed on a VIA board 😀
Overclocking the Ti200 for a SS7 does not do much anyway. Think I gained 50 points.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-01-07, 03:41:

I think I've hit the highest I ever will. For some reason, it's slightly faster with this pair of 128 meg sticks than it was with a single 256 (actually it was 512, but the chipset could only see half o the memory). This was with a fresh install of Win98, the only update being Direct X 7 (I even left the default Via chipset drivers). My Ti200 doesn't like being overclocked, so it's going back to stock speed. I cannot best this without a better K6-3 - my 1.6 volt 400 needs 2.4 volts to be stable at 560 MHz, and there's no way I'll try buying another.

which mobo? I bet that performance with the k6 has more to do with the mobo than the k6. I noticed really good oc performance on my p5a 1.04 but on a different mobo I couldn't get above 366 before updating bios (now 600 no prob, weird indeed), and the p5a 1.06 wasn't the greatest at overclock either. I'm prety convinced that any k6+ cpu on the right board should be good for at least 600 at 2.0,2.2v

I'm also wondering which motherboard that is (and how much onboard cache it has). Are you sure that it is able to cache the whole 256 MB of RAM? If not, you should get a speed bump by going with 2 x 64 MB sticks.

Skalabala wrote on 2022-01-07, 07:00:

I think the VIA motherboard is faster with the two ram sticks because of 4 way bank interleave. Your CPU does not want to do 112 […]
Show full quote

I think the VIA motherboard is faster with the two ram sticks because of 4 way bank interleave.
Your CPU does not want to do 112*5.5? How big is your CPU cooler? And did you try to set it at 112*5 and then in windows use CTU tweak to set it on 5.5?
That is not a bad score for that clock speed on a VIA board 😀
Overclocking the Ti200 for a SS7 does not do much anyway. Think I gained 50 points.

The cooler is fine, it'll boot to 112x5.5, but it borks Windows. Overclocking the Ti200 was good for about an additional 80 to 100 points, but that's a good way to send an old card to the graveyard.

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-01-07, 07:23:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-01-07, 03:41:

I think I've hit the highest I ever will. For some reason, it's slightly faster with this pair of 128 meg sticks than it was with a single 256 (actually it was 512, but the chipset could only see half o the memory). This was with a fresh install of Win98, the only update being Direct X 7 (I even left the default Via chipset drivers). My Ti200 doesn't like being overclocked, so it's going back to stock speed. I cannot best this without a better K6-3 - my 1.6 volt 400 needs 2.4 volts to be stable at 560 MHz, and there's no way I'll try buying another.

which mobo? I bet that performance with the k6 has more to do with the mobo than the k6. I noticed really good oc performance on my p5a 1.04 but on a different mobo I couldn't get above 366 before updating bios (now 600 no prob, weird indeed), and the p5a 1.06 wasn't the greatest at overclock either. I'm prety convinced that any k6+ cpu on the right board should be good for at least 600 at 2.0,2.2v

It'll do 600 with no issue, but 112x5.5 is a bridge too far.

All else is the same (except for a couple of memory settings) as my earlier post. Re: AMD K6 3DMARK, aiming for stars.

I’m wondering if addiing extra capacatance to the vrm capacitors wouldn’t help things along on some of our boards. There is room on the back… 🤔 I think the noisy vrms are the plages of many (but not all) of our overclocks.

The caps after the vrm going into the core should just be there to dampen ripple. Making that capacitance as high as the moon shouldn’t hurt, only help.🤷‍♂️

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-01-07, 15:57:

I’m wondering if addiing extra capacatance to the vrm capacitors wouldn’t help things along on some of our boards. There is room on the back… 🤔 I think the noisy vrms are the plages of many (but not all) of our overclocks.

The caps after the vrm going into the core should just be there to dampen ripple. Making that capacitance as high as the moon shouldn’t hurt, only help.🤷‍♂️

Possible, but in my case I think I'm just up against the limits of the CPU. As I stated in the older post, my K6-2+ 550 will do 616 and 624 MHz, but the benchmark score ends up lower than the K6-3+ @560. Would a K6-3+ 550 be able to do 624? It would be fun to try and find out, but because of how much it costs, I'll never know!

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-01-07, 19:20:

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-01-07, 15:57:

I’m wondering if addiing extra capacatance to the vrm capacitors wouldn’t help things along on some of our boards. There is room on the back… 🤔 I think the noisy vrms are the plages of many (but not all) of our overclocks.

The caps after the vrm going into the core should just be there to dampen ripple. Making that capacitance as high as the moon shouldn’t hurt, only help.🤷‍♂️

Possible, but in my case I think I'm just up against the limits of the CPU. As I stated in the older post, my K6-2+ 550 will do 616 and 624 MHz, but the benchmark score ends up lower than the K6-3+ @560. Would a K6-3+ 550 be able to do 624? It would be fun to try and find out, but because of how much it costs, I'll never know!

Mine is a 550,

I’ve had it around 620-630 before on slightly elevated voltage. That range is kinda a grey area for my chip. I think it’s stable limit is somewhere around there, but ss7 mobos that I have are so quirky above 100mhz that I’m never sure if I’m fighting the chipset or the processor.

I thought I'd post some notes. My highest score was achieved with a fresh install of 98SE and Direct X 7. A single 128 had the same scores as a pair did, but adding another128 stick dropped the score several hundred points.

Though it mostly worked fine with the default chipset drivers, these MVP3 boards seem to have IRQ issues when using a Promise controller card (I use an Ultra 100 TX 2 with a SATA adapter and an SSD). The computer will be running fine, then lock up while running a benchmark, then refuse to boot when you hit reset. Power it off and move the Promise card to another slot, and all is well again. Even though I have the primary IDE channel disabled, it still likes to share the IRQ with the remaining one. The only cure I've found for this is to install the Via 4.17 chipset drivers; once those are installed I can stop moving the Promise card around. But installing them does slightly lessen the 3D Mark score.

Win98 isn't the most robust operating system, and it's easily damaged by attempts to push your hardware. Tiring of reinstalls, I decided to find a way to image the drive. Clonezilla has worked well for me on modern hardware, but I had no luck with my antique Socket 7 machine. It turns out that Norton Ghost 2003 is available on Internet Archive, and it works very well with this system. It only takes a few minutes to make an image that it saves to a secondary partition of your hard drive. You'll also need to install Instmsi.exe to install Norton.

This Epox MVP3G-M is the only MVP3 board I've had that has worked with every AGP card I've tried, including an FX5500, FX5600, and a GeForce 4 Ti4600, and it has no issues with running AGP 2X. None of that really matters much for the point of this thread, since the champion card is a GeForce 3 with 7.76 drivers, and the difference between AGP 1x and 2x is negligible.

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-01-07, 15:57:

I’m wondering if addiing extra capacatance to the vrm capacitors wouldn’t help things along on some of our boards. There is room on the back… 🤔 I think the noisy vrms are the plages of many (but not all) of our overclocks.

The caps after the vrm going into the core should just be there to dampen ripple. Making that capacitance as high as the moon shouldn’t hurt, only help.🤷‍♂️

This might be worth looking into because SS7 boards were cheaply made.
I will also like to get my hands on a K6 550 3+ but it is not worth the price and gamble as I think my CPU is on the better side of the spectrum.

@Repo Man11, What happens to your score and or stability if you remove the SATA card?
I must also look into cloning as I am also so tired of reinstalling 🤣
Maybe try WIN95 on the VIA?

Skalabala wrote on 2022-01-09, 07:40:

@Repo Man11, What happens to your score and or stability if you remove the SATA card?
I must also look into cloning as I am also so tired of reinstalling 🤣
Maybe try WIN95 on the VIA?

I've never tried it without the Promise IDE card, so I don't know. Edit: I pulled it to see if it made any difference, but my scores were within the noise with and without. 4,317 with the card, 4300 and 4,338 without, the usual variation in scores. But the hard drive speed definitely took a major hit.

I tried pushing it too far again this evening, and it wouldn't go beyond "Verifying DMI pool data" with a blinking cursor. So I booted to the Ghost boot floppy, and in less than five minutes I was back to the desktop.

Skalabala wrote on 2022-01-09, 07:37:

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-01-07, 15:57:

I’m wondering if addiing extra capacatance to the vrm capacitors wouldn’t help things along on some of our boards. There is room on the back… 🤔 I think the noisy vrms are the plages of many (but not all) of our overclocks.

The caps after the vrm going into the core should just be there to dampen ripple. Making that capacitance as high as the moon shouldn’t hurt, only help.🤷‍♂️

This might be worth looking into because SS7 boards were cheaply made.
I will also like to get my hands on a K6 550 3+ but it is not worth the price and gamble as I think my CPU is on the better side of the spectrum.

The only difference between the 550 and any other 3+ is the laser etching on the IHS so just buy whatever 3+ you find.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-01-09, 08:59:

Skalabala wrote on 2022-01-09, 07:40:

@Repo Man11, What happens to your score and or stability if you remove the SATA card?
I must also look into cloning as I am also so tired of reinstalling 🤣
Maybe try WIN95 on the VIA?

I've never tried it without the Promise IDE card, so I don't know. Edit: I pulled it to see if it made any difference, but my scores were within the noise with and without. 4,317 with the card, 4300 and 4,338 without, the usual variation in scores. But the hard drive speed definitely took a major hit.

I tried pushing it too far again this evening, and it wouldn't go beyond "Verifying DMI pool data" with a blinking cursor. So I booted to the Ghost boot floppy, and in less than five minutes I was back to the desktop.

If the performance hit is that small I must try to use my SSD again 😀

Something I meant to mention but left out is the power supply. I had been using a vintage Allied 300 watt PSU that appeared to be in good condition, thinking that it would be more than adequate for a Socket 7 system. But I noticed that the + five volt was shown in the CMOS as 4.78. With it dropping that low as it was, that could potentially be a problem when trying for a higher overclock. I swapped in a much newer 500 watt Enermax PSU that has a 30 amp +5, and now it is at 4.97.

With all else the same, I installed Direct X 8.1 and it cost over 100 points in 3D 2000. The scores went from around 4,300 to around 4,170.