Omarkoman wrote on 2024-01-29, 00:42:

I have recently acquired DFI CA61 motherboard

why? its based one VIA VT82C693A

Omarkoman wrote on 2024-01-29, 00:42:

It has manual jumpers for CPU multiplier with max 8x so if using 133 FSB P3 that means max frequency 1064Mhz

that jumper is ignored, Intel slot1/socket 370 CPUs have locked multipliers (except some very early ~233 ones and maybe engineering samples)

Omarkoman wrote on 2024-01-29, 00:42:

so which 1Ghz P3 would work ?
note - I have a Intel Pentium III 1333MHz CPU Tualatin SL5VX

any Coppermine will be fine, just be aware 1GHz P3 on VT82C693A will perform at a level of 800-900MHz P3 on 440BX/815 chipset
Not sure about Tulalatins on VT82C693A, at the very least you would need modded slocket

why ? I wanted a socket 370 mobo that has 133 FSB plus AGP + PCI + ISA slots at affordable price. They are very hard to come by here in Australia.

my question to you is ... why do you ask ? Is there a problem with this motherboard outside of having VIA chipset? As long as it can handle games ok, I dont cadre about losing few FPS.

jumper - what do you mean ignored? why is it there then? Are you saying that I dont need to touch it at all ? thats bit strange. Are you speaking from personal experience? why did they put it there in first place?

as for CPU - thanks, will look for a Coppermine one. Also what do you mean modded socket? whats wrong with the socket it currently has?

thanks for the reply

Omarkoman wrote on 2024-01-29, 02:53:

why ? I wanted a socket 370 mobo that has 133 FSB plus AGP + PCI + ISA slots at affordable price. They are very hard to come by here in Australia.

They are hard to come by everywhere. The 440BX had AGP + PCI + ISA, but no official 133MHz FSB (although I believe some of the usual suspects in Taiwan sold 440BX boards to be overclocked at 133). And most 440BX boards were slot 1 anyways, not socket 370. The i815 had AGP + PCI + 133MHz FSB, but generally lost the ISA slots. The i810 had PCI + 133MHz FSB, not sure about ISA, but no AGP. The i820... well, I don't think has ISA, and in any event who wants RDRAM?

So... yes... that does tend to lead one towards non-Intel chipset options, but... ewwwww, Via...

Omarkoman wrote on 2024-01-29, 02:53:

my question to you is ... why do you ask ?

I was curious why would you pick something objectively bad.

Omarkoman wrote on 2024-01-29, 02:53:

Is there a problem with this motherboard outside of having VIA chipset? As long as it can handle games ok, I dont cadre about losing few FPS.

20-30% fps drop depending on how bad the bios was implemented, and thats on top of 10-20% slower than 440BX https://www.anandtech.com/show/491/26
Choice of Voodoo3 is very fortunate, you wont have AGP stability problems so pervasive on this chipset.

Omarkoman wrote on 2024-01-29, 02:53:

jumper - what do you mean ignored? why is it there then? Are you saying that I dont need to touch it at all ? thats bit strange. Are you speaking from personal experience? why did they put it there in first place?

Some first P2 cpus had unlocked multipliers, but that ended around P2 300MHz. You still need jumpers for those early CPUs.

Omarkoman wrote on 2024-01-29, 02:53:

as for CPU - thanks, will look for a Coppermine one. Also what do you mean modded socket? whats wrong with the socket it currently has?

Officially you need 815ep or Apollo Pro 133T / Pro 266T. Unofficially either special PoweLeap adapter or manually modifying a good slotket adapter and a motherboard capable of going down to ~1.6V
https://www.tomek.cedro.info/files/old-www/kszak/bx_mod/
https://web.archive.org/web/20210819000206/ht … .org/_lunchbox/
https://www.overclockers.com/forums/threads/r … owerleap.67417/

I guess we'll see how bad it is when I finish the setup but thanks for the inputs.

will not use the Tualatin , will stick with Coppermine

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-01-29, 03:28:

Omarkoman wrote on 2024-01-29, 02:53:

Is there a problem with this motherboard outside of having VIA chipset? As long as it can handle games ok, I dont cadre about losing few FPS.

20-30% fps drop depending on how bad the bios was implemented, and thats on top of 10-20% slower than 440BX https://www.anandtech.com/show/491/26
Choice of Voodoo3 is very fortunate, you wont have AGP stability problems so pervasive on this chipset.

I have not had huge problems with VIA boards, just takes a bit more work. I have a Asus P3V4X that is setup up as a gaming rig and I hardly notice much difference between it and my Asus TUSL2-C when they are both using the same processor. If you look at the link rasz_pl posted it would look like the P3V4X would be a horrible choice for gaming but that wasnt a bios problem its a VIA AGP GART driver problem. https://www.anandtech.com/show/547 You need to find the proper VIA drivers and even then the install order is fairly important... you always want to install them right away after the windows install, definitely before you install any other drivers.

I cant say for a fact but for me I have had the best luck with ATI video cards over Nvidia video cards on my VIA machines, they seem to just work better together. George Breese's files https://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/ have definitely helped the performance on my machines especially the "PCI Latency" patch for VIA chipsets & Memory interleave enabler for VIA chipsets. The memory one has boosted the memory performance around 10+%.

I wouldnt pay a lot for a VIA board but I'm glad to have them in my collection. Last one I picked up was a DFI CA63-SN ( fairly similar to your board ) for around $45 USD and it came with 2 sticks of generic ram, a S3 video card, a 800 MZh P3 and a Vortex 2 sound card. I changed a few things on it and its been fairly problem free.

Oh and I have had no problem running 1 GHz processors with that chipset... both the 100 MHz and 133 MHz ones.

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-01-29, 03:28:

Some first P2 cpus had unlocked multipliers, but that ended around P2 300MHz. You still need jumpers for those early CPUs.

correction, looks like it stopped at some P2 400 List of UNLOCKED Pentium II CPUs - A Quick Glance

VIA chipset boards aren't typically as fast as their Intel counterparts, no doubt.
But as long as you are careful to select a quality board with a good implementation and take care with the driver installation, I don't really see and issue with using one.
I would avoid OEM variants. I'm not overly familiar with DFI boards.

All in all i truly believe that the "VIA is stinky rancid garbage" mentality is ridiculously overblown.
But that's just me.