The fastest version of that is probably a k6-3+ with a radeon 9250 128bit or radeon 7500 64/128bit , or geforce 2/3 no usb 2.0 card, 128 or 64mb of ram, and a sata ssd

I tried one stick of 64 MB of RAM, and I can't say definitively that it is better based on just "eyeballing" it. If it is, then it might be a touch smoother in the sense the hitching seems to be in shorter intervals.

I actually upgraded the processor to an AMD K6-2 500, and I am mostly getting the same results with Half-Life. Ultimately, I feel this is just the GA-5SMM board doing the best it can. I think my next upgrade would be a new Mobo that supports AGP GPUs. I have an "era appropriate" 16 MB Voodoo3 3000 sitting around just collecting dust that would be fun to try with this CPU. Mobo recommendations would be appreciated!

I will continue to tweak this system more, and will keep posting any interesting updates here.

So, the one thing I did not mention in my initial post was that I was using an SDHC Card to IDE adapter, and a SanDisk 32GB Ultra SDHC UHS-I Memory Card - 120MB/s to run Windows 98.

Today, I swapped out that combo for a IDE to SATA adapter and a SSD. Performance was better in some cases, but still not the marked improvement I expected. As a result of some research, I enabled DMA and tuned virtual memory to 256 MB as both min and max.

This is when I saw the most notable increase in performance. Games like Jazz Jackrabbit 2 and Quake are now running at notably higher frame rates at higher resolutions. Half-Life is still anywhere between 10-35 frames, but the stuttering is not nearly as bad when enemies load in.

At this point, I’m not sure what more could be done for this build in terms of gaming performance. Ultimately, it’s an extremely unimpressive PC, but it’s the best version of my first a PC. And for that, I am excited to have back!

Thanks to everyone here who helped me along the way!

Thanks for updating your thread. I read back some and saw this:

LiquifiedBeef wrote on 2023-07-17, 14:31:

I played around with external cache, and I have found this to be the biggest difference in performance.

As others have mentioned, the K6-2+ and K6-3 or 3+ have full speed 128 or 256kB L2 cache built into the CPU. If your testing shows that cache is making a big difference with the software you're running, one of these CPUs should make a noticeable improvement.

nickles rust wrote on 2025-05-13, 22:20:

Thanks for updating your thread. I read back some and saw this:

LiquifiedBeef wrote on 2023-07-17, 14:31:

I played around with external cache, and I have found this to be the biggest difference in performance.

As others have mentioned, the K6-2+ and K6-3 or 3+ have full speed 128 or 256kB L2 cache built into the CPU. If your testing shows that cache is making a big difference with the software you're running, one of these CPUs should make a noticeable improvement.

I thought about upgrading to a K6-2+, but then the PC wouldn't be within the arbitrary limits (roughly late 1998) I want it to be confined to. The CPU I have in there (500 Mhz) is already a bit newer (early 1999) than the one I had back in the day (Probably somewhere between the 333-400 Mhz), but the performance is now more or less the same.

I think I would also need to flash my BIOS if I upgraded to +, and I think I am done tinkering with this build for the foreseeable future. Time to just enjoy DOS, and some early 3D gaming! 😀

Your problem is definitely in the GPU. You need a card with much older drivers. Something like a very cheap GeForce 2mx will give good results. Not a bad option (and more period-correct) would be a TNT2 or Savage 4. Well, or Voodoo 3/GeForce 256/GF2GTS+, if you have money.

Kruton 9000 wrote on 2025-05-14, 07:48:

Your problem is definitely in the GPU. You need a card with much older drivers. Something like a very cheap GeForce 2mx will give good results. Not a bad option (and more period-correct) would be a TNT2 or Savage 4. Well, or Voodoo 3/GeForce 256/GF2GTS+, if you have money.

The issue I run into on the GPU side is the GA-5SMM does not have an AGP slot. I know there are PCI versions of these cards, but I haven’t had any luck finding any on eBay, and I’m guessing they fetch a higher price since their aren’t many out in the wild.

I justify having a 2003 era GPU in here because i didn’t have my second PC until 2004. 😅

Just throwing it out there (and I may be able to try the idea myself as soon as I recap my personal MX4000 PCI), but the MX4000 is just a relabeled Geforce 4 MX440. I wonder if you could try something like 30.82 drivers and force Windows to install them on your MX4000 by manually choosing the Geforce 4 MX440 and ignoring the warning when Windows complains that it's the wrong driver? If it works you could always edit the inf files with the correct hardware ID info. Looking at Phil's site, 28.32 seems to be the oldest driver with Geforce 4 MX440 support. It may be worth experimenting to see if your K6-2 can benefit from the oldest possible drivers for the MX440 in the hopes there is less CPU overhead then the later drivers.

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/nvidia-9x-gr … cs-drivers.html

Use this to clean out the old drivers completely: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/driv … ofessional.html

386DX40 wrote on 2025-05-15, 01:47:

Just throwing it out there (and I may be able to try the idea myself as soon as I recap my personal MX4000 PCI), but the MX4000 is just a relabeled Geforce 4 MX440. I wonder if you could try something like 30.82 drivers and force Windows to install them on your MX4000 by manually choosing the Geforce 4 MX440 and ignoring the warning when Windows complains that it's the wrong driver? If it works you could always edit the inf files with the correct hardware ID info. Looking at Phil's site, 28.32 seems to be the oldest driver with Geforce 4 MX440 support. It may be worth experimenting to see if your K6-2 can benefit from the oldest possible drivers for the MX440 in the hopes there is less CPU overhead then the later drivers.

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/nvidia-9x-gr … cs-drivers.html

Use this to clean out the old drivers completely: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/driv … ofessional.html

I appreciate the suggestion! I’ll give a try when I find some time, and report back