Socket3 wrote on 2025-05-27, 16:47:

There is one caveat I noticed back in the day and it's still relevant now - nForce 2 motherboards do NOT like win9x.

I knew it! 🤣 I got what was possibly my first NF2 board a few years ago and could NOT get windows 98 running right on it. It was the A7N8X-E and runs winXP because of that.

The Chaintech 7NJL6 is one of my favorite boards because it runs 98 perfectly and feels absolutely BLAZING fast

Here is A7N8X-e vs. 7NJL6 in 3dmark2001 with two different CPUs:

Thanks for such a thorough exploration into these CPUs, good work!

Socket3 wrote on 2025-05-28, 14:34:

I couldn't touch a 5900 in 2003 - I had a 128 bit FX5200 with 256mb of 4ns ram witch I ran at 320 core / 500mhz vram and was fairly content with...

Does the AB-AT7-MAX2 have softmenu? Abit happens to be my favorite mainboard manufacturer, but apart from a KT600 (AB-KV7 - witch needs repairs) and a KT133A (AB-KT7-RAID) I don't own any VIA chipset Abit boards. I'm asking because the KV7 lacks the Softmenu BIOS tab.

All Abit boards for socket A have Softmenu! In the KV7 BIOS the first tab is the Softmenu!
I know that geforce 5000 series performance is downright horrible but, back than, for me anything was better than the geforce2 mx400 so even a fx 5900 would have been 10 times better!

Major Jackyl wrote on 2025-05-28, 23:07:

Thanks for such a thorough exploration into these CPUs, good work!

Thank you very much!

nd22 wrote on 2025-05-29, 07:15:

Socket3 wrote on 2025-05-28, 14:34:

I couldn't touch a 5900 in 2003 - I had a 128 bit FX5200 with 256mb of 4ns ram witch I ran at 320 core / 500mhz vram and was fairly content with...

Does the AB-AT7-MAX2 have softmenu? Abit happens to be my favorite mainboard manufacturer, but apart from a KT600 (AB-KV7 - witch needs repairs) and a KT133A (AB-KT7-RAID) I don't own any VIA chipset Abit boards. I'm asking because the KV7 lacks the Softmenu BIOS tab.

All Abit boards for socket A have Softmenu! In the KV7 BIOS the first tab is the Softmenu!
I know that geforce 5000 series performance is downright horrible but, back than, for me anything was better than the geforce2 mx400 so even a fx 5900 would have been 10 times better!

Oh, I meant to say I couldn't afford a 5900xt, I was in high school. I barely managed to scrape the ~100$ I paid for that 5200. As for 5000 series performance - it was ok for someone who upgraded from a low / low-mid end or old graphics card. My overclocked card was faster then my old radeon 7500 - it scored something like 7200 pts in 3dmark01 if memory serves, while the 7500 managed around 5000 points. In 2003 I think I had an athlon XP 2200+ in the first half of the year, then upgraded to a barton 2500+ in the later half (I traded my old CPU in and paid for the difference in cash). Come to think of it, it's around that time when nvidia started asking for a premium over ATi cards. My Inno3d FX5200 with 4ns ram was a bit more expensive then a Gigabyte Maya Radeon 9000. I remember debating witch card I should get for a couple of weeks - in the end I went with the nvidia card because it had double the framebuffer. I also remember I stuck a Titan copper cooler on it, witch also came with blue vram heatsinks. Hold on, I still have that card and it's still in working condition.

I'm trying to remember what video card I had next, and I think it was an Asus Radeon 9550. An active cooled 128bit model with 4ns ram - I remember it had active cooling because the cooling assembly was pretty poorly made, and the fan would touch the fan shroud after a month or two of usage. I had it clocked to 350 / 500MHz and it ran great - quite a bit faster than the 5200, and if I remember correctly it was about 20% cheaper then a competing PNY FX5700XT. My next card would be nvidia again, a 6600 AGP made by Inno3d. Good core clocks, poor ram speed. I quickly upgraded that to a Powercolor X800GTO AGP witch I unlocked to 16 pipelines by flashing an XL bios. I stuck with AGP for a long time, well into the mid 2000s because in early 2004 I won a Gigabyte socket 939 motherboard in a Red Alert contest sponsored by a large romanian hardware importer / distributor - a Gigabyte K8NS if I remember correctly. I also remember selling my CPU, mainboard and half my ram to be able to afford an Athlon64 3200+ for it.

Athlon XP 2700 arrived and has been tested against its brother, the XP 3000 FSB 333. I am not going to put up the screenshots but the Barton is only 5.01% faster than Thoroughbred! Again the Performance rating is artificially inflated: 2800 should be adequate for its performance and not 3000! That makes the 3200 more likely a 3000 from the performance point of view.
It should be interesting to see how an Athlon 64 with the same frequency, level 2 cache and multiplier -Newcastle 3200 - would fare against the Barton 3200 using up to date (relative to period correct reviews) drivers and hardware.

i think Socket A was the platform where i spent most of my time thinkering

from Q2 2001 to Q1 2006 i went with the Ali Magik 1, KT266A, KT400, KT400A, KT880 and Nforce 2 Ultra

i only saw a difference changing the motherboard with the Nforce 2 ultra coming from the KT880: On the same Windows XP and a 3000+ i noticed a snappier system.

on the other hand, the dual channel was super unstable, specially on the MSI K7N2 delta 2 Platinum

nd22 wrote on 2025-06-04, 09:12:

Athlon XP 2700 arrived and has been tested against its brother, the XP 3000 FSB 333. I am not going to put up the screenshots but the Barton is only 5.01% faster than Thoroughbred! Again the Performance rating is artificially inflated: 2800 should be adequate for its performance and not 3000! That makes the 3200 more likely a 3000 from the performance point of view.
It should be interesting to see how an Athlon 64 with the same frequency, level 2 cache and multiplier -Newcastle 3200 - would fare against the Barton 3200 using up to date (relative to period correct reviews) drivers and hardware.

that was the case with all the Bartons, they were trying to keep up with the P4 Northwood with HT and 800Mhz FSB

didnt matter, the Athlon XP was always a vastly better price - performance processor

Living wrote on 2025-06-04, 10:11:

on the other hand, the dual channel was super unstable, specially on the MSI K7N2 delta 2 Platinum

It is not unstable, it just requires sticks it likes. Otherwise it does not work properly. Honestly whole memory compatibility on nforce2 is a mess... i've just spent like 6 hours trying to get some memory to work on EP-8RDA. I just wanted to boot XP and run some videocard benchmarks. I did not care if dual channel or not, i just wanted it to work. It did not want to, however. I mean i am running it at 1:1 with 133Mhz FSB CPU, massively underclocking 200Mhz sticks with everything set to manual to avoid autodetect issues. Still does not work.

Then i remembered i've put aside a pair of 512MB sticks i've used on another nforce2 board before i was able to find a pair of 1GB ones and here we go, dual channel and everything:

I am just glad i did not have money to buy an nforce2 board back then...

Archer57 wrote on 2025-06-04, 11:16:

It is not unstable, it just requires sticks it likes. Otherwise it does not work properly. Honestly whole memory compatibility o […]
Show full quote

Living wrote on 2025-06-04, 10:11:

on the other hand, the dual channel was super unstable, specially on the MSI K7N2 delta 2 Platinum

It is not unstable, it just requires sticks it likes. Otherwise it does not work properly. Honestly whole memory compatibility on nforce2 is a mess... i've just spent like 6 hours trying to get some memory to work on EP-8RDA. I just wanted to boot XP and run some videocard benchmarks. I did not care if dual channel or not, i just wanted it to work. It did not want to, however. I mean i am running it at 1:1 with 133Mhz FSB CPU, massively underclocking 200Mhz sticks with everything set to manual to avoid autodetect issues. Still does not work.

Then i remembered i've put aside a pair of 512MB sticks i've used on another nforce2 board before i was able to find a pair of 1GB ones and here we go, dual channel and everything:

The attachment memtest_.jpg is no longer available

I am just glad i did not have money to buy an nforce2 board back then...

i did make it work eventually in the Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe with the same memory (2 x 256MB DDR400 Supertalent, the ones with the silver heatsink), but this was 2005, i didnt had a truckload of memory to try and money. You just bought a pair and pray it works

today i can try any combination i want. Sadly the MSI is long gone (sold it that same year) and im not willing to spend an arm and a leg so i can prove that the Bios was the problem

Living wrote on 2025-06-04, 11:30:

i did make it work eventually in the Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe with the same memory (2 x 256MB DDR400 Supertalent, the ones with the silver heatsink), but this was 2005, i didnt had a truckload of memory to try and money. You just bought a pair and pray it works

today i can try any combination i want. Sadly the MSI is long gone (sold it that same year) and im not willing to spend an arm and a leg so i can prove that the Bios was the problem

I totally get that and that's why i am saying i am glad i did not buy it back then. Can not even imagine how frustrating it must have been - you buy a bunch of rather expensive hardware, it does not work and does so in a way which makes RMA unlikely (all the parts separately are fine).

Only now, after having experienced this, i understand how good VIA stuff actually was. Yes, a bit slower. But that inexpensive KT333 board i had worked with a pair of random sticks with different timings and frequencies i bought like a year apart with absolutely no issues. Sometimes compatibility, reliability and stability are more important than small bit of extra performance...

you can imagine, first high end MB i bought with all my savings as a late teenager and the MF is unstable as a woman

The worst is that i knew was something related to the memory but because it was working fine in single channel i couldnt send it back. In the end spent 4 o 5 months in single and then sold it in favor of the Asus that was rock solid from the get go

then in 2006 jumped to 939 with a DFI NF4 Infinity, another mess that took 2 bios updates to make it right...

oh dear, i sure dont miss those days

Somehow i managed to miss nvidia chipsets entirely. It was VIA on socketA, then i went to AM2 and later AM2+ with AMD chipsets. Then FX happened, forced me towards intel and i never bought and AMD CPU since.

Living wrote on 2025-06-04, 11:58:

oh dear, i sure dont miss those days

This junk is still happening, more often than it might seem.

For example recurring ryzen BIOS issues leading to motherboards overvolting and murdering CPUs on default settings are quite fun, arguably even more fun than stability issues back then.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-06-04, 12:18:

Somehow i managed to miss nvidia chipsets entirely. It was VIA on socketA, then i went to AM2 and later AM2+ with AMD chipsets. […]
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Somehow i managed to miss nvidia chipsets entirely. It was VIA on socketA, then i went to AM2 and later AM2+ with AMD chipsets. Then FX happened, forced me towards intel and i never bought and AMD CPU since.

Living wrote on 2025-06-04, 11:58:

oh dear, i sure dont miss those days

This junk is still happening, more often than it might seem.

For example recurring ryzen BIOS issues leading to motherboards overvolting and murdering CPUs on default settings are quite fun, arguably even more fun than stability issues back then.

Don't forget all the fun Intel is having with the 13th and 14th Gen CPUs frying themselves as well.

Living wrote on 2025-06-04, 11:30:

Archer57 wrote on 2025-06-04, 11:16:

It is not unstable, it just requires sticks it likes. Otherwise it does not work properly. Honestly whole memory compatibility o […]
Show full quote

Living wrote on 2025-06-04, 10:11:

on the other hand, the dual channel was super unstable, specially on the MSI K7N2 delta 2 Platinum

It is not unstable, it just requires sticks it likes. Otherwise it does not work properly. Honestly whole memory compatibility on nforce2 is a mess... i've just spent like 6 hours trying to get some memory to work on EP-8RDA. I just wanted to boot XP and run some videocard benchmarks. I did not care if dual channel or not, i just wanted it to work. It did not want to, however. I mean i am running it at 1:1 with 133Mhz FSB CPU, massively underclocking 200Mhz sticks with everything set to manual to avoid autodetect issues. Still does not work.

Then i remembered i've put aside a pair of 512MB sticks i've used on another nforce2 board before i was able to find a pair of 1GB ones and here we go, dual channel and everything:

The attachment memtest_.jpg is no longer available

I am just glad i did not have money to buy an nforce2 board back then...

i did make it work eventually in the Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe with the same memory (2 x 256MB DDR400 Supertalent, the ones with the silver heatsink), but this was 2005, i didnt had a truckload of memory to try and money. You just bought a pair and pray it works

today i can try any combination i want. Sadly the MSI is long gone (sold it that same year) and im not willing to spend an arm and a leg so i can prove that the Bios was the problem

I do not like Asus boards for socket A. They do not have the auxiliary power conector and performance is always behind Abit even if by a few percents.
I do not have experience with other brands but on Abit motherboards with nforce2 chipset Corsair memory works all the time!

Archer57 wrote on 2025-06-04, 11:46:

Only now, after having experienced this, i understand how good VIA stuff actually was. Yes, a bit slower. But that inexpensive KT333 board i had worked with a pair of random sticks with different timings and frequencies i bought like a year apart with absolutely no issues. Sometimes compatibility, reliability and stability are more important than small bit of extra performance...

VIA chipsets are always very friendly with the memory. The only reproach I have regarding nforce2 is memory compatibility: you really need high end kits to make it work, your run of the mill modules will not pass memtest no matter the voltage or the timings.

nd22 wrote on 2025-06-06, 04:48:

VIA chipsets are always very friendly with the memory. The only reproach I have regarding nforce2 is memory compatibility: you really need high end kits to make it work, you run of the mill modules will no t pass memtest no matter the voltage or the timings.

Not necessarily kits, it does work with regular sticks, but not with all of them. I've so far had good luck with samsung memory, 2 matching pairs (but not kits) of 1GB modules i have both work without issues on different nforce2 boards i have.

Also i was able to find some random modules which work. Like a pair of completely different kingmax and hexon 512MB modules. This work in dual channel on 2 epox boards, but not on gigabyte one.

But yeah, from all my experience with computers from ~386 to now i have not seen something so problematic in terms of memory. A lot of modules simply do not work and as you said - if it does not work even lowering frequency, increasing timings or increasing voltage does not help, which is weird. Sometimes it will work in single channel mode, but sometimes even that does not help.

mind that all those problems went away with Nforce 3 and 4 once the memory controller was moved inside the processor. Somewhat leveling the plane on that side.

Socket A has been investigated and tested from start to finish! All chipsets starting with VIA KT133 up to nforce2 ultra has been compared against each other. All available FSB has been through the test suite; all 3 possible level 2 cache sizes have fought one another!

There are over 100 processors available on socket A, including some very rare ones. I tested only the following 16:
Athlon 1200B
Athlon 1200C
Athlon 1400C
Athlon XP Palomino 1600
Athlon XP Palomino 2000
Athlon XP Thoroughbred 2000
Athlon XP Thoroughbred 2200
Athlon XP Thoroughbred 2400
Athlon XP Thoroughbred 2700
Athlon XP Barton 2800
Athlon XP Barton 3000
Athlon XP Barton 3200
Duron applebred 1800
Sempron 2400
Sempron 2800
Sempron 3000

I used only Abit boards and while Abit did manufacture lots of models for socket 462, I used only 12 of them:
KT7 – RAID with KT133
KT7A – RAID with KT133A
KG7 – RAID with AMD760
NV7 – 133RAID with NFORCE1
KR7A – 133R with KT266A
AT7 – MAX1 with KT333
AT7 – MAX2 with KT400
KD7A with KT400A
KV7 with KT600
KW7 with KT880
AN7 with NFORCE2 ULTRA/MCP – T
NF7 – S2G with NFORCE2 ULTRA/MCP – G