RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2026-01-17, 09:34:

There are some DOS games like screamer 2 (in hi-colour, high res mode) and System Shock (at 640 x 480) that would most likely run poorly even on your K6-3. But, I think they are an exceptional case. Most DOS games will run fine, and these will too at lower settings

As promised, I gave system shock a try (the enhanced CD version) and it runs Great!! I had to put the mouse look patch on to make it playable. Man the standard controls are aweful! But the patch also offers other screen modes. Even 800x600 is playable. I am running it at 640x400 as this is perfect for my 16:10 1920x1200 display

I have been experimenting with slowing the system down too with k6init. For those buggy old adventure games, disabling the L1 cache seems to let me play day of the tentacle, monkey island etc using Roland emulation through the AWE64. I had already tried this with the Pentium but was unsure it would still work on the k6, day of the tentacle is notoriously problematic apparently. One game ive been wanting to try is LooM. I’ll try and install that tomorrow.

I finally closed the lid on this system today. I declare it finished.

The question remains. What do I do with the two Athlon builds?

FullYes wrote on 2026-01-30, 22:55:

As promised, I gave system shock a try (the enhanced CD version) and it runs Great!! I had to put the mouse look patch on to make it playable. Man the standard controls are aweful! But the patch also offers other screen modes. Even 800x600 is playable. I am running it at 640x400 as this is perfect for my 16:10 1920x1200 display

I have been experimenting with slowing the system down too with k6init. For those buggy old adventure games, disabling the L1 cache seems to let me play day of the tentacle, monkey island etc using Roland emulation through the AWE64. I had already tried this with the Pentium but was unsure it would still work on the k6, day of the tentacle is notoriously problematic apparently. One game ive been wanting to try is LooM. I’ll try and install that tomorrow.

I finally closed the lid on this system today. I declare it finished.

That's great. I hope it gives you many years of enjoyment

FullYes wrote on 2026-01-30, 22:55:

The question remains. What do I do with the two Athlon builds?

If you are happy with DOS performance on this machine then I guess you don't need DOS compatability on the athlon system. So maybe use the later board and keep it as Win98 only.

I have lost track of that your system configurations are now. Is it K6-3, with Voodoo 2000 and Athlon 3000+ with 5900XT?

You remember correctly!

Got two full Athlon systems effectively, and I’m thinking of doing as you say - build a system around the 3000+ using the DDR board I originally just bought just for the FX5900XT

I’m curious how it will behave in DOS using the Audigy. I don’t remember having much success with PCI sound cards in dos back in the day, but I think it’s down to the motherboard/chipset how well it works (or doesn’t). The Athlon XP setup I had in period was nforce2-based. I saw on here that nvidia chipsets don’t have good legacy support.

I need to revert the KT133A board back to standard so I can (probably) sell it. I have a pile of bits to go with it. Including an FX5200 which I bought as a backup. Doesn’t work in the DDR system but works perfectly in the kt133A 🤷🏼‍♂️

If it were me, I'd keep the parts somewhere as spares. These retro parts are only going to get more rare and expensive and, being old, could die at any time.

I just have too many spares and complete systems and not enough space. If I had to get down to one retro system, I believe I would choose the socket 7. So i will prioritise spares for that. I’ll keep at least one spare video and sound card for each system. I have much more at the moment!

I fired up the Athlon system today. It’s currently still usinf the KT133A motherboard modded to run with the 3000+ in, clocked at 2266MHz (17x133) it posted straight away, but for some reason no video in windows. I’ve changed my monitor since I last ran this machine, and whatever mode mustn’t have been compatible. After much faffing with drivers, it’s now up and running

I decided to do some of (Phil’s) benchmarks to see how the dos performance is on such a machine

Quake320 - 322fps
Quake640 - 37.6fps
Doom -94.9fps (787 ticks)
Chris’3d-320 - 707fps
Chris’3d-640 - 132fps
PCPlayer-320 - 550fps
PCPlayer-640 - 63.3fps

Interesting that there’s such a big drop going up in resolution. Univbe isn’t supported on the 5900 as it’s already vbe3.0 (same as the voodoo3) I was looking for somthig else to try, like a k6init type program for the k7 - i could not find anything in searches, but I realised it’s right there in Phil’s benchmark pack - MTRRLFBE

Enabling this gave me much better results

Quake-640 - 121.4fps
Chris’3d-640 - 452fps
PCPlayer-640 - 246.2 fps

So about a 3-4x improvement

Don’t know why doom is so slow?? It’s slower than the Pentium MMX clocked 10x slower

I’ve been running this system pretty much all day at 2266MHz. Perhaps I was too hasty to abandon the platform?

No, the more dos games I’m playing, the more it feels wrong using this machine for them.

I’m also seeing some random file corruption here and there. Nothing major, but the odd piece of software or dos driver no longer works correctly or performs an illegal operation. Perhaps a side effect of the overclocked state, or something the via 686B South bridge was renowned for?

Time to make a Change. Pulled the 3000+ from the Soltek SL75-KAV kt133A and dropped it into the A7V333 which has been sat on the shelf since I stripped the case it was in

Up and running straight away. The BIOS reports a CPU multiplier of 5x and a clock speed of 1000MHz. Oh dear. Oh wait, it’s just some BIOS bug, the CPU is correctly identified on the POST screen (the first boot, the screen was obscured by a full screen logo) as a 3000+ and is running at its correct stock speed of 2166MHz. time for a couple of benchmarks

Some interesting results. All of the dos benchmarks are faster at 320x200 and slower at 640x480 than they were using the KT133A. MTRRLFBE no longer has any impact on performance on this board it would seem.

Quake320 - 369fps
Quake640 - 123.2fps
Doom -101.34fps (737 ticks)
Chris’3d-320 - 781fps
Chris’3d-640 - 391.5fps
PCPlayer-320 - 581fps
PCPlayer-640 - 200.3fps

Quite a big swing in some results. Quake at 320 is ~15% faster while PCPlayer 640 is ~20% slower. Doom is still weirdly slow.

I had not reported previously but I did have some speedsys results to compare. The KT133A had a memory score of 539MB/s while the A7v333 has a score of 863MB/s - I expected a much higher memory score here. Perhaps the via chipset doesn’t have great DDR performance, it was still fairly new at the time. I need to test more ram configurations and timings. As far as I can tell it’s pushing the ram already on the timings (2-2-2-5). This may be why I was having trouble getting this system to post with most of the DDR RAM sticks I have

I’ve been playing around with the Athlon some more. The 3000+ seems to be working without any stability issues on the A7V333. I did see some higher temperatures with this CPU in this board compared to when it was in the SOLTEK. So I’ve ended up putting a high rpm socket 370 fan on it and put the noctua fan on the socket 7. Doing so dropped the temps about 10 degrees, but at a high cost in terms of noise. The socket 7 is whisper quiet now though! I had bought the socket 370 cooler and fan when I got the k6-3, but the K6-3 barely gets warm.

I think this board doesn’t support high multipliers, but there is a workaround of some sort to allow the 3000+ to run at the correct frequency, 5=13 when the 5th multiplier pin pulled high. 13 being the correct multiplier for this CPU

What I fancied doing is increasing the FSB on a lower multi, just to see what this board is capable of. But I cannot set a multiplier lower than 5x (13x)

Somewhat ironic that I have the opposite problem in this motherboard!

I have some comparisons for you

With the Soltek board running at 17 x 133; 2266MHz (actual speed ~2275MHz)

3dm99: 14608 GPU, 33904 CPU -> the max I could get on this board was around 15000 / 35000 respectively

With the A7V333 board running at 13 x 166; 2166MHz

3dm99: 17690 GPU, 40083 CPU

And tweaked a little to get the same clock as the Soltek; 13 x 175MHz

3dm99: 18400 GPU, 42000 CPU (I forgot to write the CPU result down, but it was over 42000)

So in this benchmark just upping the FSB and swapping to DDR has increased performance by more than 20%