RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2026-09-30, 21:31:

I just run it at the speed it auto detected. The CPU is very overpowered for Win98. It has been rock solid.

Interesting! Yeah it’s crazy to even have such a setup for win98. But it is one of the reasons why some of us are here 😬

I have been collecting info about running 266/1066MHz FSB CPUs on these boards. I think you’re the first person I’ve seen say they’ve had absolutely no trouble with one. I absolutely do not need anything better than an a 200/800MHz FSB e5800 (3.2GHz) CPU in this board, they are about £7 on eBay. But where is the fun in doing just that?!

Here are some mental notes I’ve made so far

A lot of people comment that 266/1066 FSB CPUs aren’t as stable as 200/800 as 266 is purely an overclocked setting.

Also a 200Mhz CPU can’t be pushed to run at 266MHz (with a lower multiplier) in software - instead you have to pin mod the chip to force the board to detect the CPU as a 266 one. This then properly engages the right straps/ dividers to run 266 - this is kind of pointless anyway as 266 CPUs are widely available now and cheap.

The 266 FSB CPUs also end up with underclocked RAM by default. Although I saw a post claiming that they had their board running at 250MHz FSB 1:1 RAM, though not sure how they did this with the FSB restraints this board seems to have.

I saw a review of a different board with the same chipset suggest that 266 FSB 1:1 is possible if you have good enough RAM

Someone else said that CPUS with 1/2 multipliers can cause problems eg core2duo E7600 (11.5), Pentium E6800 (12.5)

I bought literally for pennies today an E7500. It’s the same FSB x multi as the X6800 (266x11) to try out on it. I will wait to see what CPU it comes with before I spend any more!

Also in other news, time to sell some stuff. Got way too much Athlon stuff now. And I don’t need both a k6-3 and a k6-3+. I’m not a YouTuber 😂

I think your board won't support core 2 Duo. Only the revision 3 does:

https://www.asrock.com/mb/intel/775i65g%20r3.0/

I cannot confirm yet but I’m led to believe it’s all down to the bios version. The last iteration of the bios for the R2.0 is the same as r3.0? It may not officially supported but it still works? This is based on others’ experiences on here

FullYes wrote on 2026-10-01, 11:56:

I cannot confirm yet but I’m led to believe it’s all down to the bios version. The last iteration of the bios for the R2.0 is the same as r3.0? It may not officially supported but it still works? This is based on others’ experiences on here

Maybe. My R2 board is dead. So I can't try

I will soon find out. Should be here tomorrow along with (maybe) the e7500

775 build

Ok so the motherboard arrived and it seems to work. Came with a 3.2GHz celeron D, a cooler and 512mb ram

Will have to replace the cooler as one of the upper leg components is missing (the one you press down to lock the cooler in place)

I’ve ended up using the ssd i couldn’t get to work on the Athlon as the main drive. Fresh install of win98. Feels really snappy!

The e7500 turned out to be an e4400 (seller sent the wrong cpu) e4400 will do as a start

This is with an FX5200 (128mb/128bit version) and the result is about as good as the 5900xt manages with an Athlon XP!

3dmark01se is less good. About 8300 points

Hopefully tomorrow I will have some dual channel ram
and a better cpu to try as well as a faster gpu

Today the RAM arrived but no CPU 😞 so I’m stuck with the E4400 until at least Monday

I picked this kit up cheap on eBay. Probably too good for this setup but as I said they were cheap!

Ideally I would have got 2 x 256Mb but there isn’t much out there at DDR400 other than budget stuff.

There is a distinctly blue theme going on with this setup. Blue motherboard, blue GPU and now some blue ram. The Audigy 2 ZS is going to really spoil it 😅

Had some issues initially getting the ram to work, but it seemed to be poor contact in one of the ram sockets and a quick clean sorted it out

So now I have 1Gb of ram I had to use patchmem to get windows98 to work properly. I did first try modifying the system.ini but then had some issues with the GPU drivers (45.23) I am not sure if patchmem solved the problem or if the GPU just needed reseating but it was finally all working after several hours of messing around. Time for some benchmarks!

Forgot to get some pics!

The temporary setup - now with the 5900XT

And some initial results

I added some Athlon numbers with the same GPU. No surprise, the numbers are up to 50% higher

Adding dual channel did almost nothing. I guess it might be more uplifting on windows XP!

Of course I could not help but try a little o/cing. I was able to get it to POST at 266Mhz FSB but it hangs either detecting the drives or just afterwards. Not a surprise but could not help myself!

I got into windows at 250MHz FSB but after about 5 mins it crashed.

233 seemed stable but I could see artifacts in the benchmarks

Quite a big uplift for a fairly modest o/c. I am looking forward to trying some other CPUs

FullYes wrote on Yesterday, 19:15:

Forgot to get some pics!

The temporary setup - now with the 5900XT

Wow. The cooler on that GPU is gigantic!

It’s fairly modest by modern standards! 😅

Arctic cooling NV silencer 3
https://www.madshrimps.be/2005/02/arctic-cool … g-the-fx5900xt/

I bought the cooler just after I got the card. Original cooler was very weedy, and loud!

It does mean I only have 1 useable PCI slot on this board. Fortunately I only need one!

I got into memtest at 266Mhz FSB 1:1. This is as far as I can get. It crashed just after I took this photo

I was booting from a usb floppy but couldn’t get it to load. Swapping to a proper floppy drive did the trick

Backtracking now to see where the FSB stabilises

775. Not much progress. Seemed to have issues now even down at 200MHz FSB. Tried cleaning the contacts on the RAM. They were pretty dirty. This helped a bit. But it looks like there is an issue with dram slot 1. When the board arrived. There was a ram module half-inserted the wrong way around in it. All 3 DDR 400+ capable sticks I have work perfectly in slot #2. But with both modules populated, it fails memtest on the last test of the first pass then immediately starts producing many errors on the 2nd.

I wasn’t sure if the ram was getting too hot. It gets pretty toasty but then with only 1 module in slot 2 at the same settings, all fine.

Tested the ram voltage at the Regulator

Auto: 2.63V
Low: 2.63V
High: 2.71V

The ram is rated at 2.7V. So all good

Need to try some contact cleaner in the slot. There is no obvious damage to the pins but there are a few signs of wear and tear on the plastic body of the slot.

Worst case if I can’t fix it I will just have single channel. Tests I’ve done so far suggest minimal benefit in win98 and only having 512mb RAM means fewer issues with compatibility as well

I’ve checked the PCI bus clock with an oscilloscope and it appears to be locked down. I would therefore assume the AGP bus is also locked down. So the limitation to o/cing this board is 1) how well it’s made in the first place 2) the chipset 3) how good your ram is 4) CPU’s o/c headroom at its stock volts

i7 update!

Have not posted anything interesting about the i7 XP build in a while. I was on the lookout for some 2133 CL9 RAM for it. I had some excellent Corsair 2133CL9 1.5V Ram in my original 2600k build but I have been unable to find some more. I would also have taken 2400CL10 and tried to run that at 2133CL9 (i7-2600k doesn’t have a divider for 2400)

Got sent an offer for a listing I’d viewed and then forgotten about but the price was practically giving it away so I snapped it up!

I’m waiting on other CPUs and maybe some deoxit spray for the 775 build so decided to dedicate a bit of time today to testing this ram.

Well it was an absolute PITA to get this RAM to work in my board. My board has an led to indicate a ram issue and it would just not go out. I seem to be having a running theme this weekend

I could get it to post with one stick (either stick) in the first slot for channel A. But to get it to post with 2 sticks, I ended up with the 2nd stick in the 2nd slot of channel B. Not sure if my board has some weird tracing arrangement or something. But it’s a mid level board so I doubt it - all the other ram I’ve had in this board has used slot A1 and slot B1

To then get it stable I had to set the voltages to 1.65 and 1.15Vddq (thanks, various google links!) I was hoping the ram would just be ok at 1.5V as I know 1.65v for ram is bad for the CPU on these. Some of my Corsair 1.65v sticks worked fine at their rated speed at 1.5V.

Perhaps I should have waited it out for that 1.5V Corsair ram I wanted…

So after lots of messing around and 2 passes of memtest, it was time to do some benchmarks!

And upgrading the ram has made…no difference! 😂

3dmark99 - with 1866

3dmark99 - with 2133

So. I’ve had to cheat to get better numbers 😬

I love how easy it is to o/c these sandy bridge CPUs 😎