At what resolution?

K7S5A runs will all socket A CPUs. Faster CPU does not hurt, there is never really a hard cap on performance, just diminishing results. Why don't you overclock to see what can be gained?

philscomputerlab wrote:

At what resolution?

Most likely 1024x768 or 1280x1024.

Putas wrote:

Why don't you overclock to see what can be gained?

Because this board of not known for it's overclocking abilities. It works with a FSB of 266Mhz (hence the cpu "limit") and i believe i once found a modded 3rd party bios that will allow some degree of overclocking but i would rather not tinker with that for now. First i must replace a whole lots of bulged caps. That should be fun for starters 😀

rick6 wrote:

Most likely 1024x768 or 1280x1024.

That's high enough for the processor to have little effect:

Full size: http://i.imgur.com/pJQksYS.png

Ive actually recently upgraded my V5500 machine from a 1Ghz PIII to an Athlon 1400. What Ive found is that for high resolution/detail levels you mentioned, some games showed improvement, others simply did not.

For example Evolva and UT99 which are quite CPU hungry saw an increase of some 10 fps each at 1024X768 and 1280X1024 respectively.

On the other hand, Quake 3 engine games showed almost no improvement, 3 frames at best at maximum details , 1024X768.

I would say an Athlon XP 1600 is more than enough , you could go with an Athlon XP 2100 if you want, but you wont see any difference in the games themselves

rick6 wrote:

Putas wrote:

Why don't you overclock to see what can be gained?

Because this board of not known for it's overclocking abilities. It works with a FSB of 266Mhz (hence the cpu "limit") and i believe i once found a modded 3rd party bios that will allow some degree of overclocking but i would rather not tinker with that for now.

There are softwares like Speedfan or Setfsb that let you change FSB on the fly, very convenient.

A fast CPU will most definitely improve the frame rate minimum. Any Athlon XP with DDR RAM is a solid platform for a Voodoo5 (as long as the chipset supports 3.3v AGP).

Putas wrote:

There are softwares like Speedfan or Setfsb that let you change FSB on the fly, very convenient.

Well Speedfan has let me down several times in the past, as for Setfsb i can't really speak for it as i never used it, i should give it a try.
I would like to keep the system at stock speed if possible. It seems that the fastest Athlon XP with a FSB of 266Mhz is a rare Athlon XP 2800+ with the partnumber code AXDA2800DKV4C. There should be also a few 2600+ at 266Mhz of FSB according to wikipedia .

swaaye wrote:

A fast CPU will most definitely improve the frame rate minimum. Any Athlon XP with DDR RAM is a solid platform for a Voodoo5 (as long as the chipset supports 3.3v AGP).

Well this boils down to a definitive conclusion, the minimum frame rate should be improved, i didn't thought much about it but it makes sense. I do have some seriously heavy UT mods that that should bring even the fastest single core cpu that there is to it's knees so a better cpu shouldn't hurt, although i should first fix the board and play a bit with the Athlon XP 1600+ first.

rick6 wrote:

I would like to keep the system at stock speed if possible. It seems that the fastest Athlon XP with a FSB of 266Mhz is a rare Athlon XP 2800+ with the partnumber code AXDA2800DKV4C. There should be also a few 2600+ at 266Mhz of FSB according to wikipedia ...

There's also a mobile barton 3000+ @ 266FSB, which is, pretty much, the fastest thing to run at stock on this board. Or you can wire-mod any mobile Barton to increase the multiplier.

I suppose you have already flashed either the Cheepo or the HoneyX BIOS?

K7S5A is rock solid (read it as Prime95 stable) at 143/143 with CheepoBIOS and CAS 2.5. (probably CAS 2 too, with premium memory - I used Kingston Value RAM back then).

My all time favorite board 😀

Space Cowboy wrote:

Or you can wire-mod any mobile Barton to increase the multiplier.

Again, there are software solutions for unlocked CPUs that are probably lot safer. I used CPUID (or how was it called) to change multiplier dynamically by CPU load. And the same with speedfan for FSB, reliable in a range of PCI divider. I was running that for long time with mobile Barton, untill 166 MHz was needed. That switch was one way only.