bloodem wrote on 2020-09-19, 16:05:

for some reason (maybe the missing cache?)

Maybe it depends on the OS, with NT/2K/XP and later assuming you have enough RAM Windows will cache things (at the moment on this system there is 43.28GB in the system file cache!), but I don't know how well W9x caches things.

bloodem wrote on 2020-09-19, 16:05:

I usually go with either 80 GB PATA HDDs or with an 120 GB SSD with SATA TO PATA/IDE adapter. I think SD card adapters are OK for tests, however for actual usage I saw a big performance penalty - even though they have very good read/write speeds, for some reason (maybe the missing cache?) there's a very noticeable intermittent stuttering during gameplay (at least with the adapters that I tried).

Have you tried turning off write-behind caching? The feature bundles disk writes into small write bursts that can cause those stutters on cacheless drives.

Yeah, I actually tried it, but it didn't make a difference.

bloodem wrote on 2020-09-20, 10:04:

Yeah, I actually tried it, but it didn't make a difference.

I should have assumed you already did. 👍More evidence SD cards just aren't meant to be used as system drives.

Well, they're quite good for 386 / 486 DOS builds, I'm using an SD card adapter with a Biostar MB8433UUD & an Intel 486 DX2-66. Needless to say that it's probably one or two orders of magnitude faster than any drive from that era 😀
However, for Windows 95 or newer builds I always go with semi-period correct HDDs or far-from-period-correct SSDs 😀

First owner 7IXE reporting. I always had a fight with the AMD driver pack and ended up with a non-functional Windows 98SE installation.

I believe it was the GART or IDE driver... not sure anymore.

PD2JK wrote on 2020-09-21, 05:54:

First owner 7IXE reporting. I always had a fight with the AMD driver pack and ended up with a non-functional Windows 98SE installation.

My 7IXE is now dual boot with 98SE and 2003 Enterprise Server. I find 2003 is faster and far more stable, thus far I have had no issues with 2003, but 98SE is at best temperamental. For example I don't have a floppy installed, it's disabled in the BIOS, but 98SE reports A: and as soon as I access A: the system locks up 🙁. On 98SE I can't get the Matrox G400 to run at 1600 x 1200 @ 60Hz even after installing the drivers 🙁, it works on 2003 even without installing the Matrox drivers 😀.

Given this I suspect I will almost exclusively use 2003

red-ray wrote on 2020-09-19, 08:41:

...

I have BIOS F7 02/29/2000, a 750MHz AMD Athlon M2 (Pluto) + 640MB of memory.

...

I also have the "Slot-A" version of this board, but with the F3 02/29/2000 bios, so I was wondering if you could upload your bios version as the official GA site download for F7 seems to be the "Socket A", and force flashing that version bricks the bios, though it can be recovered as I've done using the AMI BIOS Recovery method (CTL+HOME) here: https://techjourney.net/recover-or-undo-corru … s-flash-update/

jm764 wrote on 2020-10-16, 13:09:

I was wondering if you could upload your bios

Here you go, as I recall I had for force the update

I suspect you need to look at https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-7IXE-rev-11/support rather than https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-7IXE4-rev-10/support