VOGONS


Reply 20 of 45, by darry

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someperson42 wrote on 2021-06-11, 01:28:
darry wrote on 2021-06-11, 01:18:
someperson42 wrote on 2021-06-11, 00:54:

Hmm... that's an interesting option, but it also seems kind of risky. I don't know if the AX6BC's VRMs support the proper voltage. I'm also not using a slotket currently (the CPU I have is an SL4BS) and it isn't clear to me what all I would need to use one.

You would not be the first one to try a Tualatin on an AX6BC . Tualatin CPUs are all socketed, which is why you would need a slotket, unless I am misunderstanding what you mean .

See https://web.archive.org/web/20060219190343/ht … fl/slot-t_2.htm

I get that I would need a slotket. It is good to hear that others have done it with my board before, but I don't know which particular slotkets would be compatible. The ones I see on eBay don't seem to come with the plastic bracket thing shown in the pictures in that link, so I'm also not sure what I would have to do about that. I also assume I would need some kind of cooling solution.

Also, aren't Tualatins 133 MHz bus CPUs? I'm starting to wonder if this makes any sense.

You would need
- a Coppermine compatible slotket
- a socket 370 or socket 462 (AMD) compatible cooling solution
- an aforementioned modded Tualatin CPU

The lack of a bracket can be addresses in DIY fashion .

Running a 1400 MHz Tualatin S (512K cache) at 100MHz FSB rather than 133MHz will yield a 1050MHz clock speed which is faster, at least in 3DMark 2001, than a Tualeron at 1300 MHz (stock 100MHz FSB). This probably makes a 1400MHz Tualatin-s@1050MHz the fastest CPU one can run on a 440BX board without overclocking anything . See Re: Tualatin Celeron vs Williamette Celeron

Reply 21 of 45, by bloodem

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someperson42 wrote on 2021-06-10, 23:29:
Since making this post, I've obtained a Ti4200 card. This definitely runs a lot more stable with the 133 MHz bus than the MX440 […]
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Since making this post, I've obtained a Ti4200 card. This definitely runs a lot more stable with the 133 MHz bus than the MX440 did. However, there are still issues. Most games actually work just fine, but there are still cases where I run into crashes. Oddly, the most reliable way I've found to reproduce them is to preview the "Underwater" screensaver that comes with Windows 98. I have no idea why, but in this configuration, this crashes the system almost every time. It works fine if I set the FSB to 100 MHz.

This seems to leave me with a few options:

  • Try to find an even more stable GPU for this configuration. I'm not convinced that's possible though.
  • Try to find an SL4BR or SL4KL CPU, which are Slot 1 CPUs intended for a 100 MHz bus. These CPUs seem to be rare though.
  • Get an SL5QV CPU, which seems far more common than the aforementioned Slot 1 CPUs, and try to set it up with a slotket. There are a bunch of unknowns here for me, like which slotkets would work, if they would fit in the retention clip already on my board, and I'm sure I'd have to get some kind of cooler.
  • Replace the board with something more suitable for the CPU I already have. Options? I'd definitely want something with an ISA slot or 2.
  • Live with the CPU underclocked to 750 MHz.

Honestly, it kind of sucks, but I'm leaning towards just living with it.

As I said, I would not blame the GPU - it’s very likely that your motherboard (chipset) does not handle the overclock - because, don’t forget, the 440BX does not officially support anything above 100MHz (especially not 133). And while many do run fine at this frequency, I did encounter some which don’t. Yours seems to be one of those unfortunate cases. Did you try 124 MHz (if your motherboard offers this option)? From my experience most (or all) motherboards should work fine at this frequency.

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 22 of 45, by darry

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bloodem wrote on 2021-06-11, 04:03:
someperson42 wrote on 2021-06-10, 23:29:
Since making this post, I've obtained a Ti4200 card. This definitely runs a lot more stable with the 133 MHz bus than the MX440 […]
Show full quote

Since making this post, I've obtained a Ti4200 card. This definitely runs a lot more stable with the 133 MHz bus than the MX440 did. However, there are still issues. Most games actually work just fine, but there are still cases where I run into crashes. Oddly, the most reliable way I've found to reproduce them is to preview the "Underwater" screensaver that comes with Windows 98. I have no idea why, but in this configuration, this crashes the system almost every time. It works fine if I set the FSB to 100 MHz.

This seems to leave me with a few options:

  • Try to find an even more stable GPU for this configuration. I'm not convinced that's possible though.
  • Try to find an SL4BR or SL4KL CPU, which are Slot 1 CPUs intended for a 100 MHz bus. These CPUs seem to be rare though.
  • Get an SL5QV CPU, which seems far more common than the aforementioned Slot 1 CPUs, and try to set it up with a slotket. There are a bunch of unknowns here for me, like which slotkets would work, if they would fit in the retention clip already on my board, and I'm sure I'd have to get some kind of cooler.
  • Replace the board with something more suitable for the CPU I already have. Options? I'd definitely want something with an ISA slot or 2.
  • Live with the CPU underclocked to 750 MHz.

Honestly, it kind of sucks, but I'm leaning towards just living with it.

As I said, I would not blame the GPU - it’s very likely that your motherboard (chipset) does not handle the overclock - because, don’t forget, the 440BX does not officially support anything above 100MHz (especially not 133). And while many do run fine at this frequency, I did encounter some which don’t. Yours seems to be one of those unfortunate cases. Did you try 124 MHz (if your motherboard offers this option)? From my experience most (or all) motherboards should work fine at this frequency.

Very good point which I meant to bring up as well, but somehow didn't it . Anyway, I agree .

Reply 23 of 45, by bloodem

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His problem is that he is making an inaccurate assumption:

someperson42 wrote on 2021-05-21, 18:03:

[...] The CPU I'm using is a 1 GHz Pentium III designed for a 133 MHz bus, but just to test the board stability, I let Prime95 run for about 4 hours. No issues.

The fact that the board ran for 4 hours in Prime95 is not relevant. Certain workloads stress components (especially the CPU / RAM / chipset communication) in different ways.
I can't even count how many times I've seen a system be Prime stable, while at the same time freezing in 3DMark in a matter of minutes 😀

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 24 of 45, by Paadam

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Sorry but 440BX is perfectly stable at 133MHz and in case there are instabilities first thing would be to try other graphics (MX440 is NOT good card for 89MHz unlike Ti4200, geforce3 etc) and secondly your RAM timings as in many cases RAM is not stable at 133MHz with toot itgh settings. You can try more loose timings first.

Suggesting running 1.4GHz PIII-S at 1050 Mhz instead of getting a VGA card that handles 89MHz nowadays is very bad advice 😀 There's plenty of cards to choose from.

Many 3Dfx and Pentium III-S stuff.
My amibay FS thread: www.amibay.com/showthread.php?88030-Man ... -370-dual)

Reply 25 of 45, by bloodem

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Paadam wrote on 2021-06-11, 09:46:

Sorry but 440BX is perfectly stable at 133MHz and in case there are instabilities first thing would be to try other graphics (MX440 is NOT good card for 89MHz unlike Ti4200, geforce3 etc) and secondly your RAM timings as in many cases RAM is not stable at 133MHz with toot itgh settings. You can try more loose timings first.

It is not always, not as a universally valid axiom like you present it. 😀 Also, he tried a GeForce Ti 4200, he just mentioned so.
I have a motherboard that breaks this axiom (Epox EP-BX3): same 933 MHz CPU, same 256 MB Kingston PC133 RAM, same GeForce 4 Ti 4400 video card, all of them working perfectly fine on countless other 440BX boards at 133 MHz, but on this one I get intermittent freezes in 3D apps. Dropping the FSB to 124 MHz solves the issue. I even did a full recap with Panasonic FM series caps, just to make sure that there wasn't some weird capacitor-wear issue going on... but no, there wasn't, the problem persists.

Yes, 440BX usually works fine at 133 MHz. But after you've thoroughly tested 10, 15, 20, 25 boards... at some point you'll encounter one that isn't 100% stable at this frequency (it could be either a chipset silicon lottery problem, or just poor build quality of that specific board).

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 26 of 45, by Cyberdyne

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I will give my two cents, a underclocked system is a long living system. Many of my Socket 7 and Slot 1/Socket 370 are most of the times underclocked. Few of them have switches at the front to change FSB and X.

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

Reply 27 of 45, by Paadam

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I have tested ~30-40 boards over the years, only problematic ones were the early ones without 1/4 PCI divider and even those worked when finding add-on cards that tolerated overclocked PCI.
When stability is problem it pays to check the voltages, 3.3volt being most important, high clocks are compsomised if i/o voltage is lower.

Many 3Dfx and Pentium III-S stuff.
My amibay FS thread: www.amibay.com/showthread.php?88030-Man ... -370-dual)

Reply 28 of 45, by waterbeesje

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Another two cents in the bucket.

I've got an Asus P3B-F (late BX with 1/4 PCI div) and a coppermine 933 mounted and cherry picked the CPU and ram to get it even faster.
With a Point of View 440MX card I've managed too get 150MHz fsb stable, resulting in a 100MHz AGP bus.
Later over switched to an Asus Ti4200 and had to downclock it to 140 (First lower option) and still get a stable system with a 93MHz AGP bus. The Ti wasn't able to handle the 100MHz AGP bus.
But overall performance increased so I kept the Ti in.

Also in another BX board I had (can't remember which one) the same 440 did the 133/89 stable as well. Also a geforce 2mx400 was stable at this speed, also a late tnt2 m64. Ofc they are no match for the gf4 series, but we're stable 😀

I have yet to fine an ATI graphics card that takes a heavily oc'd AGP bus. 76MHz (fsb115) was the maximum I've got with a Rage 2 pro.

Stuck at 10MHz...

Reply 31 of 45, by dionb

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bloodem wrote on 2021-06-11, 10:02:

[...]

Yes, 440BX usually works fine at 133 MHz. But after you've thoroughly tested 10, 15, 20, 25 boards... at some point you'll encounter one that isn't 100% stable at this frequency (it could be either a chipset silicon lottery problem, or just poor build quality of that specific board).

Second this. I've had mixed results with different specimens of the same board, same revision (MS-6168 rev 2.0 is the first one that comes to mind 😉 )

Agree with Paadam though that it's as likely to be a board VRM issue as a fundamental chipset limitation. However you're generally stuck with a fixed combination of the two on any given board, so that distinction is fairly academic.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-06-13, 21:35:

A good way to determine if it really is the AGP overclock vs something else in the system would be to test with a PCI graphics card

It's a good indication, but not 100% unless the PCI card draws exactly the same amount of power as the AGP card does (V3-3000 AGP vs PCI would be a good test). Otherwise it could still be down to power issues.

Reply 32 of 45, by maxtherabbit

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dionb wrote on 2021-06-13, 23:28:

It's a good indication, but not 100% unless the PCI card draws exactly the same amount of power as the AGP card does (V3-3000 AGP vs PCI would be a good test). Otherwise it could still be down to power issues.

why are we talking about power? AGP draws 3.3v directly from the ATX power supply AFAIK

Reply 33 of 45, by dionb

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maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-06-14, 00:35:
dionb wrote on 2021-06-13, 23:28:

It's a good indication, but not 100% unless the PCI card draws exactly the same amount of power as the AGP card does (V3-3000 AGP vs PCI would be a good test). Otherwise it could still be down to power issues.

why are we talking about power? AGP draws 3.3v directly from the ATX power supply AFAIK

Well, for starters because the PCI card draws 5V only , not 3.3V, and secondly because the AGP card signals at 3.3v, but draws a significant portion of its power from the 5V line, which it shares with the CPU. If that line is overloaded on the motherboard, it can impact stability (think FIC PA-2013+ for extreme example, although that wasn't a BX board).

Reply 34 of 45, by maxtherabbit

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dionb wrote on 2021-06-14, 06:02:
maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-06-14, 00:35:
dionb wrote on 2021-06-13, 23:28:

It's a good indication, but not 100% unless the PCI card draws exactly the same amount of power as the AGP card does (V3-3000 AGP vs PCI would be a good test). Otherwise it could still be down to power issues.

why are we talking about power? AGP draws 3.3v directly from the ATX power supply AFAIK

Well, for starters because the PCI card draws 5V only , not 3.3V, and secondly because the AGP card signals at 3.3v, but draws a significant portion of its power from the 5V line, which it shares with the CPU. If that line is overloaded on the motherboard, it can impact stability (think FIC PA-2013+ for extreme example, although that wasn't a BX board).

The 5V rail is also generated by the power supply, the motherboard has nothing to do with it

Reply 35 of 45, by dionb

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maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-06-14, 14:02:

[...]

The 5V rail is also generated by the power supply, the motherboard has nothing to do with it

The 5V rail on the PSU goes to the ATX connector on the board and from there it's split over lines to the AGP slot and to the CPU. That all happens on the motherboard.

Reply 36 of 45, by maxtherabbit

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dionb wrote on 2021-06-14, 22:45:
maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-06-14, 14:02:

[...]

The 5V rail is also generated by the power supply, the motherboard has nothing to do with it

The 5V rail on the PSU goes to the ATX connector on the board and from there it's split over lines to the AGP slot and to the CPU. That all happens on the motherboard.

I mean it does, yes, but the quality of the VRM components on the motherboard has absolutely no bearing on it. It's nothing more than a simple strip of copper

Now if your argument is: "the power supply may be underpowered for the system, and doesn't manifest issues until it is loaded additionally through overclocking" then I would agree. But the motherboard is really not relevant in this case

Reply 37 of 45, by darry

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maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-06-15, 02:00:
dionb wrote on 2021-06-14, 22:45:
maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-06-14, 14:02:

[...]

The 5V rail is also generated by the power supply, the motherboard has nothing to do with it

The 5V rail on the PSU goes to the ATX connector on the board and from there it's split over lines to the AGP slot and to the CPU. That all happens on the motherboard.

I mean it does, yes, but the quality of the VRM components on the motherboard has absolutely no bearing on it. It's nothing more than a simple strip of copper

Now if your argument is: "the power supply may be underpowered for the system, and doesn't manifest issues until it is loaded additionally through overclocking" then I would agree. But the motherboard is really not relevant in this case

Hmm, correct me if I am wrong, but I thought AGP cards were powered by 3.3V but used a different voltage on signal pins depending on version (3.3V ,1.5V or 0.8V) .

Then there are boards like the FIC PA-2013 and its known AGP power issue on some revisions (
FIC PA-2013 Ver 2.1 and Voodoo3 3000 AGP ) ? Does it derive its 3.3V from the 5V through an (insufficiently specced) VRM ? Do most other boards simply pass 3.3V directly from the PSU ?

Reply 38 of 45, by maxtherabbit

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As far as I know, the norm for ATX boards with 3.3v AGP is to just pass the power straight from the power header to the slot.

Perhaps that FIC board generates it's own 3.3v for some reason idk

Reply 39 of 45, by Paadam

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The early AT boards with AGP slots and some early ATX boards (Asus P2L97 comes to mind specifically) had VRM's that converted 5v to 3.3v and they had problems with more powerful (for the time) graphics cards. Asus even had official rework guide regarding the P2L97 mod early revisions that included unsoldering VRM leg and routing wire from ATX 3.3v pin to to a capacitor leg instead.

Not aware that any of the BX boards had such issues.

Many 3Dfx and Pentium III-S stuff.
My amibay FS thread: www.amibay.com/showthread.php?88030-Man ... -370-dual)