K6-III+: How much RAM? What Windows? nGlide?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
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GLQuake is running using Windows software OpenGL renderer, that's why it's so slow. You can see it in your video, it says GL_RENDERER: GDI GENERIC.
That's usually happens when you use Windows built-in drivers as they lack the OpenGL ICD drivers, Microsoft forcefully trying to impose DirectX. If you get NVIDIA drivers installed, it should fix the issue.
If this video was 1h long I would have watched it probably 2 times at least. Thanks for this content! :)
Same here.
I bought the 5ax when the first k6iii came out.
Mine has 1mb cache.
The only trouble with this board is the agp won't handle cards like the rage fury well, but is great with
Voodoo SLI. I need some help over clocking k6-2+.
Also trouble shoot and repair of voodoo I I cards.
I am absolutely addicted to your stuff. I have tons of old hardware and programs and is great reliving old builds and programs. Thank you so much.
9:16 the 0xc000001d error code means ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION. You're dealing with a lack of CPU instructions. I know for a fact that all driver versions that have Geforce 6 and newer support will crash when 3D accelerating games on 586 class chips (like the K6 chips) on Win2000/XP. Downgrade your nVidia drivers.
Hi Phil.
This was a very interesting topic as I too am trying to build the ultimate retro PC. Given that we discovered that more isn't always better I was wondering if you ever considered doing this same test (RAM) but using the VIA chipset. Using your DFI board for example.
Cheers, and your channel rocks.
Thank you so much for this video Phil. I was able to run Airfix Dogfighter in 3dfx mode using nglide in XP & Vista. The game was a tad brighter with nglide compared to Voodoo3.
Glad it helped! You can play around with the Gamma setting to adjust that.
i had a Gigabyte GA5-AX back in the day, I used PC133 CAS 2 RAM on the thing and was able to crank the FSB to 115mhz. Two sticks of RAM though, you'd have to back off to 110mhz. Voodoo 3 card , and I eventually settled upon a PCI Yamaha DS-XG ... gave me 5-10% more FPS than the old ISA soundcard i had before it... apparently the Yamaha got some kind of hardware acceleration.
Phil, thanks for this video - this is what I like to see: Old stuff being tested with nowadays' resources. I really appreciate that you went into extensive windows testing but at the same time I feel for you; installing four or five different windows versions on one machine is a painful process. Thanks for your efforts.
Thanks! Yes it can take some time that's for sure. That's why I just briefly summarised my findings, the actual footage was many, many hours :)
I've seen this before.
PC66/100/133 "3rd slot" memory caused a a lot of trouble "in the day" for both Intel and AMD chipsets. It's caused by latency issues (usually). Most of the times when you see a performance drama with additional memory (like your 512mb test), the OS struggling with timing of a stick.
If it's bad enough, you'll see crashes like you did when using three sticks. It's not that the memory's bad. I've seen matching sticks that didn't age properly.
I had a Chaintech motherboard that had instructions that said it only theoretically supported 384mb (I guess they never tested for it). I struggled with three sticks. But I could get two undocumented 256mb sticks to work on her flawlessly!
I confirm, I distinctively remember issues with 3rd memory stick in those days. I too suspect slacking the RAM timing could cure the problem.
Do you know what exact chipsets were affected by this? Other than being ram picky, my 440BX based Dell Optiplex GX1 worked great when upgraded to 768MB. (3x 256 sticks)
It was always an OS / memory latency problem, more than a chipset issue.
And we saw it with older and used memory, and more with PC100 than PC66/PC133. By 2002-2003, someone would bring in a machine that was shutting down, usually looking for an upgrade. We'd take it in on trade, do a standard service (teardown, clean and paste), to find it still crashing.
We had a rig to test latency (ran off a floppy) and find timing on some to be horrible. And it didn't matter what the BIOS setting were. The system would run fine until certain programs ran.
It was also more common when an OEM crammed three 32mb or 64mb on to a board to save money.
The reason that these systems got slower or unstable with large quantities of RAM has less to do with memory timing and more to do with cache.
If we go a bit farther back in time to the late 80s and early 90s, motherboards had a special type of cache called TAG RAM. This cache held "cache lines" or a table of cached memory addresses in regular L2 cache and main system memory. TAG RAM had an inherent problem though in that if there wasn't enough of it, it couldn't cache all of the systems' memory. This as a result causes any memory outside of the cacheable area to be accessed much slower than memory inside the cacheable area because the CPU has to go out and manually find the data it needs in that region, rather than being able to look it up in a fast table.
Now fast forwarding a bit to the later 90s during the time of this hardware, TAG RAM disappeared as a discrete IC from motherboards and was integrated into the chipset. The same problem still existed, and when you hit the chipset with a then huge amount of memory, it wouldn't be able to cache it all. Not all chipsets had the same amount of TAG RAM, and garbage knockoff chipsets had little if any, leading to very poor performance.
Another consideration is the ability for the memory controller to electrically drive three or four memory sticks. A marginal motherboard could make or break that ability. Age is another thing to consider, these boards are coming up on 20 years old and the filter capacitors are going to be worn out and cause additional problems. Recapping these old boards can solve a lot of weird stability issues they have.
@@GGigabiteM The K6 III with its integrated 256 kb L2 cache memory should be able to cache the entire system memory. It is something related to chipset, mobo design and signal strenght. It happened also a lot in the K7 era.
Nice video. This is anecdotal, but I also have a SS7 K6 III+ retro build I've had for a few years. Mine is a VIA MVP3 MSI MS-5184 AT setup, though. I found that this board also performs best with a single stick of 256MB SDRAM. It maxes out at 512MB, but this increases RAM latency and POST time and lowers performance a bit. I suspect MVP3 boards also don't care for maxed out RAM. These SS7 chipsets are notoriously buggy.
I haven't booted it up in a year, but I was running Win98 SE and Gentoo Linux on it. For Linux, you will have to find a distro that targets the i586 arch, since the K6 isn't fully P6 compatible. Slackware worked a few years ago, not sure now. I compiled Gentoo on my main PC with an i586 target and ran that. Linux is the most modern OS you can run on this thing. You can even run brand new software, although not well. Win 98 SE was by far the best all around DOS and Windows gaming platform, I ran Windows 3.1 to play certain games as well.
I particularly liked the AT VIA MVP3 boards for SS7 builds, they are said to be a little slower than ALI chipsets. Hardware-wise I kept it pretty simple: Voodoo3 AGP, Sound Blaster 16 CT1750 for DOS sounds, Aureal Vortex 2 SQ2500 for Windows sounds and better DOS sound when supported and a Yamaha MIDI card. My motherboard has Chhsi capacitors, so I think a recap may be necessary at some point, we'll see, although they are in much better shape than my old 440BX boards.
I have the AT turbo button soldered to the bus jumper on the MS-5184 motherboard, my turbo switch would toggle between 66mhz and 100mhz FSB for old DOS games that misbehave at higher speeds. It worked but needed a reboot. This combined with the K6CLK software FSB multiplier tool gave me a CPU I could run anywhere from 133mhz to 550mhz without even opening the case, and the L2/motherboard cache can be disabled to run at 386/486 like speeds.
Overall 100% agree: go with 256MB for any SS7 builds. Anything that requires more will run terribly on the K6 CPU anyway.
1st I'd like to say great video PHIl .... now for the reason i commented .......at the end of 2003 i bought a 5600ultra & had nothing but problems running older games compared to my geforce 4 or voodoo3 believing the hype "oh your new card is too fast " i got my hands on both a 500 ~& a 5200 . but sadly had the same or WORSE problems {5200} causing the most due not being very good for ANY games that ran under windows for example . in the end opting to keep both my othe machines & muggled through untill i giot a 6800gt was seemed much better all round than the fx 5 series of cards . which completely refused to " AVP (alien v's predator " my the favourite game . .. I still have at least 1 card of each of the series from 1 point on but sadly notne of the geforce (1 - 4 range " . sold with the pc's i think . how ever i made sure i still have my pentium200 32mb ram & voodoo3 2000 sitting happily in the corner just to play AVP as even using "DGVOODOO2 or NGLIDE just doesn't give the same feel on modern machines .
Back when i had a k6-2 I had 3x pc133 256mb sticks
the motherboard was an Amptron 598-lmr, it was a baby at style with the very old keyboard connector. Had a SiS 530 chipset
Old but gold! Helped a lot ♥
2x (or even 3x) 64MB would have been interesting to see, if it looses performance compared to 1x 128MB
Nice video! A comparison between the Tualatin and Coppermine 1ghz models along with the amd athlon would be great.
LOL Nice, would you like some Tea with that order as well :P I do my best, but such comparisons are a ton of work and then you always get complaints about something not being fair :D But yea, Tualatin will for sure be tested!
Nah I'll never complain for any of your videos man. You 're doing magnificent work for the retro pc community, keep it up!
Awesome :D
Hy Phil!Thank you so much for making this video,i am looking forward to make a system like this and this helps a lot.
Thank you!
Hi Phil, great video as always. Could you also run similar RAM tests using a motherboard with VIA-based chipset? Is be curious to see how the VIA MVP3 (1mb cache to make it fair since it seems quite common) handles different memory configurations. Since you can't read all the comments I figured I'd repost. Cheers
Yea could be interesting.
at that time I also used a K6-III@500 with an ATI All In Wonder Rage128 AGP and later a AIW Radeon 9000 AGP, and NFS2 was so much faster.
Phil :) Thanks for your efforts :)
There is NO combo faster than: Win98, ALi 1.82, 128MB ram, Geforce 2 with driver 7.58, Geforce 3 with driver 7.76
Unfortunately GA5AX is a slow motherboard and little buggy. You need the change AGP ALi parameters in Regedit to get stability and bug free.
However there is a windows and ATI driver combo with a Radeon 9200SE that is the fastest, problem is I can not find/remeber the combo I used :( Will be awesome if you can try and help :)
It was unstable on the GA5AX and I did never get to it to find the problem.
On another note, there is only one ALi motherboard that can successfully cache more than 128MB of ram.
I will get back to this in about a months time and I will make a nice thread on Vogons :)
@schalk, might it be the P5A(-b) series? These boards tend to perform great in just about any circumstance. Plus, I have seen a pinmod for the CPU socket floating around somewhere on vogons. So if there were some instability issues with or without overclocking, you'd be able to up the voltage and stability would come back. :)
I'd love to hear from you and your combo's!
768 is an issue with your video drivers or memory timing. Performance with 512 probably suffers likewise.
The GeForce FX series of cards were total garbage - They were the Pentium 4 of video cards.
Hot, expensive, occasionally dysfunctional, and always slower than the competition.
They were terrible for D3D9 but they are OK cards for Win98SE retro gaming system with a very fast CPU. In that case the fast CPU makes up for the poor driver efficiency; you get fast and OK quality AF and AA, you get nglide support, it still supports all the archaic features so it's very compatible. The reason you'd use such an overpowered system for windows 98 SE is basically just when A3D support and the best quality you can get without breaking it. This is often what I want and not the "authenthic" experience. CRT, A3D and AF have become almost non-negotiable for most of my favourite 98-era games.
It would be nice to show the whole thing in a longer video podcast showing how you deal with the issues etc.
An outtakes or extras video!
It maybe some issue with the chipset or bios not being able to properly address the totally memory seen by the system including the video card. On one of my retro PCs it states in the manual that it supports a total of 4GB of ram which yes it does with the built in video, but as soon as I installed the 6800Ultra with 256MB of vram the whole system went into melt down with all kinds of weird and wonderful glitches, from not loading windows, hanging, taking 10-20 min to most, not accepting USB devices without causing a CMOS checksum error. Wasn't until I finally got a clue when it worked perfect again with the card removed, and then reinstalled I got a RAM error beep, repeated that like 10 times with the same results. Removed one stick of ram, any of them resulted the same and it was happy as larry. Fixed all the issues I spent weeks trying to work out.
So I found it could not address the total memory once above the 4GB limit. This of course might not be the issue and would vary from board to board but worth considering. You could try to run the tests with a card that had a much smaller vram.
Yes something like this is very likely the reason. It was a fun experiment, but I'm glad it's finished :D
I've never heard of a retro board that could address 4gb ram. I wouldn't be surprised if some obscure workstation supported such things though...
Yeah, back then(1998ish), Ali chipsets did not have the best of reputations. I remember going with ASUS board with intel HX chips.
I always got VXD drivers to install under Windows me without issues.Of course I use the MSDN version which is the best version of Windows Me.
To get the Win 98/ME utilize more than 512MB you had to tweak some windows register values.
I had Windows Me with 768MB of Ram back in 2002. My symptoms were identical to yours. Some programs simply wouldn't run, others ran appalling slow and the longer the session, the more it slowed to a crawl.
For example at the beginning of the session I would be able to play Medal of Honor Allied Assault perfectly for say an hour. Throughout the day the PC would be used for other lighter tasks such as surfing the Internet etc. By the time it got to 6 hours of uptime, I would be unable to load MOH again and something as simple as opening a menu and hitting a command would cause a stutter. I had desktop themes enabled so I could hear the sounds stuttering.
Turns out that Windows 9x has a bug where if you have 512MB or more Ram it starts slowing down and performance is extremely erratic. If you have more than 1GB then it simply won't boot...this was a well documented case on Technet back in those days.
NT or 2000 architecture will be fine up to 4GB but as you know, driver support for consumer hardware prior to XP era is extremely ropey. If you have a device which Microsoft considered popular, XP will have native drivers for it, as I found out with my 1989 Dot matrix printer. Otherwise you will be out of luck...
Thanks for another excellent retro gaming and platform review video!
Thanks!
I have 512 in my ALI chipset socket 7, I'll have to try it out!
I haven't toyed with an AMD processor so your issue may well be specific to
that, but on Intel chips the 768MB+ issues often come up primarily with AGP
based cards. But anyhow, I followed these settings I copied off some win98se
forum way back years ago:
"Vcache is limited internally to a maximum VCache size of 800 MB.
On computers with large amounts of RAM, the maximum cache size can
be large enough that Vcache consumes all of the addresses in the system
arena, leaving no virtual memory addresses available for other functions
such as opening an MS-DOS prompt.
This problem may occur more readily with Advanced Graphics Port (AGP) video
adapters because the AGP aperture is also mapped to addresses in the system
area of RAM.
To work around this problem, use one of the following methods:
1. MaxFileCache: Set it to 512 MB
(524,288 KB), or less, in the [Vcache] section of System.ini to reduce
the maximum amount of memory used by VCache (enter maxfilecache=524288)
[vcache]
maxfilecache=524288
2. System Configuration Utility: Use the SCU to limit Windows to using 768MB,
or 512MB, or less - or - enter MaxPhysPage=30000 in the [386Enh] section
of System.ini.
3. Physical memory: Limit the amount installed to 512 MB or less"
One day I will count every single "however" you said in all of your videos :P
That's great, however it will be quite tedious :D
It's more fun if you make it into a drinking game.
With how often he says it, you'd die in about 5 minutes :D
I guess so haha
I have a circa-2000 Compaq Presario 5000 Series desktop with a 900 MHz AMD Athlon (Socket A) which has 3x slots for PC-133, and interestingly enough paired to a GeForce 7800 GS (I know, complete overkill, but I have two of them :) ) I run into absolutely no issues with RAM capacity or timing or any of that with any OS newer than Windows 2000. However, any Windows 9x operating system (excluding 95; to sate my curiosity, I tried it, and it simply won't run) has massive issues when you put any more than 2x128 MB of RAM into the mix. Interesting to see you had similar results.
Detailed as always. great stuff!
Cheers!
I've been sleeping on Windows ME. I need to try it on my Athlon system.
The usb support is a must. May run games a tiny bit slower than the 98 but I had absolutely no issues with my P3 800/ Voodoo3 pc.
Tanasen yes it's far more convenient than trying to get the Win 98se USB drivers on a fresh install. I have to pull the drive, hook it up to an adapter, and manually copy it over.
I think, that I will end up with microATX mb chaintech 6via5t (acpi disabled in bios) with tualatin-s and 0,5 gb ram (one stick). Additionally there will be two soundcards. First - diamond mx300 (with x1 attached, 2048 original drivers, some registry tweaks to enable spdif output from mx_link connector), second audigy 2zs sb0350 (vxd drivers, pins 25 and 35 shorted to enable spdif_in, where connected mx300 spdif_out). Gpu is agp chaintech geforce 7600gs 256mb with zalman cooler (agp 1.0, tweaked 77.72 nvidia drivers to avoid shutdown problem). Dvd-rw nec, gotek floppy emulator. Os - 98se, dx 9.0c, nglide. Or I will end up with all my retro pc's when my first kid born. Depends on what will be first :)
nGlide even now in 2019 on a high-end PC still seems to stay around 60fps (vsync off) at 1600x1200 in Unreal. Better to use the D3D option. With that I get 160fps and the black levels aren't as crushed. Interesting. Still for games that have NO D3D or OpenGL option. nGlide is a savior.
My Pentium 2 computer has "only" 128MB of ram and runs windows 98SE, but I've never seen a period correct game lagging on that machine. System requirements for RAM were munch lower than 128MB so to me, 128MB is more than enough. I see many people adding a lot of RAM in their computers but a bit like you showed, it hurts more than it helps. The only part that seem to struggle here is the CPU. Games from back then were very CPU dependent. Games work, but some of them won't run at 60fps constantly (such as half life) but I think that it was okay for people back then. They are definitely playable, that's not the problem, it's just that it's not always comfortable to play them
Yes Half-Life is extremely demanding on the CPU. It seems popular to max out RAM, so I wanted to look into this and now I'm happy with "just" using 128 or 256 MB :D
PhilsComputerLab yeah it's popular, but like you saw, it's rarely helping performance. It's more likely reducing it X)
Using period correct amount of ram or just a bit higher is the best option back in 1998 I believe that the middle range of PCs had 64MB. 128MB was premium. Same for 1999. I think that for the year 2000 it switched to "128mb is middle range and 256MB is premium" and so on years after years
I'd say 256 MB would be pretty optimal for 98 SE. It runs everything that can be run on 98 anyway.
For stuff that needs more, XP is usually a good choice. Reasonable long update ccle (so it supprts a broad range of hardware) and actually usable on 512 MB although I'd strongly suggest installing more.
I plan on building a similar but lower spec system. I have an old IBM Aptiva w/ AMD K6-2 @450mhz, just seeking out a PCI graphics card for it now (no AGP)..
I feel that this amount of ram might make a big difference on more demanding games (for that time) like GTA3 or Morrowind or maybe NeverwinterNights.
I remember playing on my K7 500Mhz with a GeForce 2MX400 and had also maxed the ram, and it was the best PC I had !
Too bad I had the upgrades too late (Ninja Freespeed pro and K7 750@900)
I think opengl issues will go away if you use a more period correct videocard, I had a K6 333 rig with geforce 2 mx running win2k and it did not complain about anything. FX5500 PCI is a really unusual piece of hardware to stick into a computer like that.
Of course, but period correct PCI cards are not easy to find.
Any chance you'll ever get to checking if 0 vs up to 2mb L3 (motherboard) cache makes a difference? The k6-III supports it and I've always wondered but never got my hands on such a config :(
I'll also gladly bring whatever practical knowledge I've got of those days to get such a system tweaked to optimal performance; please check my 86box upload where I've tried to add something to your review right here :)
It makes very little difference. Especially the K6-III and III+ have large amount of L2 Cache which is much better than the motherboard Cache. Apart from minute differences in benchmarks, not worth getting an expensive motherboard with 2MB Cache.
@@philscomputerlab Thanks for responding, Phil! that's one thing I won't have to discover for myself
If you are running a k6-3 or better, you get more performance from increasing the FSB with L3 off than L3 will do. On the ALi V the L3 will only work at 100mhz. I have the same board running 768 of 133 rated SDRAM at 130 mhz fsb. It makes a pretty big difference, ~20%, with the CPU clocked the same.
Interesting result with the 512MB. I might have to dig out my ALI SS7 board and see if it has the same quirk. I do not have an FX5500 pci card though so that could be where the quirk lies. Can't say I've ever actually tried to run more than 512MB of ram on a SS7 board before, though I know 98SE will go above that without issue on Pentium II/III/PIV boards, so that leads me to think something is a bit strange with the chipset. The slow down would make sense if the bios is auto configuring the ram for slower timings @ 512MB for some reason... but strange result for whatever the reason behind it might be.
My opinion, 98se is nice when dealing with DOS support and EMM386 but me may need to emulate ems support, while I've used win 2k it's very close to xp, but win xp under config.nt emm=ram syntax can with some systems create a page frame address.
you won't believe me if I told you that a gateway solo 1150 is capable of setting a EMS page frame under 98se and emulated with win me but xp won't set that frame on the same laptop. So there's something wrong with win xp in this regard. It's best to have a multi boot pc with a partition for each operating system. OR just run Windows 8.1+ to virtual console each. I don't have a ssd large enough but this is what I'd have if dropping some cash on a ssd drive.
98se driver support is terrible
Is the CPU actually 550mhz or do you have it over clocked to 550mhz
Regarding the sound card drivers causing slowdown in ME/XP: I recall having this issue with various sound cards back in the day with certain games. I would usually turn off or lower hardware accelerated sound in dxdiag or Windows itself to fix it. It usually sped things back up and didn't cause any noticeable sound quality difference. Your mileage may vary depending on the sound card though. It was a pretty regular thing for me. Game running like crap? Try screwing with sound hardware acceleration. Don't ask me why certain games are weird like that. Who knows.
That's good advice. Software audio just works and can avoid glitches. It was often mentioned in readme files to improve compatibility.
I have the same motherboard (although different revision) and a K6-III+/400 and I had some trouble trying to run Screamer 2 with 640 MB of RAM (2x256 + 1x128). First of all, it didn't detect my Voodoo2 card, and if I tried to run it in software mode, after some minutes it crashes the computer. Maybe I'm gonna try it again with only 128 or 256 MB this weekend...
Anyway, thanks for doing this video!
That game can be a bit picky. In pure DOS don't use EMS memory, just XMS. I remember having some issue with that game.
PhilsComputerLab Huh, interesting. I remember trying with Win98 and DOS 6.22 but with EMS and XMS enabled, so...
Thank you very much!
Never use EMS memory in general unless something specifically requires it. XMS is significantly better. EMS is sort of like having a swap file on a RAM disk and is quite inefficient.
After watching your old video with the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, I'm curious about the nGlide performance of some other late Windows 98 video cards - maybe not with the K6-III+, but with a high-end P3, P4, or Athlon XP/64 rig. Would you be willing to do a comparison with something from the GeForce 6600/6800 and Radeon 9700/9800 families? I also ask partly because the price of FX 5950 cards seems to be rising, and while cheaper than a Voodoo 5, it's no longer the cheap, undesirable card that it once was.
Neat, i want to see comparison between the Tualatin and Coppermine 1ghz models.
I'm interested
on win9x and ME most software and parts of the operating system are not meant to handle over 512MB of RAM and if the programmers have not implemented a rutine on what to do if more is available it will crash or act strangely. on w2k and up that is handled automatically.
this is true when they came out and near there EOL not many people where runing more then 256mg i did not even get 512mg till i was well in to windows xp
Jur El Win98SE can work with 1GB RAM tho it wont really know how to handle it and is more likely to crash.
Windows 9x only supports up to 1GB of RAM officially, this is because of some small bugs that were overlooked at the time since nobody would have payed that much for something so useless.
Stability therefor suffers with 1GB and up, and in this case of 768 crashing and 512 being slow, it could also be attributed to chipset problems.
Don't make things up.
That NFS 2 SE framrate is catastrophic on those K6-III CPUs
Does anyone know the optimal graphics card for AMD K6-3+ on VIA chipset? I have a Radeon 9700 pro paired to K63+ 550. This is over kill and perhaps I would see better optimised performance with something more modest. I’m unable to find an affordable 3dfx of course. What is the most sensible alternative graphics card to use for this setup whilst benefiting from good visual effects. I have a number of Radeons, 7500, 8500, other 9 series. PCI 7000. Nvidia 5200, 5500, 6200. If anyone has an informed suggestion that would be great.
Wonder how the VIA MVP3 chipset handles RAM. I have two Super Socket 7 boards with this chipset, but I'm not sure which RAM setup to use on them.
Ace9921 I can't wait to try it out, but got to do other projects first.
you can mix edo and sdram on it, but eh.
the only thing I can say is that it doesnt like to use a 512mb stick
I have an IBM PC350 that will accept both SIMMs (Bank 1 & 2) and a DIMM (Bank 0).
A maximum of 384MB through it - and it's got a COAST slot which will accept up to 2MB of L2 cache (detect but not use in this case. Only 512KB can be used.)
you mentioned that you tried the nglide wrapper for 2000/xp, but did you try the 3dfx 3500 card? Also if you did, what driver were you using? I prefer the GOLD driver made by users since the XP driver is next to garbage for the card on that OS.
Damn living in a piddly apartment (Sydney for ya), I would LOVE to get into retro hardware but I simply don't have the space. First world problems though I guess...
I don't know how much memory is on the graphics cards you are using but the total memory supported on a 32 bit O/S includes both the RAM and the VRAM which could possibly explain some results but it is a bit of a guess.
when you talk about AGP compatibility issues are you talking about voltage and compatibility with cards and AGP slots or games that have issues with AGP cards or rather using the AGP features of the slot. I know there are various incompatibilities with games due to different video chips but I'm not sure I've come across a DOS game that wouldn't work solely because the card was using an AGP slot. can you give any examples of games that have issues when using an AGP card? is this a DOS only issue?
0blivi0n100 Under Windows. I don't remember ever having issues in DOS.
*KernelEx* is very interesting for running modern apps on win98 :)
Windows Me has problems with memory higher than 512MB. I tried installing winme with a fullGB and it will BSOD (At least in an LGA1155 machine).
I've been playing with my old K6VB3+ just for fun. System specs: K6-2+ 450 @550 (2.1 volts) Thermalright AX-7 heatsink, 768 megabytes of SDR, 64 meg Radeon 9000 AGP card, SIL3512 PCI SATA card with a 500 gigabyte drive with 64 megs of cache, Yamaha PCI soundcard, and Windows XP. I've found that you cannot load anything but the default Windows video card driver. Even loading the driver from Windows Update results in 0x000008e blue screens. There might be an old driver out on the web somewhere that doesn't cause this, but the system works fine with the default driver, so I've learned to leave well enough alone. My 3D Mark 2000 score is around 1,800 and the 2001 score is around 2,450.
Because the AGP implementation is buggy on most Super Socket 7 boards, a PCI video card can often be used to avoid this. Or a Voodoo card, as they are basically PCI cards with an AGP slot :)
I did find an old ATI driver that loaded and worked fine on OldVersion.com (it dated from 2005), but it actually lowered the 3D Mark 2000 score by 200 points! So I rolled back to the default Windows driver.
Even a PCI card doesn't avoid all of the issues. My Asus TXP4 system is running a K6-III+ @500 MHz, 256 megs of RAM, a 64 meg PCI MX420 and a Promise card with a 500 gig SATA drive on it. I just installed Windows 2000 on it, and the legacy 93.71 driver you can get from Nvidia installs okay, and will allow me to set the resolution to 1440x900 (proper for the monitor I have it attached to), but neither 3DMark 2000 or 2001 will run. Older drivers won't allow me to set the resolution properly, but 45.23 runs 3DMark 2000 with no issues (2001 skips the Nature test with this driver). The 61.77 allows me to set the resolution properly, but you get the NV_4DISP blue screen.
I don't recommend using 2000 at all, I always have issues with this OS. In general you're mixing new with old, so there are bound to be issues :) Windows 98 should work well for you.
I found the magic number: 56.72! I found a site that was hosting them, they allow the proper resolution, and 3D Mark 2001. is running well. I had Windows XP on this machine, and 2000 is a little more responsive. I think it works better with the low amount of RAM (TX chipset maximum is 256 megabytes).
if you use more than 256mb ram, Chipset disabled L2 cache. This is the razon of decreased performance . Optimum size in K6 is 256 RAM.
With the K6-III+ the motherboard cache is Level 3 Cache, the CPU has it's own 256 KB of super fast Level 2 Cache. This is what makes this processor so cool :)
Exactly, with more than 256mb ram, the "internal L2" cpu cache is disable, an only use the external motherboard slow cache. I don't remember , but some years ago see an complete table of specifications ALi Chipset supported cacheable RAM, and remark the issue with more than 256mb.
No, I got to disagree. The chipset doesn't control the state of the CPU Cache. But what the motherboard Cache is concerned, the cachable amount is 128 MB. You can clearly see this if you use a regular K6-2 for example.
By the way Phil what years of retro hardware do you cover in your reviews?
Do you have reviews of 1996 and 1995 graphics cards for example or anything earlier.
I do all sorts of projects. Best to check out my playlists or videos or run a search.
I think the system you have may only cache up to the first 512mb and I suspect because your surpassing this limitation may have something to do with the issues your having. Normally I would only expect a performance hit when addressing uncached memory space though so don't really know why your getting games refusing to run. May be wrong though as its a very long time since I have used this sort of kit.
So the easiest is windows 98 + installing the generic usb storage drivers for usb support.
would be interesting too see if 3x128 mb would be faster as its a smaller size per slot.
Add to this the internal organization of the sticks (ranks & banks) and we have alot of tests to run.
Just building my retro Dream Pc. I Have a GA-5AA , K6-3+ 400 , 2x Kingston 256mb ram, S3 Trio AGP and 2 Voodoo 2 12 mb SLI. Im planning to run the K6 on 2V , 100mhz fsb and a 4x Multiplikator. Can i run it on a higher Multiplikator without worries ?
Yes that shouldn't be a problem. Up to 6x is supported.
Thanks for the fast response. I love your Videos Mate! Just subscribed to your Channel, i was surprised that there are still people out there showing love for the old Hardware !
I had an AMD K6-2 with a Voodoo 2 back in the day, I didn't knew much about computers so when my mom bought a new PC I let her give away my old K6-2... worst mistake ever made in my life.
But can it run windows10 ?
I wonder what results you would see if you reproduced all the same tests with a less overkill card. Maybe a more period correct Geforce 2 MX or a Radeon and see if you get the same results with stability issuees with additional RAM.
fx5500 isnt that overkill it has almost the same performance as a voodoo 3...
Overkill is a radeon 7200
Voodoo3 was competition to the TNT2. The TNT2 was generally faster except it doesn't have Glide, which is why many people stuck with the Voodoo3. The FX5500 is 5 GPU generations newer. As far as FPS at lower resolutions you are correct. But, the FX5500 with 16 times the memory of the Voodoo3 can handle but higher resolutions, but that RAM might be robbing the ability to run 768MB of system ram because the OS has to map both system memory and video memory. that is what I mean by overkill. The GPU is 5 generations newer and as such introduces issues that were not issues we would have run into at the time.
...And actually a Radeon 7200 would be a lot more period accurate as it's only 1 generation newer then the Voodoo3.
I agree, but the radeon 7200 + super socket 7 is a huge no combo.
I had tested on a Pentium mmx, with a radeon 7200 quake 2 would only get at max 25fps while a voodoo 3 reached more than 40fps just fine.
His fps score with quake 2 is too similar compared to my score with a k6-3+ and a voodoo 3
Of course, but I wanted to use a PCI card to avoid the AGP bugs. These FX 5500 cards are readily available on eBay, whereas older PCI cards are really hard to find and expensive.
9x/ME "randomly" have problems with more than 512mb of RAM. probably related to your 3dmark issues.
Which version of NGlide did you use for win98?
hmmm i am running 768mg under windows 98se running good... 1 512mg and 1 256mg stick runing the same ALI chipset... varey odd run the 3dfx card and see if you get the same glitches
Just curious, why do you persist with socket 7 and this motherboard? Why not a Slot 1 system? Is there something that Socket 7 systems do better?
rootbeer666 There are over 400 Videos. I'm not persisting with anything.
I still don't understand the value of a system like this. What purpose does it serve better than another system? Your reply isn't encouraging the belief that the video was made with purpose.
From your video, as well as your comments I expected a statement such as "this Socket 7 K6 is great because...", or "this Socket 7 K6 is better than that because...", or "this Socket 7 K6 does this better than that..."
What makes this hardware combination useful, interesting or important?
I think this channel isn't for you.
Can you try the same test with the Intel SE440BX-2 or other motherboard with intel cpu?
Not necessary as the chipset doesn't have cache limitations. The CPU has the Cache integrated and can access the entire memory.
Your issues with Windows 2000 and Opengl must be the video card. I've run OpenGL games under Win2k with both a Voodoo3 and a Geforce4 without any problems.
Not sure why everyone practices the modern RAM mantra of "more is better" with these older OS's. You'd be hard-pressed to find 512MB on a server back then... and should be able to do anything in Windows 98/Me you ever want with 256MB.
I know right? There is a real lack of reviews from back in the day with maxed out memory, likely because of the cost I guess? I just wanted to see what happens as I tend to just go with 128 and 256.
I think (hope) you've put the question to bed! Back in the day, when Win98 was current and I supported it everyday, we experienced that that more RAM you gave it, the more it liked to "choke" on it.
Is the slowdown with 768 MB maybe caused due to the cachable area of the mainboard?
With a standard processor, yes, the cachable area is just 128 MB. However the K6-III+ has built-in L2 Cache which doesn't have this limitation. You can disable the motherboard BIOS actually, and only lose minimal performance as the CPU Cache handles it all.
Interesting. Have you tried to crosscheck with a regular K6-2?
LOL Well, yes, this is kinda what I do :D
I use a 3rd party USB mass storage driver package for transferring stuff via USB sticks on Win 98SE computers see www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/win98se-usb-mass-storage-drivers.php
Which version supports Windows 98?
Why not Windows 7? The FX series even had WDDM drivers for Vista and newer.
I doubt Windows 7 would run on a sub 500 MHz chip without any form of SSE instructions. Besides that, ,ever tried running it with 768 MB or less of RAM?
Could be a fun experiment :D
I'm pretty sure SSE wasn't a requirement for Windows 7, I once ran it on a K6-2 450, 512MB and a GeForce 6200. It ran well enough with fancy effects like Aero disabled.
I can confirm that Win7 does work on a pentium 1 233mhz with 256mb of RAM, but it's faster and more fun to watch paint dry than to load win7
On one hand, it seems like this could be amusing. But really.. a lot of us are interested in having retro PCs with 98SE because we don't feel like constantly having to put in a bunch of effort to get old games working on Vista/7/8.x/10 (or even, in many cases, XP). It makes little sense to seriously try getting 7 running. But just for amusement without making it into any sort of long-term project could be fine.
hmm i got nfs 2 woking good on win98se and turok 2. Unreal on mid settings with 800x600. Try windows 98 second edition
I'm no expert and I may be wrong, I recently watched a video on memory timings and that paying attention to it may be crucial (no pun intended) to how these benchmarks turn out. Maybe that's it? Like I said, I'm no expert so I may be wrong. You might just be using a mishmash of sticks with different timings?
I used Cruial / Micron PC133 CL2 sticks for all tests. I set the fastest timings in the BIOS as well :)
CL2, those where the days. Just imagine we had such tight timings on modern RAM
Hmm... What's the bus speed of the motherboard? 133 MHz? Maybe less? It's been a long time since I've put together a pre-64 bit computer (the last computer I built was based on an AMD Athlon 3200+ CPU on a flagship 32 bit Asus motherboard, maybe one of the last made) so my knowledge is hazy at this point.
+CatSay
We do. Two cycles at 100 MHz is twenty cycles at 1000 MHz. It's just that clock speeds have increased more than latency has decreased, so the _ratio_ looks worse. Today's latency is still far better than it was back then.
ᴇᴅɪᴛ: 100 MHz = 10ns per cycle. Two cycles = 20ns of latency.
1600 MHz (as in my less than cutting edge DDR3 desktop) = 0.625ns per cycle. Nine cycles (my CAS latency) = 5.625ns of latency. That's 3.56x the speed, or 256% faster.
Latency will *never* improve at the same rate as local clock, because the lowest latency of a bus is determined by its size. Light moves at 1 foot per nanosecond (close enough) and electrical signals at about 70% of this, so if RAM is 4 inches from the CPU (in trace length, not a direct visual line), the minimum possible latency will be about 1 nanosecond round-trip. There is no way to improve on this except to decrease the distance between them. Fortunately, the effects of latency on system performance can be mitigated by a large cache.
Yeah. DDR-400 CL2, DDR2-800 CL4, DDR3-1600 CL8 and DDR4-3200 CL16 all have the same real latencies but much higher bandwith.
I thought ME supported officially 512mb, for me ME was unstable with 128mb back in the day however was with anti virus
Yea I read this on a MS KB article a while ago.
Just a general question but I was wondering: have you ever tried using any of Omega's drivers?
I heard of them but don't have a reason to use them over the catalyst drivers. The website is also down, so that doesn't help.
A friend of mine was able to find a few of them, but I'm certain it isn't all of them. There's only one on this site that works for Win98, while the rest are for Win2k/XP.
I recommend at least 700 or 800MHz for Windows XP.... So I'd say a K6-III is best suited for Windows 98, Windows 2000, or even WinFLP.
Well XP Vanilla actually ran just fine. If it wasn't for the issues with the GPU, it wold have been a nice option.
Performance isn't going to last long in my belief. 550 isn't that much. Well, unless you optimize it for speed with tweaks. (Such as Nlite) 128 is still way too little ram for XP. In my experiences, XP vanilla, (No service packs) with 192MB ram will be skipping with background music playback during the installation of certain games loaded from a CD-ROM. You definitely need at least 256 for any XP system.
i still think its funny that he put a GPU that is like 4 years newer than the rest of the hardware in the system.
Windows ME. Yeah We don't go there anymore.
That's the Ravenholm of Operating Systems.
It was actually pretty okay-ish. But why use it of 98 SE runs everything aswell (with the lighter VXD drivers) and for everything that needs more horsepower (think of 1 GHz and up, 512 MB RAM and up) we have XP.
Why use the PCI over the AGP ???
Because the chipsets available for these Super Socket 7 CPUs have flakey / unstable AGP ports / implementation. With PCI everything is rock solid. That's why people like to use AGP Voodoo 3, because it's basically a PCI card, doesn't use any of the AGP "features."
@@philscomputerlab assuming the AGP was stable wold it not be faster in performance.
@4Free But it's not 😅
What makes them so unstable.
ok man. time to subcribe for me. keep make videos. salute
dose this board take the agp voodoo 3 2500
Yes absolutely!
PhilsComputerLab fantastic were did you get most of your componants are they exspensive? and your copy of win98s? any links so I cud download the operating system?
go to winworldpc to download operating systems and burn to disk
The 3dfx cards in specific are usually OK because they don't really use AGP-specific features - basically using them as a higher bandwidth PCI bus (AGP is heavily based on PCI with some tweaks for increased data rate and some additional features). Phil points this out in several of his other videos that focus more on Voodoo cards. Of all AGP cards available, when it comes to SS7, 3dfx are some of the most likely cards (if not the most likely cards) to work properly.
dansolodan so the board he users in this video and the previous video should work with my voodoo 3 because really its a pci in disguise?
Try Windows 7
man. why dont get agp graphic?
AGP is not that stable on Super Socket 7 boards.
that new for my. give me more info please
Run a search on my videos "Super Socket 7". I've done a lot of videos.
This is true, I am also playing around with different super socket 7 boards and the AGP graphics cards or maybe the drivers(?) always give me a hard time. Finding the right OS/driver/directx/chipset driver combination for SS7 always is an extremly discouraging task. Maybe this is because of the fact SS7 has to cover several generations of CPUs (P54C, P55C, K5/K6, Cyrix M, WinChip, ...) and Socket 7 then had already a long lifespan and AGP was something more of a "next generation" thing then, which was tried to be integrated in the already aged chipset technology of the then already vanishing Socket 7 era. As I understand AMD tried to squeeze out the Socket 7 platform at that time, as they had no choice, because Athlon still needed to be finished. But: These videos really help and are fun to watch! Finally, it is interesting seeing someone actually having the same troubles and your findings are real time savers for me, so thank you Phil!
Ever considered a Windows 95 build ? :)
Yea I think I actually did a vid on windows 95, but I saw very little benefits compared to windows 98 se. Maybe with very slow machines 95 runs a bit better, but not if you have a halfway decent CPU and enough RAM.
SOUNDCARDAAGAIN
As someone who was actually there when these machines were hot, I just don't see the appeal in trying to game on them unless the games simply cannot be coaxed into running on modern hardware. Back then it was about getting the most you could out of what you had. In that same spirit, we would want to get the most out of what we have _now,_ rather than what we were stuck with back then.
Now if a game simply won't run on my current hardware, and I really wanted to run that game, then I could see the point.
Newer stuff doesn't have that same retro or vintage 'feel'
"Back then it was about getting the most you could out of what you had."
This is part of that experience (lol).
I'm contemplating using a socket a athlon mainboard with ISA and a mobile cpu for my oldtimer 'feels'
Part of it is having a computer that you could never have back in the day. I sure as hell couldn't afford something like a pentium 2 or 3 with voodoo 2 sli back then but now I have that thing in my room and it's totally radical to play some old games on it. Helps that I have period correct mouse/kb/monitor.
+Tomas Degutis
I can understand enjoying something because you could not have it when it was new and expensive, but I couldn't have a Phenom II x6 in 2000 either (and actually did have a K6-2, which only overclocked to 600 for me). The fact that it was unobtainable because it didn't yet exist is irrelevant, because I would have wanted it if it had, it would have been equally out of reach, and it would have torn through games of the day just as it can right now.
If I want the K6-2/3 level experience back, all I have to do is fire up my Aspire One from 2009. I don't do that because it adds no value to the proposition as far as I am concerned. I don't even power it for updates but once or twice a year now, and that only out of optimism that someone will want to buy it.
Imagine you saw people using high-quality kitchen cutlery, while you were limited to thrift store cast-offs. You sharpen them as best you are able, but the people with the superior blades still can do much more than you. Then one day you get a ceramic knife and blow right past them. Would you want "the stainless experience" if your ceramic blade can do everything a stainless blade does, and better? You might, but I wouldn't. I'd rather wield the superior blade for all it's worth.
+Zark Eh
As far as I'm concerned, the "retro feel" lies in the software, not the hardware. The only "feel" inherent to old hardware is "slow", and that's a limiting factor rather than a positive one. I know you likely disagree, but I think emulation and virtual machines are awesome. The "retro" value is wrapped up in the software, not the hardware it runs on.
There are aspects of the old hardware that emulators don't bother with, such as the gaps between scan lines for a game at 320x200. You know what? I was there, we knew it sucked even then, and I much prefer playing on a line-doubled or tripled LCD screen with no gaps. I think the people who wrote the games would think they are improved as well.
Using an ISA sound card lowers the performance of the CPU by 5-10%. It's much better to use a PCI sound card for Windows.
Prove it :)
PhilsComputerLab The performance drop is most noticeble on slow CPU's, CPU intensive games (Unreal engine) and in lower resolutions. On fast CPU's (Pentium 3/Athlon) the performance drop when using an ISA sound card is small but when using a slow CPU like the Celeron, K6 2/3, 66 fsb Pentium's the performance drop is 5-10%. I read about this subject on the internet and afterwards I made many tests on my retro pc. On this K6 3 550 mhz the performace will increase by 5-10% when using an PCI sound card instead of a ISA one, especially in CPU intensive games like the unreal engine games and in lower resolutions. In Quake 3 engine games and higher resolutions the difference is much smaller.
fascinating!
I've done a nice video this topic with some interesting results: th-cam.com/video/TC01uiyuJxI/w-d-xo.html
For games, that run well on Socket 7, it's really a non issue and ISA cards are very fast. PCI cards you got to watch the driver, especially WDM are slower.
In GLQuake for example the AWE64 is the fastest card I tested, faster than any PCI card I have.
PhilsComputerLab I understand, maybe the ISA card I have is just slower. So it depends on the card not on the slot. :)
>Running Unreal Engine 1 with nGlide
lol