Hey guys,

I recently purchased a really retro setup, to play 3DFX games in win2k or win98se.

I found an , with an AMD-K6-2+ 475Mhz, which ofcourse I overclocked to 550Mhz :)

The rig is currently setup with this:

MOBO Asus P5A
CPU AMD-K6-2+ @ 550Mhz
RAM384MB PC133
GPUKyro II 64MB
3DFXDiamond Monster 3DII 12MB SLI
HDDMaxtor 80GB ATA133
DVDLG 16x dvd-rom

Will be making a dual boot, 98SE and win2k, see what is better gaming :)
For fun I will sometimes put in a Voodoo3, or banshee.

K6-2+ / Kyro II: Bad match for an all-around retro rig, IMHO. No HW T&L and weak SW T&L, but it's OK for 3dfx games.

that's the only kinda games I'll be playing on this rig....just for nostalgic reasons. :)
But I can always swap out the Kyro II for a Rage Fury MAXX.

I don't have too many agp 2x cards, let alone 1x.

batracio wrote on 12.05.12 at 19:02:55:

K6-2+ / Kyro II: Bad match for an all-around retro rig, IMHO. No HW T&L and weak SW T&L, but it's OK for 3dfx games.

Dunno bout kyro, but K6-2(3) is awesome for retro stuff. Windows 98 literally flies with it. Disable cache and u get 486 DX40. Whats more retro than that? :-) Also, practically all 3dfx games will work on it too, even if not @ best possible framerates.

hardware TnL is too new to be considered Retro....
:)

I game my retro rig an upgrade, videocard is now V5 5500 AGP.
A bit overkill for this rig, but hey......I paid 17 euros for the card, so a steal in my opinion.

I reverted back to the voodoo 2 SLI on this setup, the V5 was overkill.

Since I still had some hardware, just not the mobo, I got a really cheap asus A7v333-x for the 5500AGP.
Combined with a 2500+ barton and 1GB DDR400LL 2-2-2-5, this will be a nice rig for the 5500AGP.

well don't I feel stupid :)

The A7V333-x has an agp Pro slot which can only deliver 1.5V and the notch is also on the wrong side for agp 2x :(

But I found someone on tweakers who's parting with their old setup for the shipping costs, so.....new rig is as follows:

Asus A7M266-D
2 x Athlon MP2000+
2 x 1GB PC2100
3DFX Voodoo5 5500
WD 120GB ATA100/133
Diamond MonsterSound MX300

Will be making it a dualboot, as it will also serve as a backup server in my little domain, so if I decide to play a game on it, it will not be a problem.

Nice setup for shipping costs  :)

I don't actually get that whole system, the parts I get for shipping costs, are the motherboard, cpu's, coolers and ram.
but still nice :)

Absolutely ! Lovely system !

I'm planning to upgrade mine to a more extreme level by adding a second 400GB IDE hard drive to ^put both of them in RAID, and adding IDE SSD's.

I also have a wicked set of Geil DDR550 modules (2x 512MB) that I tend to put to use by switching the XP3200 to the very overclockable Barton 2500 and see how far I can stretch it.

yeah, I have some DDR550 as well, from GSkill, with the famous Samsung TCCD chips on them.
maybe if 1GB will be enough I will use them, but seems like a bit of a waste on this mobo, since officially it only supports 266Mhz fsb (can overclock to 333Mhz if cooled sufficiently)

I have 2 XP2500+ barton's, I'll try and make MP's outta them and unlock the multipliers.

ultima wrote on 29.06.12 at 11:45:25:

yeah, I have some DDR550 as well, from GSkill, with the famous Samsung TCCD chips on them. maybe if 1GB will be enough I will use them, but seems like a bit of a waste on this mobo, since officially it only supports 266Mhz fsb (can overclock to 333Mhz if cooled sufficiently) I have 2 XP2500+ barton's, I'll try and make MP's outta them and unlock the multipliers.

Me I'm in the search of a good Epox board with all the features such as RAID etc. Hoping to get an high overclock ... But that's for the future for now, have been buying too much retro stuff lately  :D

Not tried overclocking my epox, cant be asked to get my 2500 barton out of my msi board and the 2700 is underclocked on standard settings at the moment. Nice board though.

I received the package today, and took the coolers off, they are not MP2000+'s, they are modded XP's :)

But I think I will be getting XP2400+'s somewhere, with T-bred B core, unlock those and use them :)
I did some reading up and this board seems to be stable in most cases up to 150Mhz fsb.

Sweet.......I found an XP-M3000+ with 266Mhz fsb.

Will put that in there and try and find a 2nd one, mod them to MP's and I will have dual MP3000+ barton cores :)

I received the 3000+ today, 2.2Ghz with 512KB cache, now to find another :)

You're lucky, i only have the XP2600+ with 266MHz fsb, where did you find it ?

I found mine on tweakers.net, a dutch site.

But if you look on ebay for code AXMA3000FKT4C you'll see a few pop up, though most are in the US

I haven't built in the MP3000 yet, cause I haven't modded it yet AND I haven't found a 2nd one  yet :(

I did however, for fun, test the cpu on my Abit NF7-S nForce2 board and was pleasantly suprised that the cpu runs stable @ 2.6Ghz with only 1.725V Vcore, that is 0.05V higher then default, and it ran that on a 400Mhz fsb

Only downside is I can't put my 5500 in that rig cause of the wrong agp voltage :(

I haven't been able to find a 2nd XP-M3000+ for a normal price, so I'll go and slap 2 2500+ bartons in there.

In the mean time, I bought a really cheap watercooling case, Koolance for socket A, I put my XP-M3000+ on my NF7-S board to test and she runs 2500Mhz at the moment @ 1.7V vcore

:o Wicked !

you she runs great, will be doing a few benchmarks, altho I'm bummed I can't put my 5500 in this rig, that would be awesome :)

Runs with a Radeon 8500 and Voodoo2 12MB SLI.

I think I will install the 3000+ on the A7M266-D anyway and see how far she'll go on that board, and when I ever do find a 2nd one, I'll add it.

Multiplier is unlocked on the 3000+ up to 19x I think where default is 16 if I'm not mistaken.

To solve that I bought me a nice mint, boxed, V5 PCI  8-)

I can put that even in my Core i7 system as I was smart enough to find me a motherboard with good old PCI slots on it still  ;)

Haven't done that yet though, been working on other things.

I'd love to have a PCI 5500, but the only ones I've been able to find are too expensive.

Cheapest I've been able to find is like 50 euros and I don't wanna pay that for it. I know it's worth it, but still.....:)

I found this 5500AGP for 17 euros, so....:D

I paid quite a bit more for it, but it was worth every penny ! I wonder what she'll do in my Core i7 rig ...

probably overheat. LOL

I on the other hand am not so lucky......I had the cpu running at 2.5Ghz and went for a dogwalk. when I came back, the machine was off and I felt wetness at the bottom of the case.  >:(
And sure enough, it wouldn't start, not even out of the case and with aircooler.

Lucky for me I also have an Epox 8RDA+ nForce2 board, so I put the cpu and ram on there and lucky for me she runs again, so it seems only the mainboard is screwed. :(

The board I don't mind so much but I need to know where the leak is so I can fix it.

Just feed power to the pump only and let it run for half an hour or so. I'm sure you'll see it ;)

My Core i7 is also watercooled (Highflow.nl). The setup now is about 2 years old, never had a leak, never needed maintenance

.... yet

I will, thanks for the tip.

In the mean time, I will see how far I can get her on air :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DU5Zi69QPQs

it's an empty screen Geri, something went wrong??

Actually, it doesn't display AT ALL in my browsers (Firefox & I.E) :-/

@Geri - what are we supposed to be seeing in your post? :-?

This is apparently what Geri wants you to see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU5Zi69QPQs

that looks very cool imo, nice to see the pretty big difference between 3DFX and the other competitors at that time.

Very good comparison video! 8-)
(remember though folks - all these comaprison vids are not "apples for apples". To do that you'd have to capture direct from the frame buffer of each card)

Here's another two good ones:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ev6HmOvvVQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycGwXYmwNKg

paulpsomiadis wrote on 16.11.12 at 20:56:46:

Very good comparison video! 8-) (remember though folks - all these comaprison vids are not "apples for apples". To do that you'd have to capture direct from the frame buffer of each card)

I am the one who made the comparison video of POD. Just wanted to add that the game is run on actual hardware and captured through the VGA signal. It's the closest way to the real thing you can get at the current moment. Unfortunately Youtube bitrates aren't the best even in HD and it only runs at 30fps. All my videos are captured & rendered in 60.000kb/sec and in 60fps, so if Youtube upgrades their player in the future it will be easy to up the quality.

My latest video is of Mechwarrior 2. PowerVR beating 3DFX here though  ;) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWzWdwj9NvU&feature=g-high-u

Hmph...figures it's Youtube and their dodgey video player that borks your captures... ::)

well, after quite some time I fired up my a7m266-d rig again, but for some reason it has never been stable with the XP-M3000+

when I looked at cpu support, the XP-M line is nowhere to be found and the board identifies it as an athlon at a certain Ghz.

So I went to look again and found a set of MP2400+, based on T-bred B core, real MP's, not modded XP's and the cost me 17 euros incl shipping.
Will probably have them before the weekend and slap on a fan on the northbridge cooler and overclock them a bit.

the board has no support for Barton cores either, I guess I was looking at the wrong manual all the time :(

According to asus website, this board support the Athlon MP2800 which is based on a barton core with the latest beta bios

I also found a website where somebody tweak the bios to support the XP-M 3000+ : maybe, it'll works for you !
http://www.allquests.com/question/1161895/ASUS-A7M266-D-Unofficial-BIOS-Update-Rev-1011.html

thanks a million for that link Narmounet, I will give this a try this weekend, and if it doesn't work, I can still use the MP2400+'s

will keep you posted.

haven't flashed the bios yet, but system is purring away nicely with 2 MP2400+'s @ 2200Mhz

current bios is 1010 btw

well I finally found a 2nd XP-M3000+.........I'm so happy :)

And I got my hands on a 5500 MAC edition, with near mint box, tho I could care less about the box :)

Can't wait to get it up and running :)

I will be flashing my 5500 MAC card tonight to PC edition, put it on a 66Mhz pci slot and let her rip through 3DMark2000.

I feel as if my 3DFX rig has finally reached it's final stage, specs being:

Asus A7M266-D
Dual Athlon XP-M 3000+ @ 2.2Ghz
2 x 1GB PC2100 2-2-2-5-1T
3DFX Voodoo5 5500 PCI MAC edition flashed to pc
WD 120GB ATA100/133
Diamond MonsterSound MX300
Windows 98SE / Windows2000 SP4

This is how I will keep it, no further upgrades needed / possible aside from an SSD perhaps or another dual XP board that supports higher fsb/ram speeds

**update**

I will receive the other 3000+ coming thursday or friday

I flashed my 5500 yesterday, 1st try it hung in the middle of the flashing process, but 2nd round it was done in a jiffy.
powered down, took out my G550 and set the bios to PCI display 1st, works like a charm.

Gonna do a fresh install of windows today, have to do 98SE again as well, so.....

what drivers would be best for a 5500 MAC flashed to pc?? Amigamerlin? gonna be using 98SE/2000Pro, no XP

I use the last official 3dfx drivers, and have no problems !

do those have dvi support for the 5500 for pc?

Never mind, I installed it and works like a charm.

In 3dfx tools I can enable digital display, which works like a charm as well.

Played FF7, carmageddon 1+2 and UT99 and then called it a night, only strange thing was, that with FF7, the movies were flipped upside down, but that was with install from original discs and win2k patch.

I removed it and installed Ultima edition and that works just fine.

Seems like I've been doing something wrong, ff7 is hanging up on me in win2k, even the Ultima edition.

When starting from scratch with win2k with sp4,  what drivers are best to use with voodoo5 5500 mac edition??

Amigamerlin or official 3dfx and which of the 2 with what dx version??

Btw, finally getting the 2nd xp-m 3000+ today, so will have those running dual if all goes well

and here's apicture of my 2 beauties before modding them:

http://abload.de/thumb/img_20130725_211722e7ky3.jpg

I flashed the bios with the latest one that Narmounet posted about, running just fine, have to set the multiplier tho :), srunning 800Mhz now

And gonne test the cpu's speeds first, will be doing the pin mod and if they both can run 2600Mhz, that's better then 2200 ofcourse.

Will be testing on an nforce2 board, so no limits there in regards to fsb or multiplier

both cpu's ran just fine @ 2500Mhz with 1.7V vcore, so I'll be doing the pintrick on that.

will be doing with wires 1st to see if they'll run, if so, I'll make it permanent.

my god this is so friggin annoying :(

I used the wires from a fan controller cable, those tiny things that are like hairs, putting little U's in the sockets is undoable, they jump out as soon as I put em in.
For wiring on the pins themselves they are ideal, bendy enough, if it weren't for the fact that as soon as I try to get it around 2 pins more then once, it jumps off again :(

Anyone have a suggestion about how this can be done relatively easy?

Only upside so far is that both XP-M's are recognised by the A7M266-D as XP's being MP capable :) they run 800Mhz right now, so I really need to get the pinmod done, as I do not have options for setting multipliers, in bios or with switches.

ultima wrote on 20.08.13 at 10:55:06:

my god this is so friggin annoying :( I used the wires from a fan controller cable, those tiny things that are like hairs, putting little U's in the sockets is undoable, they jump out as soon as I put em in. For wiring on the pins themselves they are ideal, bendy enough, if it weren't for the fact that as soon as I try to get it around 2 pins more then once, it jumps off again :( Anyone have a suggestion about how this can be done relatively easy? Only upside so far is that both XP-M's are recognised by the A7M266-D as XP's being MP capable :) they run 800Mhz right now, so I really need to get the pinmod done, as I do not have options for setting multipliers, in bios or with switches.

You should try the more delicate option of modifying the bridges on the top of the CPU. To know which ones you need see the link bellow which explains them in detail with pictures:
http://fab51.com/cpu/barton/athlon-e23.html

And how to make an MP cpu out of you XP-M see here some
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=393&pg=3

I tried this some time ago and one CPU worked fine as an MP with fixed multi while the other still had the variable multi of a XP-M so only worked at lower limit of 800Mhz.

I hope this helps.

G1nX

thanks for the links, I will have a look at it at home, but they already are MP capable, so no need to change there, just need to fix the multiplier.
Gonna set it to 2.4Ghz, so multiplier of 17.5x or something, will try and do that with pinmod.

will leave that running for a longer period of time and if all is still well after lets say 2 months, I will make a permanent mod.

I decided I will try and see what the highest stable fsb is I can get the board running on.

Since voodoo5 cards love a higher fsb, I will try and see what I can get out of it.

Doing it while still running on default multiplier, absolute speed won't be the problem, I also have 1 stick of 512MB DDR550 in there now, so that won't limit it either.

I'm thinking about changing the heatsink on the chipset for an actively cooled one, or just add a fan to it.

will keep you posted.

I got a stable fsb of 145Mhz yesterday, did some testing runs for about an hour or 2, gaming, benching etc etc, flaswless operation.
I won't show you the benchmark results, as they are pityful due to low speed.
Even the ram test will be crappy, cause let's face it, if I reach 150Mhz stable, it srtill is only DDR300 speed, so...

but the upside is, I've been looking around, a stable fsb above 150 should be doable, I will replace the NB heatsink with a decent actively cooled one and use some artic silver for it.
Won't keep the DDR550 in there, I have 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS PC3200 2-2-2-5 1T lying around for the system, no need for ECC reg ram :)

But when I have reached my final FSB speed, I will set the multiplier accordingly and then do the tests again and those results I will post. :)

Just to see how much impact a higher fsb will have, I'm doing testing:

It is a Windows98SE installation without the unofficial SP, 3dfx driver set that came with the card and directx7a. so no MP support :)

XP-M @ 800Mhz
512MB DDR333
40GB ATA100
Voodoo5PCI

800Mhz 133Mhz fsb

3DMARK99MAX @ default settings = 6811 3DMarks / 16762 CPU Marks
3DMARK2000 @ Default settings = 4731 3DMarks

900Mhz 150Mhz fsb

3DMARK99MAX @ default settings = 7094 3DMarks / 18696 CPU Marks (almost 300points increase for the voodoo card from 100Mhz cpu speed, and 2000 for cpu marks)
3DMARK2000 @ Default settings =  5117 3DMarks (almost 400 points more)


more benches to follow

Sweet......I just received an HP 2025 20" flatscreen with dvi support, which I will hook up to my 3DFX rig. max resolution is 1600 x 1200, so pretty good for a 20"screen.

A lot better then my old 17" craptastic screen :)

This way I can test if for example UT99 is playable on 1600x1200 @ 32bit color, when it has a 2.4Ghz Barton core backing it up, along with enough ram.

Anyone wanna venture a guess at what the framerate will be?

For some reason, when the 5500 is connected through dvi to the monitor and I change it to anything, it will display a message saying I need to set to 1600×1200@60Hz.

I have tried everything, is this a known issue for mac cards flashed to pc??

Anyone have any suggestions??

hey guys,

I finally got to modding one the XP-M cpus, here's a pin lay-out and what pins I needed to connect. :)

http://abload.de/thumb/xp-m3000moddedk9f9e.png

and here's a picture of the actual mod:

http://abload.de/thumb/xp-m3000modded33fdt.jpg

the wires look to be very close to eachother, but I have corrected that problem.

tomorrow night I will be putting this cpu in the board to see if it runs. :) if it runs just fine, I'll be doing the other one tomorrow as well, I have perfect tools for it now :)

small update:

I installed the modded XP-M, it detects it as expected, a 2400Mhz Athlon XP, MP capable :)

I ran 3dMark again, but it doesn't seem to want to run it, in fact....I get errors all over the place, BSOD with XP.....what is default voltage of XP-M?

ultima wrote on 28.10.13 at 19:49:06:

.....what is default voltage of XP-M?

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K7/AMD-Mobile%20Athlon%20XP-M%203000+%20-%20AXMA3000FKT4C.html

Vcore = 1.65V

But that's 2.2 GHz, if you overclocked the CPU it will need just a little more to be stable.

And the problem might not be the voltage, most likely the problem is the FSB, non standard FSB will cause a lot of problems.

66/100/133/200 MHZ FSB is ok, but 112 MHZ for example can cause a lot of problems.

Let's say you have a Barton 2500+, FSB 166. You can change the FSB to 200 MHZ, it will practically become a Barton 3200+ and it will run stable (in most of the cases).

Changing to FSB to 183 MHZ (for example) will cause a lot of problems, even if the final frequency will be lower.

But that is the strange thing, I have it set for 2.4Ghz with a 266Mhz fsb @ 1.7V vcore, it ran that easily on an Abit NF7-s motherboard, the default for the board.

Also strange was that I had to re-install drivers for the 5500 in 98se.

I'll set the cpu to 2.2Ghz and remove the pins for vcore, see what she does.

I did some searching, and found this patch, for faster cpu systems with old IDE drives / win98se

Windows 98 Second Edition / Windows ME  IDE Hard Drive Cache Package

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=90

after installing that, 3dmark99/2000 did run longer then before, but still failed at the 1st test. :(

I checked the temp of the cpu, it was 45C max, so that can't be the problem either

Gonna do a " reset to factory default" on the bios tommorrow, see if that helps, and will try lower speed, ya never know

just to try the easy way, I started up the rig and set the fsb from 266 to 200, making the cpu run 1800Mhz and it actually runs stable.

900Mhz 150Mhz fsb

3DMARK99MAX @ default settings = 7094 3DMarks / 18696 CPU Marks
3DMARK2000 @ Default settings =  5117 3DMarks

1800Mhz 100Mhz fsb

3DMark99MAX @ default settings gave 7343 3DMarks / 28787 cpu marks
3DMark2000 @ default settings gave  5738 3DMarks

so quite an improvement coming from 900Mhz :) altho the increase is bigger in 3DMark2000, but that is probably because cpu and gpu are counted together.

now ofcourse the question is, won't it run 2.4Ghz on 1.7V on this board, or is the total Ghz just too much for 98SE to handle?
more coming soon :)

I took a look at the pinmods needed to get this stable, seems the easiest is to set the vcore to 1.75V, that is still well within the safe range of overvolting, just a little over 5%, so....

on the other hand, it is just as much work to set the speed to 2300Mhz as it is to set the vcore higher, I'll try 2300Mhz 1st I think.

Not saying I'll keep it at that, just to find out if it can run that, and win98se, stable. probably will set it back to 2.2Ghz @ 1.65V after that.

Are you sure the MB has the correct dividers for the RAM? What speeds is the RAM working on when 200 and 266 FSB is selected? I would also try (just to be sure it's not the RAM), to make it work on 3-3-3-2T and try to test again. Also check the voltage of the RAM.

ram is running in sync with fsb, and it is 512MB stick of PC3200, I took out the 4 x 512MB PC2100.

the timing for PC3200 speed is rated for 2-3-2-5 1T, so it should be able to match that easily at PC2100 speeds.
I have a feeling the cpu was the problem at that speed, so will try that 1st....is just connecting 2 more pins, so easily done.

EDIT:

I did the pintrick for 1.725V vcore, see if she'd run that, for some reason that resulted in still 1.7V only @ 2.26Ghz, so.....I booted, no problem, results are here:

900Mhz 150Mhz fsb

3DMARK99MAX @ default settings = 7094 3DMarks / 18696 CPU Marks
3DMARK2000 @ Default settings =  5117 3DMarks

1800Mhz 100Mhz fsb

3DMark99MAX @ default settings gave 7343 3DMarks / 28787 cpu marks
3DMark2000 @ default settings gave  5738 3DMarks

2260Mhz 133Mhz fsb

3DMark99MAX @ default settings gave 7418 3DMarks / 35510 cpu marks
3DMark2000 @ default settings gave  5996 3DMarks
3DMark2001SE @ default settings gave  3064 3DMarks


So WOW on the increase in cpu score in 3DMark99, appears that fsb plays a major role here. :)

I think I'll mod the other cpu exactly the same and see how far I can take the fsb, I had it stable at 150Mhz, so that would be another (150-133) x 17 = 289Mhz, resulting in 2.5Ghz max, or somewhere between that and 2.26Ghz

EDIT2

I've been looking through the bios and I can set the vcore manually, so no need to do pinmod for that. I will set the bios to 1.725V and take the cpu out and remove the stuff.

just to take it slow, I upped the fsb to 140Mhz, still 1.7V and total speed 2.38Ghz.
that means the PCI bus is also running faster, should be a 1/2 divider I think for the 66Mhz slots, so will now run 70Mhz instead of 66Mhz.

scores as follows:

2380Mhz 140Mhz fsb

3DMark99MAX @ default settings gave 7450 3DMarks / 38413 cpu marks
3DMark2000 @ default settings gave 6034 3DMarks
3DMark2001SE @ default settings gave 3109 3DMarks

Is there any 3dmark version that will make use of the 2nd  XP-M3000+ and can still run on a voodoo5 card??

I know I'll have to run that on either win2k or xp, but still....