What retro things have you done today?

paradigm · 15 May 2020 at 17:36

AmigaMerlin seem to offer me the most performance. Followed by the x3dfx drivers.

In other news I just tried the K6-3 with my recent acquired VIA chipset based USB 2.0 PCI card. No performance loss, yay!

hohum · 15 May 2020 at 17:51

@LewisRaz Nah don't send me the card back, I'm not going to be using it in any build now really. With regards to 3dfx drivers, I just used the last reference drivers that were released during my brief usage of mine. You can replace the glide dlls after install with updated versions from here though if you wish: https://www.3dfxzone.it/koolsmoky/glide.html

@paradigm I have the same badge slot on my case, but I never got around to buying a 3dfx sticker as the card stopped working so quickly! So I'm waiting to see what your results are with my V3 before buying one

paradigm · 15 May 2020 at 17:56

hohum said:
@paradigm I have the same badge slot on my case, but I never got around to buying a 3dfx sticker as the card stopped working so quickly! So I'm waiting to see what your results are with my V3 before buying one

So far so good, I’ve been replacing caps one by one and then stability testing by running a 6 or so hours of looped 3DMark99, I’m yet to see any problems but yet I didn’t see any before either. I’ll finish off the caps this weekend, and assuming all goes well I’ll send it back early next week.

LewisRaz · 15 May 2020 at 18:09

Hows this looking?

hohum · 15 May 2020 at 18:10

paradigm said:
So far so good, I’ve been replacing caps one by one and then stability testing by running a 6 or so hours of looped 3DMark99, I’m yet to see any problems but yet I didn’t see any before either. I’ll finish off the caps this weekend, and assuming all goes well I’ll send it back early next week.

That's great, thanks yet again! I don't know why it's worked fine for you thus far, but I had the card drop vga signal on two very different motherboards (my current 440ZX-based system, but also on a SIS-based P4 board). I am curious as to whether replacing the caps results in you being able to reapply the overclock on your system, given you said it originally wouldn't boot with my card in there!

hohum · 15 May 2020 at 18:13

LewisRaz said:
Hows this looking?

Looks about right to me!

paradigm · 15 May 2020 at 18:16

LewisRaz said:
Hows this looking?

What are the framerates like for the game benchmarks?

LewisRaz · 15 May 2020 at 18:23

most of game 1 seems locked at 75fps with a few drops into the 50s.

Game 2 mostly 60fps+ but the last few seconds in the 30fps

paradigm · 15 May 2020 at 18:25

LewisRaz said:
most of game 1 seems locked at 75fps with a few drops into the 50s.

Game 2 mostly 60fps+ but the last few seconds in the 30fps

The results browser will give you a detailed breakdown, but 75fps cap almost seems like a vsync?

LewisRaz · 15 May 2020 at 19:39

Ah there was a vsync on. score is the same tho. It only goes over 75 for a second or 2.

paradigm · 16 May 2020 at 08:12

I need to dig out my P3 machine for a run or two of 3DMark, I'd be interested to work out where the scaling stops with the V3 3000, clearly it's somewhere between the K6-3 500MHz and the P3 850 you have there Lewis.

LewisRaz · 16 May 2020 at 10:17

I have a socket 370 1ghz I could try. I was reading into it and it seems most agree its around the 1ghz mark that the scaling stops.

I had to download a patch last night for sonic and knuckles collection as it was running too fast

Sounds really good on the awe32 tho..

Also having a really random problem with 1 of my cd drives. The icons no longer show for any of the CDs but the D drive says "not valid win32 application" when you try to auto run. This happened after I installed the via drivers I think. The other drive is fine (although still doesnt show the correct icon)

paradigm · 16 May 2020 at 11:11

I can’t see it scaling to 1GHz given at your 850MHz the difference between vsync on and vsync off was negligible at best.

cee-S-dee · 16 May 2020 at 11:49

Finally...! Managed to pick up a Asrock 939Dual-Sata2 Motherboard. These are quite iconic with a bit of a cult following due to its real Frankenstein Design. Socket 939 with PCI-E and AGP with a weird slot for a add-on board which can accept AM2 cpus!

The one i picked up works but has horrid caps so will be replacing those. Really looking forward to doing a build around this board. Maybe i can pickup the add-on board in future.

paradigm · 16 May 2020 at 12:58

That’s the board the guy from Pixel Pipes likes isn’t it? Seems like a real hodge podge of a board but yet intriguing and useful for benching multiple cards.

What are your plans for it @cee-S-dee ?

cee-S-dee · 16 May 2020 at 13:05

@paradigm - Yeah i think he did a video about this board. I have a ATCS 201 Case empty so i'm planning to stick it in that. I need to update the bios on it as its quite old and i have a X2 4400+ 939 CPU to use with it, maybe overclock it a bit. For Video cards you can run 2 cards in the system and switch them via the bios. As to what cards i'm going to put in.. not got that far yet :-)

hohum · 16 May 2020 at 13:16

cee-S-dee said:
Finally...! Managed to pick up a Asrock 939Dual-Sata2 Motherboard. These are quite iconic with a bit of a cult following due to its real Frankenstein Design. Socket 939 with PCI-E and AGP with a weird slot for a add-on board which can accept AM2 cpus!

The one i picked up works but has horrid caps so will be replacing those. Really looking forward to doing a build around this board. Maybe i can pickup the add-on board in future.

This was the motherboard I bought when building my first PC from scratch! It replaced my pre-built P4 from 2001. Still have it stored in its original box, one of those items which I periodically contemplate selling but not sure if I'd regret it. All the caps seem to be fine still on mine, although I've only used decent brand PSUs in builds over the years so that probably helped.

Decent board and very versatile. Some things I will note to save you some hassle - the 'AGP P2P Deep FIFO' option added in later BIOS versions is used for AGP cards that have a PCI-e bridge chip. If you aren't using such a card then change the setting from auto to disabled, as I spent a while back in the day trying to work out why it would like to freeze up when idling on the desktop - this was the culprit! Also, 1T command rate won't work properly in dual-channel mode unless you have a later motherboard revision (1.05 possibly?). You can set it, but you'll probably find it will fail memtest86 on the modulo test. Finally, consider sourcing a backplate for the CPU - the standard mounting bracket just uses four plastic push-pins which is fine for an OEM cooler, but not sure I'd trust it with something heavier.

LewisRaz · 16 May 2020 at 13:19

Seen a couple of videos on that board. Think pixelpipes was one of them. Really interesting board!

My aztech card arrived today but I have been having so much fun actually playing on this new rig that I have lost all drive to start tearing things apart!

I am now interested to see if the v3 scales at all with 1ghz and also if this mobo supports the 1ghz cpu in socket. I have a sloket so can test the scaling regardless. Also been reading into getting 3500 speeds from the voodoo but will wait until it has a fan before I do that.

cee-S-dee · 16 May 2020 at 13:24

hohum said:
This was the motherboard I bought when building my first PC from scratch! It replaced my pre-built P4 from 2001. Still have it stored in its original box, one of those items which I periodically contemplate selling but not sure if I'd regret it. All the caps seem to be fine still on mine, although I've only used decent brand PSUs in builds over the years so that probably helped.

Decent board and very versatile. Some things I will note to save you some hassle - the 'AGP P2P Deep FIFO' option added in later BIOS versions is used for AGP cards that have a PCI-e bridge chip. If you aren't using such a card then change the setting from auto to disabled, as I spent a while back in the day trying to work out why it would like to freeze up when idling on the desktop - this was the culprit! Also, 1T command rate won't work properly in dual-channel mode unless you have a later motherboard revision (1.05 possibly?). You can set it, but you'll probably find it will fail memtest86 on the modulo test. Finally, consider sourcing a backplate for the CPU - the standard mounting bracket just uses four plastic push-pins which is fine for an OEM cooler, but not sure I'd trust it with something heavier.

Awesome info @hohum! I'm going to be using the wraith cooler off the 3700X as its what i have spare. My board is a 1.05 and was going to use some Corsair 3500LL (the modules with the cool activity lights on). I'd keep the board. They don't come up on the bay very often!

almoststew1990 · 16 May 2020 at 14:10

I came across a similar one last night - an ASRock something something 939 Upgrade. It only had PCI-E but had a slot (like Slot 1 kinda slot) for an AM2 CPU. Not sure how you were meant to cool it... Interested to see what you do with it!