I have an Athlon K7800 (SLOT A) + Gigabyte GA-7VX setup. I chose this option because of the color of the motherboard (blue); I simply insisted on a blue set. From my experience, VIA is a bit slower than AMD (chipset) but the color compensates for the shortcomings. Choosing SLOT A is a more expensive but also more unique solution; there are relatively few boards compared to socket A. By choosing the K7xxx series CPU, you get a slower cache (1/3 core speed, 512KB) compared to A0 (full speed but 256KB). The socket A option offers additional possibilities if you get bored with the old Athlon, a whole range of processors like AthlonXP, Athlon, Duron, DDR memory, AGP 8x.

retep_110 wrote on 2024-06-14, 07:01:

Please feel free and just share every though you have about plans?

I once had an Athlon XP-M on a KT-133 (?), so that I could still use a 2x AGP card like Voodoo 3 or 5. I don't have it any longer.

I am back to Pentium III (at 500-1000 MHz) on 440BX. It is just so much less hassle. That is my thought on the plan.

I have no experience with other Athlon boards, but I built a Voodo 3 System based on the Gigabyte GA-7IXE board a few weeks ago.

I am using AMD Athlon 700 MHz
256 mb PC 133 ram

Voodoo 3 3000 agp
Aural Vortex 1 sound card
It works well so far. Have no clue how good the the Gigabyte GA-7IXE board is compared to other Slot A mainboards though. I am happy with it and the fact that I got one board that is refurbished is also a big plus.

Return 0; wrote on 2024-06-14, 08:03:

I have an Athlon K7800 (SLOT A) + Gigabyte GA-7VX setup. I chose this option because of the color of the motherboard (blue); I simply insisted on a blue set. From my experience, VIA is a bit slower than AMD (chipset) but the color compensates for the shortcomings. Choosing SLOT A is a more expensive but also more unique solution; there are relatively few boards compared to socket A. By choosing the K7xxx series CPU, you get a slower cache (1/3 core speed, 512KB) compared to A0 (full speed but 256KB). The socket A option offers additional possibilities if you get bored with the old Athlon, a whole range of processors like AthlonXP, Athlon, Duron, DDR memory, AGP 8x.

Thanks for your reply. Yeah I have already figured that Slot is more expensive but that's ok. After using rather mainstream socket 370 system I want something more unique for my second build. But I also would not mind using a Socket A instead of the slot A. As long as the V3 card is going my system I do not mind. if is Slot 1 or Socket A.

Socket A would be a bit more versetile though due the more available cpus. But nothing can beat the coolness factor of Slot A and early Athlon in the 600 to 1 GHZ range.

@ux-3 Thanks for the warning. Yes I have already heard that it might no that hassle free to go with slot a system. But Like I said is just for the coolness factor and do something different this time.

retep_110 wrote on 2024-06-14, 07:01:

[...]

Which configuration (slot a or socket a) motherboard plus CPU (Athlon or Duron) would consider as the least hassle option concering getting right power supply?

Maybe a good idea to look at what current the PSUs you have available offer on their 5V line. 20A should be enough for most mid-range Athlon(XP)s from each respective line of CPUs when paired with a Ti4200, and any Slot A Athlon - or indeed any single-CPU Athlon when paired with a Voodoo 3. If you have a crappy 16A max or less, you might have a problem, as even with the Voodoo you'd only have 54W left for the CPU (assuming 16W for Voodoo and 10W for rest of system from 5V line). In that case, take a good look at TDP figures:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Athlon_processors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Ath … n_XP_processors

But if you go socket, you could choose a late motherboard with 12V ATX connector that powers CPU(s) from the 12V line. The obvious choice then is an nForce2 board, as they all use 12V and are the fastest Socket A chipset. Only potential downsides are lack of ISA (so not so great for DOS) and AGP 3.0 slot, so no support for AGP 1.0 3.3V cards (i.e. no Voodoo). Late Via KT400A and KT600, as well as AMD 760MPX dual CPU boards also have it. The KT400A and 600 also have AGP 3.0, the 760MPX is AGP 2.0 so still has backwards compatibility with the Voodoo.

Still, getting an MPX might be a challenge that's not worth it for running a Voodoo3 on an Athlon with crappy PSU...

Tbh, if you have a Ti4200, pair that with the Athlon (it's contemporary for the last 'Barton' family of Athlon XPs) and leave the Voodoo3 in a system from its own time. If you really want GLide, add a Voodoo2 instead.

My personal experience with athlon stuff is with Athlon XP and Athlon 64, the biggest hassle is after-market coolers, they are not as easy to find and some sockets are less common than others, also the 64 gets hot, like "wtf is going on?" kinda hot but if you can find a good cooler and create a good airflow for the case then you are golden at least in my experience, let me also specify that i have the luck to use nforce powered mobos, everything works and both XP and 64 are total beasts for that period of time, they can eat most of what intel churned out in the same time frame.

A Geforce 4 Ti4200 would have been contemporaneous with ~Athlon XP 2000+ through 3000+ and an nForce 2 motherboard and DDR

iraito wrote on 2024-06-14, 23:37:

My personal experience with athlon stuff is with Athlon XP and Athlon 64, the biggest hassle is after-market coolers, they are not as easy to find and some sockets are less common than others

This is true for Socket A coolers, but not so much for Socket 754 and 939, as any modern Ryzen cooler still fits on those.

also the 64 gets hot, like "wtf is going on?"

The later Athlon64 cores like Venice and San Diego don't usually get super hot, unless you're overclocking. Earlier cores maybe, but not much more than a contemporary Pentium 4.

Are you wanting to only run Windows or do you want to play DOS games?

If DOS, with full sound support, you are going to want an ISA slot for the Athlon build.

This is going to limit you to the KT133A chipset or older or, if you can find one, a Biostar M7MIA which is a mix of AMD and VIA chipsets and is the only board ever made for Socket A with ISA and DDR support.

The KT7A or KT7A-RAID is my favorite KT133A based motherboard. It can have the 5th multiplier bit unlocked and, with the modified BIOS that supports Barton, it is a great board and will run a mobile CPU up to around 2.3Ghz.

Thanks for the advice. @dionb Well putting the V3 back to the socket 370 p3 800 mhz system and use the 4200 ti for the upcoming Athlon is a thought that did not occur to me yet. But it makes sense.

A Socket A System with very fast Athlon sounds like a good idea. A much better idea than "wasting" the power of the 4200 with the p3 800 mhz. For the p3 800 mhz the V3 3000 agp should be the much better partner.

@cyclone3d The ucpoming Athlon system is only for Win 98se. I want to have a very high end Win 98SE system.

I am back to Pentium III (at 500-1000 MHz) on 440BX. It is just so much less hassle. 

I have a PIII on a 440BX (CUBX-L) as well as an Athlon 800 on a A7V and an XP 2200+ on a MSI KT3 Ultra. They all just work flawlessly . What is the hassle on the Socket A you are referring to ?

Im thinking about downsizing a bit but the 800 MHz Athlon is actually the one I will probably keep (maybe because thats the machine I first beat Half Life...)

retep_110 wrote on 2024-06-15, 11:18:

Thanks for the advice. @dionb Well putting the V3 back to the socket 370 p3 800 mhz system and use the 4200 ti for the upcoming Athlon is a thought that did not occur to me yet. But it makes sense.

A Socket A System with very fast Athlon sounds like a good idea. A much better idea than "wasting" the power of the 4200 with the p3 800 mhz. For the p3 800 mhz the V3 3000 agp should be the much better partner.

@cyclone3d The ucpoming Athlon system is only for Win 98se. I want to have a very high end Win 98SE system.

In that case, the two potential reasons not to go for nForce2 are not relevant (lack of AGP 1.0 support, not great for DOS) so definitely go for one of the late Socket A systems with 12V ATX, and really there's no benefit to going for anything other than nForce2 there. Note that there are quite a few versions of the nForce2. What you definitely want is the nForce2 Ultra 400 northbridge, which supports dual-channel DDR SDRAM and 400MT/s FSB. Optional nice-to-have is the MCP-T southbridge, with nVidia Soundstorm audio - probably the best integrated audio out there, on par in terms of features with an SBLive 5.1, but with added Dolby Digital support (and Win98SE drivers, so relevant to your build). Of course if you can't find a board with this, just slap in an Audigy 2, which gives you that and adds EAX3 and 4.

As for specific models, be very wary of the Asus A7N8X series. If you could get them to work, they were top-notch, but they were extraordinarily picky when it came to DIMMs, as bad as some contemporary Ryzen boards. Other good quality boards from brands like Abit, Gigabyte and MSI had no such issues and were in no way inferior in performance. I'd be wary of Abit or MSI capacitors from this era, so if you want a concrete recommendation, I'd go for one of the Gigabyte GA-7N400 boards. But as always, with vintage stuff focusing too much on a particular board leads to waiting too long and spending too much. Instead, see what is available for an acceptable price near you (or elsewhere with acceptable shipping costs) and then judge whether it's good enough.

Aui wrote on 2024-06-15, 11:52:

What is the hassle on the Socket A you are referring to ?

My plan was to cover speed ranges. That is why I used the mobile Barton iirc. I encountered issues with ISA sound and speed changes. At some point, I abandoned it. I see if I can find the thread from 14 years ago...

ux-3 wrote on 2010-09-05, 11:52:

I have thought about moving it (XP-M) onto my Kinetiz 7A, but can't be bothered any more. Virtually any game in need of more than 1400 MHz (Athlon TB) will work nicely on my current C2Q system. The Kinetiz 7A would be living on borrowed time anyway, thanks to the cap's limited lifetime.

I've declared peace on the universe and settled for a slot1 BX machine with a P3 at 1000 MHz or a mulit-limited P2. I managed to install an 8 inch fan independent of the cpu, so that I can switch CPU in less than a minute (Pull and Plug). And since that decision is off my chest, I feel better.

I did get a nice boost on Voodoo5 performance, not even saturated yet in many games. But it wouldn't run very stable. I tried a Geode first.

retep_110 wrote on 2024-06-15, 11:18:

The ucpoming Athlon system is only for Win 98se. I want to have a very high end Win 98SE system.

I still have an ASRock Conroe 865PE boxed with a few different core2duo CPUs. The board still has win98se driver support. I haven't tried it yet with win98. When I changed from Athlon XP-3200+ to this board and an E4300 at 2400 MHz, I had a speed gain of about 300% on CPU tasks. As Win98 will only use one core, you would be at perhaps 150%. With a faster CPU, you might get even better results. I will try this eventually.

If we talk classic Athlon K7 then we probably talk VIA KT133.
Best get mobo with ISA for best DOS compatibility. If not then all VIA chipsets support DMA audio on PCI cards. I have ESS Solo-1 and SB128 working on Athlon X2 AM2 just fine.
CPU's are cheap as chips. Most fitting would be something like Athlon 1400MHz on Thunderbird core. It should be possible to run newer athlons too. My all-time recommendation is Athlon XP 1700+ on T-Breed B core with JIUHB markings. These CPU's have unlocked multiplier and can run from as little to about 2.4GHz and in other direction I don't remember exactly how slow I ran mine but I definitely remember 333MHz. You might need some pencil mod or BIOS for KT133 mobo but people were running even Barton's on KT133 so its definitely doable. One advantage of more recent K7's is SSE support so you don't loose anything versus Pentium 3.

As for nForce2: amazing for AMD K7 for Windows 2K/XP but I am not so sure they are even good choice for Win9x let alone great. I remember trying Win98SE on my nForce2 and it didn't ran that well. Of course DOS audio is out of question. Then if you want to run Voodoo3 then you need 3.3V AGP slot (Voodoo 3 AGP version consternation) and nForce2 boards are too new for that. It was AGP 4x/8x times.

One note regarding SoundStorm...
It was just an additional audio accelerator which you had to connect to existing audio codec like Realtek ALC655 to accelerate sound mixing and add Dolby Digital support. Accelerate as in not force CPU to calculate this stuff freeing CPU resources in the process. SS was better at it than even Creative's EMU10K2 chips. Sound quality out of audio jakcs on SS enabled motherboards was the same trash as any ALC655 board. In other words nothing really worthwhile where it came to quality. It did made Athlon systems running it a bit faster. It didn't made anything sound better. Dolby Digital... personally not a fan of this lossy audio tech. For it to even sound good you need to have very good D/A chips. Typical computer speakers didn't and you would be much better off with connecting 5.1 to analog outputs on Audigy 2ZS - not only D/A conversion is much better but you avoid compressing audio.

@all thx for the further information.

@dionb Thx for the detailed post about the nforce 2 boards. I will look if I can find such boards at a decent price or not. Having a decent on board sound would be great plus .Could help me to avoid purchasing a second sound card.

I wanted to get another sound blaster live! for my second rig because the sound blaster is doing an amazing job in my first rig.

But in case I should go the Socket A and not the classic Athlon K7 route looking into a more modern sound card like the Audigy 2 might be the more logical choice. I am I right with that assumption?

But I have to see first which Socket A boards are available at a good price.

If there too expensive I might tone my specs down a bit and get a high end Slot A board or another non nforce Socket A board.

I have to do a more detailed search before making my final decision but Socket A with a Via Kt133a chipsets can be quite economical..

I have seen a MSI MS-6340 VER:3 at very good price.

retep_110 wrote on 2024-06-17, 06:46:

But in case I should go the Socket A and not the classic Athlon K7 route looking into a more modern sound card like the Audigy 2 might be the more logical choice. I am I right with that assumption?

Not everyone upgraded to the Audigy 2 as soon as it came out. Putting a Sound Blaster Live! in a Socket A build would not be out of the question.

GemCookie wrote on 2024-06-17, 07:36:

retep_110 wrote on 2024-06-17, 06:46:

But in case I should go the Socket A and not the classic Athlon K7 route looking into a more modern sound card like the Audigy 2 might be the more logical choice. I am I right with that assumption?

Not everyone upgraded to the Audigy 2 as soon as it came out. Putting a Sound Blaster Live! in a Socket A build would not be out of the question.

I am aware of that. It would totally make sense from historic point of view. I just want to get out the optimum for Win 98SE system. So getting one of the best possible cards for a win98 gaming system is part of the package I want to create.

There is nothing wrong with the Soundblaster live per se. I really like the one working in my socket 370 p3 800 mhz system.

In that case, the Audigy 2/ZS should work. Avoid OEM Creative cards, since they have worse driver support.

GemCookie wrote on 2024-06-17, 08:27:

In that case, the Audigy 2/ZS should work. Avoid OEM Creative cards, since they have worse driver support.

I see. Thanks a lot for your recommendation.

@all after doing some research I found out the mainboards with the nvidia nforce are out of question due to the high price.

What are your toughts about the VIA KT 333 family of chipsets?

I would be able to get a
Gibabyte GA-7VRXP at a good price.

Plan b would be to get KT 133A mobo The MSI MS-6340.

Which one of these guys would be pick or would you pick?