The highest K2/3+ CPU you can get. That is best CPU you can get. E.g the low voltage K2/3+ can be overlocked pretty well.

Saying this the extra cache doesn't really help in games.

Also you will probably be bottlenecked in many cases with Super Socket 7, but IMHO still worth it.

What motherboard? This may limit the use of k6 2+/3 cpus.

Overclock the 400 as high as it will go first and see how it does. If you are able to go from 66 to a fsb like 83 or 100 there are significant gains to be had

Anon3156 wrote on 2024-11-24, 23:31:

I have a micro-atx super socket 7 board that I want to do sli on with 2 voodoo 2's 8mb. However I am aware that my k6-2 400 mhz cpu is probably not the best choice for this, so what would be the best super socket cpu for this?

A lot of micro-atx super socket 7 boards have the CPU socket behind the PCI/ISA slots which makes it very difficult to install 2x Voodoo cards because of their length. What board do you have?

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-ms-5185-al12

This is the motherboard I have. A ms-5185.

Anon3156 wrote on 2024-11-25, 03:17:

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-ms-5185-al12

This is the motherboard I have. A ms-5185.

The good news is that your Voodoo's will fit. The bad news is that it's not a super socket 7 board. The voltage only goes down to 2.2v. You need 2.0v for K2+/3+. A standard K6-2 500 or 550 will be the fastest CPU you can get.

This guy sells K6's pretty cheap. Every now and then he'll update his listing and add CPU's. You could wait for one to popup. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/256328509903 (I have no affiliation with the seller).

zuldan wrote on 2024-11-25, 03:50:

Anon3156 wrote on 2024-11-25, 03:17:

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-ms-5185-al12

This is the motherboard I have. A ms-5185.

The good news is that your Voodoo's will fit. The bad news is that it's not a super socket 7 board. The voltage only goes down to 2.2v. You need 2.0v for K2+/3+. A standard K6-2 500 or 550 will be the fastest CPU you can get.

This guy sells K6's pretty cheap. Every now and then he'll update his listing and add CPU's. You could wait for one to popup. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/256328509903 (I have no affiliation with the seller).

I will say that it is actually a super socket 7. I am not sure why on that site it says its a normal socket 7 but right now it has a k6-2 in it. Also the gateway link on the site says its a super socket 7 as well

For super socket 7 it needs AGP (well, it has onboard VGA), 100mhz bus and support K6-2+/3+ CPUs (2.0v).

zuldan wrote on 2024-11-25, 04:48:

For super socket 7 it needs AGP (well, it has onboard VGA), 100mhz bus and support K6-2+/3+ CPUs (2.0v).

Sorry it looks like it's this board. Slightly different.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010210194108/ht … 04687/index.htm

IMHO Super Socket 7 really just means 100MHz FSB. Anything else is nice to have.

mwdmeyer wrote on 2024-11-25, 05:44:

IMHO Super Socket 7 really just means 100MHz FSB. Anything else is nice to have.

That seems to be the case. This motherboard was originally documented as a socket 7 but was later documented as a super socket 7.

Anon3156 wrote on 2024-11-25, 05:53:

mwdmeyer wrote on 2024-11-25, 05:44:

IMHO Super Socket 7 really just means 100MHz FSB. Anything else is nice to have.

That seems to be the case. This motherboard was originally documented as a socket 7 but was later documented as a super socket 7.

"Super" Socket 7 is a pure marketing term and means whatever the marketeer of the day wanted it to mean. There is no technical Super Socket 7 spec, it's just regular (Intel) So7 spec, i.e. 321p, split voltage planes and 3 multiplier pins, with one or more features added that are considered "Super".

That said, this board does have all the usual features, including 100MHz FSB and AGP - not a slot, but an AGP port that is connected to an onboard Rage128.

However, semantics aside, the relevant bit is the voltage. VCore is only documented down to 2.2V, but uses five jumpers, which is an awful lot for just the 7 listed settings. So you can definitely get different voltages out of it. The trick is to find out which voltage regulator chip the board has and read what combinations of VID input gives which voltage in its datasheet. This image on TheRetroWeb shows enough detail to be able to read the chip - it's the little one in the upper left hand corner at location U1: an SC1153CSW.

Here's the datasheet:
https://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/vi … /SC1153CSW.html

Page 5 shows the voltage logic table. Comparing that to the manual shows that the jumpers pull the VID lines low, so wherever the logic table says "0", you should have the jumper on, and the order is displayed reversed - compare 2.2V (Off-On-Off-Off-Off in manual, 10111 in datasheet) and 2.8V (Off-Off-Off-On-Off in manual, 11101 in datasheet). So according to the datasheet you can go down to 1.3V if needed, and for the 2.0V you want with K6plus CPUs, you need 11111, which corresponds to no jumpers on at all. Pretty easy really 😉

Before you do this though, double-check if your specific board also has the SC1153CSW, in particular given the confusion around identification. If not you might need different settings (or it might not be able to go so low at all...)

zuldan wrote on 2024-11-25, 04:48:

For super socket 7 it needs AGP (well, it has onboard VGA), 100mhz bus and support K6-2+/3+ CPUs (2.0v).

100 mhz and AGP yes, + CPUs no. those arrived only in mid-2000, nearly two years after the first 100 mhz K6 chips.

I would go so far to say that there was never a desktop motherboard designed FOR a plus chip, all the motherboards they run on were previous designs. Maybe they tweaked the BIOS and put a sticker on the box, but that motherboard design was out a year ago at least. Maybe some had minor revisions, but the design was old.

Anon3156 wrote on 2024-11-25, 05:03:

zuldan wrote on 2024-11-25, 04:48:

For super socket 7 it needs AGP (well, it has onboard VGA), 100mhz bus and support K6-2+/3+ CPUs (2.0v).

Sorry it looks like it's this board. Slightly different.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010210194108/ht … 04687/index.htm

Ss7 without an isa slot? Blasphemy! Hopefully gateway didn't stuff their own bios on there

dionb wrote on 2024-11-25, 09:40:

"Super" Socket 7 is a pure marketing term and means whatever the marketeer of the day wanted it to mean. There is no technical S […]
Show full quote

Anon3156 wrote on 2024-11-25, 05:53:

mwdmeyer wrote on 2024-11-25, 05:44:

IMHO Super Socket 7 really just means 100MHz FSB. Anything else is nice to have.

That seems to be the case. This motherboard was originally documented as a socket 7 but was later documented as a super socket 7.

"Super" Socket 7 is a pure marketing term and means whatever the marketeer of the day wanted it to mean. There is no technical Super Socket 7 spec, it's just regular (Intel) So7 spec, i.e. 321p, split voltage planes and 3 multiplier pins, with one or more features added that are considered "Super".

That said, this board does have all the usual features, including 100MHz FSB and AGP - not a slot, but an AGP port that is connected to an onboard Rage128.

However, semantics aside, the relevant bit is the voltage. VCore is only documented down to 2.2V, but uses five jumpers, which is an awful lot for just the 7 listed settings. So you can definitely get different voltages out of it. The trick is to find out which voltage regulator chip the board has and read what combinations of VID input gives which voltage in its datasheet. This image on TheRetroWeb shows enough detail to be able to read the chip - it's the little one in the upper left hand corner at location U1: an SC1153CSW.

Here's the datasheet:
https://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/vi … /SC1153CSW.html

Page 5 shows the voltage logic table. Comparing that to the manual shows that the jumpers pull the VID lines low, so wherever the logic table says "0", you should have the jumper on, and the order is displayed reversed - compare 2.2V (Off-On-Off-Off-Off in manual, 10111 in datasheet) and 2.8V (Off-Off-Off-On-Off in manual, 11101 in datasheet). So according to the datasheet you can go down to 1.3V if needed, and for the 2.0V you want with K6plus CPUs, you need 11111, which corresponds to no jumpers on at all. Pretty easy really 😉

Before you do this though, double-check if your specific board also has the SC1153CSW, in particular given the confusion around identification. If not you might need different settings (or it might not be able to go so low at all...)

I think this is slightly different from a SC1153CSW, since the voltages don't seem to match.
I found this documentation for this:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboard/manual/ms … be767942938.pdf
and it appears that it has a different setup. I think that the one on my boards documentation is inverted and backwards.

bertrammatrix wrote on 2024-11-25, 16:56:

Anon3156 wrote on 2024-11-25, 05:03:

zuldan wrote on 2024-11-25, 04:48:

For super socket 7 it needs AGP (well, it has onboard VGA), 100mhz bus and support K6-2+/3+ CPUs (2.0v).

Sorry it looks like it's this board. Slightly different.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010210194108/ht … 04687/index.htm

Ss7 without an isa slot? Blasphemy! Hopefully gateway didn't stuff their own bios on there

I have the ability to add one which I plan on doing. I do believe it has a gateway bios though. Not sure if I can change that

Anon3156 wrote on 2024-11-25, 18:47:

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

I think this is slightly different from a SC1153CSW, since the voltages don't seem to match.
I found this documentation for this:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboard/manual/ms … be767942938.pdf
and it appears that it has a different setup. I think that the one on my boards documentation is inverted and backwards.

OK, but that documentation doesn't show what voltage regulator chip your board has. Could you see what chip is on it?

That manual is the one belonging to the board on TheRetroWeb that has the SC1153CSW regulator, and I already pointed out the jumpers pull down (so jumper = "0" and no jumper = "1") and that the order in the datasheet is reversed (VID 4,3,2,1,0 vs jumper 1,2,3,4,5). If that manual is the right one and so is the board, 2V is no numpers, so everything 11111.