Awesome machine you built there! The P3B-F must be the best 440BX board ever designed. I'm thinking of revising my 440BX machine and rebuilding it around the P3B-F, too, but that single ISA slot is the only thing holding me back.

Did you have to use a modified BIOS to support the Tualatin? You can find one here with the required microcode updates, but I'm not sure if it's necessary.

Which OS do you plan to run on this?

Thanks! I did run that modded BIOS but it still shows as a Pentium II at post. I'm running Windows 98 SE.

You might have better luck with an Upgradeware Slot-T adapter and a vanilla unmodded PIII-S, or maybe even a lin-lin on the Asus slotket. I doubt those Korean sellers actually test those CPUs, rather, they probably just mod them and advertise them as such. If you really want to know if it's the videocard or not, run a PCI videocard and test it again for stability. PCI has a 1/4 divider (Of course you're aware that the PCI is slightly underclocked at 31MHZ at 124Mhz FSB).

The Enlight 7237 is an excellent case. I have mine for my main work computer, with an Asus P5B and a Xeon 5430 (Quad Core, 12MB cache). P5B/965P Chipset can overclock to 1333 FSB (333MHZ), but the northbridge gets too hot for my liking at that speed, so the chip is running at 2.13Ghz (1066 FSB/266MHZ).

mockingbird wrote:

lin-lin on the Asus slotket.

??

I've read that a lot of people disable AGP sideband addressing (and possibly AGP fastwrites) in an effort to stabilize these cards (with much success) on an 89Mhz FSB using tools like RivaTuner and PowerStrip. I've tried both on this system and when I attempt to disable one, the other, or both through the GUI, the system hard-locks - even when slowed down to 100Mhz FSB.

Personally I would lean towards a Intel 800 series chipset board with official 133 FSB support. Not a big fan of overclocking these old boards.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Personally I would lean towards a Intel 800 series chipset board with official 133 FSB support. Not a big fan of overclocking these old boards.

Howdy Phil -

Typically I would, but for this little project I wanted to push the 440BX chipset as far as I could - especially since others have done it (while retaining an ISA slot). I still may build a 'real' Tualatin i815EP system since I have an un-modded Tualatin FCPGA2 chip and TUSL2 board sitting here.

Very nice Artex 😀 after seeing your last build and now this one, I started looking for the same case but can't find one down here in Australia anywhere unfortunately. I did find one overseas with the 2 USB ports at the bottom but the postage costs are generally too high to get cases shipped international. Obviously due to weight of course.

Awesome 3DMark score as well. What DirectX + Nvidia driver package are you using?

borgie83 wrote:

Very nice Artex 😀 after seeing your last build and now this one, I started looking for the same case but can't find one down here in Australia anywhere unfortunately. I did find one overseas with the 2 USB ports at the bottom but the postage costs are generally too high to get cases shipped international. Obviously due to weight of course.

Awesome 3DMark score as well. What DirectX + Nvidia driver package are you using?

Thanks! I'm running out of these tower cases now as well. I think I have 6 in use. 😀

I'm running 28.32s with DirectX 8.1.

Artex wrote:

mockingbird wrote:

lin-lin on the Asus slotket.

??

I've read that a lot of people disable AGP sideband addressing (and possibly AGP fastwrites) in an effort to stabilize these cards (with much success) on an 89Mhz FSB using tools like RivaTuner and PowerStrip. I've tried both on this system and when I attempt to disable one, the other, or both through the GUI, the system hard-locks - even when slowed down to 100Mhz FSB.

Lin-Lin Adapter

What I'm saying is you should eliminate the actual CPU as the problem. The videocard itself may very well be able to handle the 89mhz.

mockingbird wrote:

Artex wrote:

mockingbird wrote:

lin-lin on the Asus slotket.

??

I've read that a lot of people disable AGP sideband addressing (and possibly AGP fastwrites) in an effort to stabilize these cards (with much success) on an 89Mhz FSB using tools like RivaTuner and PowerStrip. I've tried both on this system and when I attempt to disable one, the other, or both through the GUI, the system hard-locks - even when slowed down to 100Mhz FSB.

Lin-Lin Adapter

What I'm saying is you should eliminate the actual CPU as the problem. The videocard itself may very well be able to handle the 89mhz.

Got it - I never heard of that one. Interesting! So instead of modding the chip, you just drop a 'real' Tualatin into this adapter which sits on the FC-PGA socket?

If I can find either of these for cheap, I'd be happy to try my 'real' Tualatin in this board and see if I have the same issue.

Yup. There are jumpers for voltage and FSB.

They pop up from time to time on eBay.

I've got two of them put away in a safe place.

Im pretty sure the CPU is not the issue.

I have a Aopen AX6BC slot1 BX board with PCI/4 but only 2/3 AGP and I had huge issues geting that board stable at 133 MHz FSB.
In the end the only video cards that were 100% stable at 89 MHz AGP in all games and benchmarks were Geforce4 MX cards.
The same board with the same CPU and memory would run 153 MHz FSB all day with a PCI video card.

Many cards did run the benchmarks and most games OK but would freeze in S.W Rogue Squadron.

Skyscraper wrote:

Im pretty sure the CPU is not the issue.

I agree.

Have the same system with the same modded CPU from Korea. Most likely the video card which is messing up. Try a PCI one to see if the problems go away (I'm sure you have some Voodoo5 PCI cards laying around 😉 )

I'll throw in a PCI card this week and see how she goes....

There might be two issues to check:
- motherboard can't cope with increased amperage while Ti4600 or Ti4200 (which are powered from AGP port) is in the AGP port.
- Tualatin-mod isn't done correctly, CPU can have voltage fluctuations on AK4 (PWR_GD pin) <-> AN11 (VTT voltage pin) connection, which causes system freezing. Needed: Pictures of your completed Tualatin mods

My Abit BX133-RAID with pinmodded Pentium III-S 1.4 and MSI FX5900XT is perfectly stable under any benchmark and 3D game.

tyuper wrote:

There might be two issues to check: - motherboard can't cope with increased amperage while Ti4600 or Ti4200 (which are powered f […]
Show full quote

There might be two issues to check:
- motherboard can't cope with increased amperage while Ti4600 or Ti4200 (which are powered from AGP port) is in the AGP port.
- Tualatin-mod isn't done correctly, CPU can have voltage fluctuations on AK4 (PWR_GD pin) <-> AN11 (VTT voltage pin) connection, which causes system freezing. Needed: Pictures of your completed Tualatin mods

My Abit BX133-RAID with pinmodded Pentium III-S 1.4 and MSI FX5900XT is perfectly stable under any benchmark and 3D game.

Not sure if I follow. What do I need to check to validate both of these checks? Also interesting that you and Vetz are both using a 5000 series card without issue. Maybe these are less sensitive?

You can try to use modded BIOS for P3B-F (ver NOA) for correct CPU detection: http://www.rom.by/files/P3BF_Noa.BIN

Just wondering, how does the 1.4Ghz Tualatin compare to an Athlon 1400? obviously its also up to whether a game uses SSE/3DNow, chipset , etc. But given similar components, how would it compare?

Im guessing the Tualatin runs much cooler, thats probably a given.

kokornov wrote:

You can try to use modded BIOS for P3B-F (ver NOA) for correct CPU detection: http://www.rom.by/files/P3BF_Noa.BIN

Do you have a readme or any additional info about this BIOS?