@@Xan0906 what GPU were they running?

@@AncientElectronics It just says GeForce, I'm assuming GF256. I'd post the link but yt tends to not like that. You should be able to find this with "600 MHz with Socket 7: The AMD K6-2+", July 13 2000.

@@masejoer system was perfectly stable before the cpu upgrade which is why I don't suspect a ram or controller issue. Its probably either the cpu that has problems or the motherboard can't handle the higher speed due to to failing components.

@@stevendong4182 unfortunately I did not. I ended up coming across a nice JVC player that I liked better and gave this one away.

Indeed, but I already have a Win 98 setup with a TNT2 Ultra and one with a Voodoo 3 so I wanted to go with something a little more over-the-top GPU-wise with this one.

@@b747xx your not the first person to comment on how crappy Maxtor is.

@@AncientElectronics My 4.3, 6.4, and 40GB Maxtors were still working fine 15 years later when they were gotten rid of. I believe they were turned off very night for a period of time, and later were left on 24/7 when used in a backup machine/home server. I have good memories of those drives. A few years ago I found some IDE Maxtors of 160GB or so size in some ancient "servers" (desktop athlon 64 x2 systems) at an office, and they were still chugging along fine under Windows Server 2003, always powered on. Doubt they were accessed much, but they worked when the systems were parted out about 5 years ago. I even ran hdsentinel for a few write/read sequential and butterfly passes on one and it had no problems. I think Seagate was known to be one of the best (along with earlier IBM drives) at the time, but I had a 30MB Seagate catch on fire in my 386 around 1993. Everyone had their good and bad products.

@@0MeALot0 at the moment its having a hard time getting into Windows even to run anything. If/when I try to fiddle with this thing again ill probably swap out the CPU and then keep an eye on temps as you suggest and see how that goes.

​@@AncientElectronics Might want to take the board out of the case to fully test it with different hardware. That way you can easily use a infrared thermometer on parts like the vrm.

@@AncientElectronics Ive also had psus not being able to provide a stable voltage anymore, if its dropping under load you will also have these kind of problems. Specially with more demanding hardware.

I mean the gf4mx makes a decent late 90s win98 card, obviously if your going for a later system you should go for a higher end card.

Geforce 4mx is fine for this type of build, i have one for my voodoo 2 sli system. Back at the time though yeah no 😆 it's gimped and weird. Has some Geforce 4 features and a 128bit mem bus but lacks a few of the Geforce 3 features so makes it worse performing. Better than a geforce 2 tho for sure. Better with one of the Ati 9800 pro/se/xt models but those are very overkill for the K6 III+

On SS7 there is no reason to go beyond a GeForce 2 MX. The key is to use oldest drivers possible in order to decrease the CPU load, which an early GF2 will happily do. And on top of all that, its period correct, as it was a common upgrade path for K6 machines

The GF MX will run just like the GF3, 4, 5, 6, 7... On this platform.

@@Romerco77 There are games runnable on '98 and ME that are DX8/9-based and need that pixel shader onboard the GF3 and GF4.. Unreal 2 and Doom 3 are two titles coming to mind that hugely benefit.

You do not actually reduce the life span of a part that is overclocked if you know what you are doing. Its worse to have parts running stock speeds in 0 airflow cases then overclocking parts that are well within thermal limits. The mosfets on the motherboard and gpu can handle way more energy if operated at low temps. I personally overclock everything i get my hands on and nothing ever died on me. Ive got lots of hardware that has been running like that for ages but pcs do need more maintenance that way. Heat is the only real enemy here. If you have a overkill cooler on your cpu there is no harm in running harder, given the vrm on the motherboard is well cooled. Its usefull too. Ive got a fx 5950 ultra that is just able to run at stock speeds, more degredation and the card becomes useless, or will need underclocking so i will not put it in a pc to game on it too much. On the otherhand i also have a Quadro fx 3000G which is basically a underclocked fx 5900 ultra that happily runs past 5950 ultra speeds all day long. Also have a xfx 6800 ultra that was shipped with the unreleased 6800 ultra "extreme" speeds so its overclocked no matter what, and that with the stock double slot cooler although the vbios lets the fan run at 100% all the time to get that speed.

I'd also add that the entire point of a K6-III+ is to overclock, if you don't want to overclock you just get a regular k6-III. The III+ is well known for its easy OC abilities and it's mostly seen as common practice. Actually I'm not sure I know any retro gamer that doesn't OC the k6-III+

The AM5x86 could easily do 160MHz without anything but a simple heatsink and small fan. I don't think it made a huge difference to performance over the 133MHz stock speed, but I always liked setting the 3 digit display to "160", because it was just cool.

@@flamaalt-hx9io unfortunately I have already passed this machine on.