Upgrading and Tuning Socket 7 to the Max

[@psychopowner101]

I'd love to see you do this with a super socket 7 board. The agp and higher bus speed should be a bigger difference.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yup especially the higher bus makes quite a difference.

[@ionstorm66]

Have a super socket 7 with a g200 and voodoo2, it flys.

[@Malheirods]

@@philscomputerlab 3x133MHz for a K6-III on my Epox MVP3C2, too bad I don"t have that video card to compare.

[@mpettengill1981]

I'll 2nd that. I recently acquired a PC with a super socket 7 board and a cyrix MII. Came with a PCI cirrus logic card, but assuming the board works (still getting around to testing it), my plan is to get an AGP card in there - maybe a Riva TNT or something like that.

[@davidp4456]

@@Malheirods I have K6 3+ 550 on Epox EP-MVP3G5 with 2MB cache that I built in 2000. I did have 768MB on board, but reduced it to the cachable limit of 512MB and it is much better. I’m too scared to try it over 100Mhz even though it has PC133 cl2 in case something bad happens. It uses 2 x SSD’s and every slot (Ed. 1 free PCI) and bay is now filled with the best parts including Dream Blaster XG midi on the aureal 2 PCI Sonic Vortex card and 8MB on the AWE64 Gold. I can’t teak it any more! The only thing I lack is a 3dfx card. It is the one thing I have never experienced. Is it worth adding one of these to this rig? Unfortunately I’m probably also out of IRQ’s.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Phil's Computer Lab tunes my knowledge to the max!

[@framebuffer.10]

That 66MHz FSB seems to be impacting Quake performance quite significantly, I measured 77.4 FPS with a K6-2 450 (ASUS P5A-B, Matrox G400DH 32MB) Anyways this was very interesting and informative, great work Phil!

[@BurningFlame1999]

Phil if possible please make a benchmarks video with games from 1996-1999 with those socket 7 CPUs using a Voodoo 2 or Banshee. Quake1/2, Unreal, Half-Life, NFS 2/3 and others would be really really interesting to see. Thank you!

[@50shadesofbeige88]

Good idea

[@dallesamllhals9161]

Didn't he do that YEARS ago?

[@BurningFlame1999]

@@dallesamllhals9161 yes he did but with a much newer more powerful nvidia card, not with a 3dfx cards from that time 1998-1999. The K6-2 and 3 work best with 3dfx cards.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

@@BurningFlame1999 I know! Still have my Voodoo² from '98 in my Socket 7 from '97 😛

[@another3997]

​@@dallesamllhals9161I still have a Voodoo 1 in my collection, not that I use it. I wish I'd kept my other Voodoo cards too, but never mind.

[@someguy872]

Wow, you kept showing a step higher! awesome

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Love the Gigabyte Super Socket 7 boards. I have the GA-5AX

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

Like! Back in mid-1999 I upgraded my Socket 7 P166 MMX to an AMD K6-2 400 mhz (6x66). lt was a very nice efficient and cheap upgrade. A lot of people who had older Socket 7 systems did the same back then. Some benchmarks with games from that time would be really interesting :)

[@rasz]

AMD K6-2 400 was ~$90 in June 1999, Celeron 300A was $60. Selling motherboard +P166MMX+ram you could probably manage to swap into modern Intel platform with AGP altogether for not much more.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@rasz you are right but I had zero experience with overclocking back then and was too afraid to try it out. At stock speed a Celeron 300A has a similar performance to a K6-2 400 mhz.

[@evergreengamer5767]

Maxing a platform out is what did it for me when first got into retro computing back when dos/win9x era systems were abundant in dumpsters or at yard sales it always felt good to take parts from all these systems gathered up and see what they could do. Often tested Tomb Raider on those systems but until years later only had the demo on 2 floppy disk.

[@Trick-Framed]

I didn't know about the S3 speed boost. Thank you Phil!

[@johnhajdu4276]

In the Tomb Raider, if you select software render, you can see that during walking that the walls are moving a little bit. It is because the software render they made, is using integer calculation exclusively (no floating point - because it is to expensive or maybe not supported). So sometimes during math calculations the rounding of the integer numbers make the artifacts, thus the polygons of objects/walls moving a little.

[@Synthematix]

Ive never owned any socket7 stuff, but i remember at the time they were pretty good, think the oldest cpu i owned was a duron

[@fanprocar]

Your voice is calming when you talk about computers CPUs etc

[@retropuffer2986]

Your recent 90s era PC vids are really triggering old memories! 😁

[@tofuguru941]

It's always a great day when PCL uploads a vid! Love me some Socket 7. My heart will always be with the Gigabyte GA-5AX Rev 5.2. Still have mine with a K6III+ 500Mhz APZ 1.8v running 115fsb, 633Mhz @ 2.2v Beast of a machine and can hang with the slower PIII's in some instances.

[@madson-web]

Those AMD K6 are such a pretty processors.

[@AmstradExin]

If he means Mode X as in programmed VGA modes, I think Doom is fully VGA compliant and Quake has 'Mode X' support.

[@FizzoDizzo]

Thank you, Phil. Cheers from Singapore. 🎉🎉

[@philscomputerlab]

Beautiful country! I've been at your airport a few times recently, connecting flights. I always go to the 7-11 there 😊

[@billyjackswildamerica6326]

When you dropped that K63+ in there .... I was just waiting for the Crysis boot screen.....

[@philscomputerlab]

🤣

[@mxthunder2]

very intresting results! would be interesting to see comparison of P MMX 233 vs K6 233 vs K6-2 233 vs K6-2+ clocked at 233

[@dallesamllhals9161]

Only if in Quake II with the 3DNow! patch...

[@philscomputerlab]

😝

[@peterilling1627]

Awesome video Phil brings back old. Memories. Setting up my old Unreal Tornament server running old Pentuim 3 a d voodoo 3 3000 graphics .Cheers from Turkey mate.

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks for the greetings from Turkey 😁 Pentium 3 and Voodoo 3 is beautiful.

[@davidp4456]

I love maxing out my old PC’s, just because I can. It often requires a few tricks to make it work, but that’s all part of the challenge.

[@el_yemo]

😊 This is a really cool video. I do miss my old pentium 3 rig, the good old voodoo 3 was the best. Man, I miss those days.

[@djpirtu2]

I'm using Asus TX97-XE with 256MB memory. Motherboard's own cache is disabled, not stable @83MHz bus speed AND because of that cacheable memory limitation but CPU deals that problem: AMD K6-III+/500 which can cache all the memory. Running 83x6=500. By the way, those S3-speedup tools works with VLB-cards too. Used those in nineties with my 486DX2/90 with S3 Vision864 VLB. Duke Nukem 3D was running smoothly!

[@philscomputerlab]

Ah nice to hear that information about VLB.

[@DarkLordValmar]

I love those IDE to SATA adapters, $10 all day in stock at MicroCenter, I bought all of them they had in the store (I love supporting the few remaining B&M stores that sell the kind of stuff we use)

[@elmonte5lim]

Ooh! THAT brings back some memories. The first PC I built had a FIC mobo an S3 Virge and a K6-2/350, almost thirty years ago. Then a K6-III+ and a Voodoo 3. Night and day! Now, I'm about to build my first in sixteen years - and I'm a bit apprehensive. I miss Win 98! But at least I won't need to heat my flat this winter.

[@philscomputerlab]

What's your take on the S3 Virge?

[@elmonte5lim]

@@philscomputerlabBlimey! Now you're asking. It was so long ago - I'd barely graduated from my ZX-80. It seemed adequate for day to day. I had no luck with it playing games. I played 'Wing Commander Prophecy' - eventually, with the Voodoo 3. With the Virge, it would freeze the system at the same point each time and I'd have to reboot. I quickly gave it up as a bad job and saved my pennies up for the Voodoo 3 - the Virge is probably still in the same box I put it in to forget about. But then, I barely knew what I was doing. Oh well.

[@MBDB666]

Thank You Phil, for all the deep dives into the various CPU's, Mobo's, Graphics, and Sound Cards over the years. Your insight, testing, tips, tricks, and references are greatly appreciated. You have helped many enthusiasts extend the life of these products, and bring back some happy memories. I wish you nothing but continued success in your channel and once again, Thank You! 😀👍

[@philscomputerlab]

Much appreciated! More to come 😁

[@arcticfox04]

I remember my AOpen 430TX board. With a K6300 and a Savage 4. First build such good memories.

[@SUCRA]

Great experiment, Phil. Like yourself I recommend getting whatever cheap components you can get and work around that. I particularly like pentium 4s, down here in Brazil you can still get them cheap.

[@philscomputerlab]

Pentium 4 is life!

[@ColdSphinX]

12:00 this would be a low pass filter, passing the low and filtering the high frequencies.

[@philscomputerlab]

My bad...

[@eletro_doc9529]

This reminds me of childhood times when we had those ancient machines our parents bought 5 or 6 years ago and were struggling to run a recent title. All of tweaking and switching weren't enough. hahah

[@Cypher321]

If I'm building a workhorse computer then I tend to try to max out the hardware so I can cover my bases as much as possible. That being said, I rarely do this anymore since I have my workhorse systems already and so I typically do themed builds now such as the best hardware for a certain time period, extreme compatibly for an OS, or building around a unique piece of hardware. Phil, I'd be interested in seeing some videos on those ISA video cards you mentioned. I usually start at PCI and so I'd be curious to get a glimpse into that world.

[@Vile-Flesh]

Pentium 200MMX was my daily PC from 1998 to 2005 with the same exact installation of Win95 which became severely bloated and corrupt. I didn't realize till over a decade later that it was a Asus super socket 7 board with 75mhz and 83mhz FSB settings. I still have the computer buried under a mountain of other stuff in my house.

[@GigAHerZ64]

You can install more than 64MB of ram. Just use XMS ramdisk on the top of the memory with the size so that only 64MB of lower memory is left to use. ;)

[@krz8888888]

I love socket 7!

[@lemagreengreen]

With Quake I think you're hitting a combination of engine and video limits regardless of CPU. Software renderer can only work so fast and you're close to 60fps in all cases, I'm not sure there's much more to have without switching to a hardware accelerated mode. I had almost forgotten Socket 7 was able to support these 400MHz K6-2's, I always associate the K6-2 with Super Socket 7 and the 100MHz FSB models but these 400MHz and below chips were fantastic, affordable upgrades for Pentium MMX machines that weren't ready to upgrade to Slot 1.

[@RuruFIN]

Gotta love Socket 7 with its huge compatibility over different CPUs. :)

[@BloodiTearz]

Hi Phil, great video, your content never gets old.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

You're correct about memory addressing in DOS and Windows. Back in the day you could kind of work around the 64MB cache limit by creating a RAM drive and then setting the swap file to that. This worked better in Linux because it supported a staged swap configuration where it would exhaust the RAM drive first and then start using hard drive swap space. Of course you could also replace the TAG RAM chip but those were rare even at the time. Can't imagine how much such a thing would cost now.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

OH! You know a bit about Linux on HW from these good ol' days? I'd like to try that on my Iwill P55XB2.

[@GGigabiteM]

It's better and faster to have all of the system memory be addressable and available, rather than making a RAM disk and storing a swap file in it. The CPU can't execute code or use data directly from the swap file, it has to be copied back into system memory first. If you end up in a situation where the main system memory is exhausted, you can enter swap hell. This is where the system goes into an endless cycle fever pitch of swapping back and forth because it can't find a large enough chunk of contiguous memory free to do some operation, and there's no sanity check to say "I've run out of memory, I need to forcibly close something to continue functioning." Swap hell used to not be a thing. Windows XP and prior had checks in place to determine if too much memory was trying to be used, and would warn the user about it. Windows Vista and onward got rid of that. Linux is the same story, more modern Linux distributions can get stuck, especially "live cd" versions. You run out of RAM disk and the thing just packs up and dies. Having more memory available, even if it's slower memory, is better than no memory. On NUMA systems, this is a fact of life.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

@@GGigabiteM Do you have experience with this configuration? Exceeding 64MB was a death sentence to performance. It was in no way "better even if slower". Using RAM as a RAM drive or swap was a way to get at least something out of it. Most people got into this situation due to not knowing about the limit rather than purposely engaging it. Anyone making an informed decision would have either verified that the TAG RAM supported the full 512 MB or have sprung for a Pentium Pro or, later, Pentium II. >64MB on Triton motherboards was the domain of people trying to stretch their purchase into the mid-to-late Windows 98 era and running into unexpected issues.

[@GGigabiteM]

​@@dycedargselderbrother5353 I've been a system builder since the early 90s, so yes, I have experience with it. To start with, MS-DOS 6.22 and lower never supported more than 64 MB of RAM, so even if you had more than that, it could never be used, even for a RAM disk. Such a configuration required Windows 95/NT at minimum. Second, such ludicrous amounts of memory in the mid 90s was entirely unrealistic. The average machine only had 8-16 MB, with some approaching 32 MB. And those "high memory" configurations cost thousands of dollars extra. 512 MB was entirely unrealistic and unheard of outside high performance servers, and no desktop Windows OS supported that properly until Windows 2000. You say "Late Windows 98 era", are you talking about going into the mid 2000s? Because Windows 98 was supported up until 2006. Trying to shoehorn 512 MB into an ancient Triton board, even at that time was just pushing technology farther than it was ever intended to. Windows 98 was also so wasteful with resources that it was really pointless to go that high, plus you start running into weird internal OS limitations that affected stability. And I still say that more memory is better, even if it's slower. Especially for Windows 98, because such ridiculous amounts of memory were almost never utilized. I remember some of my final Windows 98 machines having 256 MB and I never had problems with running out of memory.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

@@GGigabiteM You don't seem to understand the technology being discussed. TAG RAM isn't literal RAM. TAG RAM controlled how much of the memory could be cached. Most commonly the amount was 64 MB. The next most common was 512 MB. There may have been intermediate steps, but I don't remember them. Having TAG RAM that supported up to 512 MB didn't mean you were forced to install 512 MB RAM. Few motherboards even supported that. But if you wanted something like 96 or 128 MB, amounts commonly seen during the K6 era, you needed 512 MB support to properly utilize it. That or replace the motherboard. This was primarily an issue with the i430 line, though some of the Super 7 chipsets had similar issues. It was not a problem otherwise, e.g. with the previously mentioned Pentium Pro, II, III, or 4. Or Athlons for that matter.

[@youtubewzd2196]

Interesting addendum to what Phil said about the max RAM capacity. My first PC was a P166MMX which I bought at the time with 32 MB of RAM.. I later upgraded to 64 MB of RAM and was even able to overclock my CPU to 233 MHz without any issues and it ran pretty nicely. When I upgraded it later to 256 MB it dropped in performance like crazy under Windows 98SE but surprisingly under Linux it worked like a charm and I was able to access everything without any problems. I later learned that it was a caching issue like he mentioned.

[@StrangelyIronic]

These days, I have a lot more fun pushing budget or older hardware than just maxed out best of the best. I haven't really built a retro computer in a while, I still have my Apple IIGS and Mac IIci, both loaded, working great. I got those past their time as a kid in the late 90s as gifts (hints fully loaded with period parts, they both were used at a printing place my Uncle worked at and cost wasn't an issue when buying/maintaining them... then they chucked them in the bin). This build is interesting, would be neat to see a faster bus board, even if you'd probably just be better off with a P3 or P4 setup like you mentioned at the end. Thankfully, with certain tech like upscaling with FidelityFX from AMD, we can kind of go back to the era of pushing budget/older hardware again, at least for games anyway. I say FidelityFX (and Intel's option I suppose) over DLSS because it doesn't require specific training or extra lifting from the developers, so it's generally easier to implement. My current test rig uses is using the RX580 8GB card I used for so many years before my current 6800XT. I miss playing with config files and consoles, but at least upscaling gives some life to the older/lower power/cost cards.

[@philscomputerlab]

Great point about these modern scaling technologies. Some work well with old games like custom resolution, virtual super resolution and high refresh rates. I played Far Cry on a 144 Hz panel and it was so smooth.

[@TheDuumiMuumi]

Interesting video! I started my computer hobby with Socket 7 system.

[@another3997]

Ah, socket 7... you started with the modern stuff. You're still a newbie. 😉 Back in my day we had 8 bit CPUs with Kilobytes of RAM, cassette tape as storage, and if you had a floppy disk drive, the disks were actually floppy. Meanwhile , my stepfather reminds me that back in "his day", computers were the size of a small housing estate, and used punched cards. At school they didn't have calculators, they used slide rules.😂 How quickly things change.

[@ashleyjwilliamshand]

Long-Format-Phil is killing it. Slightly different vibe that still hits. Analitical vs Analitical Narative Essay? Love the farmilliar comfort watching the older music infused videos bring, but I really dig the slower paced, narrative driven, and longer runtime videos as well. Good job on all fronts!

[@philscomputerlab]

I have to read up on what you say. Writing and speaking is something I actually struggle with, could be because if dislexia. So I just make notes as dit points and freely talk around them. I found that works well for me even if I stumble words or not as neatly.

[@ashleyjwilliamshand]

@@philscomputerlab Haven't missed a upload since late 2017 (I think), and by your videos, you wouldn't know you're fighting the conditions effects.

[@registrazioniduemillaotton6030]

Great video as usual Phil! Thanks :)

[@MDCrabTank]

Those Samsung S23/24C450 and C650-s monitors are just superb for their age

[@SneakiestDuke68]

Very useful video. Maybe I will return to my socket 7 motherboard and try it again with these tweaking. I will waiting for video about ISA gpus.

[@savagemadman2054]

I remember overlocking my 430TX board's FSB to 75/83MHz. An Asus board I think? Was a huge difference from 66MHz for the K6-2+. Eventually the board was replaced with a super socket 7 board for AGP and even better performance.

[@xenon2Merchant]

Very cool, love those retro tunings. I've had Soltek Super 7 mobo, I was able to run K-62 400 (sadly was not able to afford K6-III+ etc) with 112 FSB.

[@dougtemple8474]

I think utilizing a K6 of any kind is a great idea, then you have the ability to run some of the Windows games that need some CPU power behind them, but with setmul you could always slow the CPU down considerably. That's how I would go about it!

[@OzzFan1000]

Personally, I enjoy maxing out my systems as much as I can. If I need to run something more speed sensitive, I just use one of my slower machines. I have run into situations with some of my machines where if I install the maximum amount of RAM, other problems have cropped up. For example, I have a Super Socket 7 system that can support up to 512MB of RAM, however putting that much in caused the system to refuse to boot Windows Me (though it was working fine under Windows 98SE). On different system, I have a Socket 4 Pentium 60MHz Packard Bell that supports up to 192MB of RAM, however , putting in more than 64MB causes issues with the Packard Bell ISA sound card.

[@Malheirods]

I'm fairly confident in your motherboard supporting 75MHz FSB speed.

[@philscomputerlab]

Maybe undocumented setting?

[@xXBeefyDjXx]

Nice video, and great tip about double checking the chipset too! I came into performance issues when I maxed out my Packard Bell Multimedia Socket 7 board. Interposed K6-III because that motherboard doesn't have a properly adjustable VRM (can't use anything other than Pentium none MMX without overvolting) 64mb RAM no problem, however I find that because the K6-III has an extra level of cache, it tends to run up to 128mb better than say, a P1 MMX with 128mb. Paired with a Voodoo 1, it is my go-to Win95 rig for sure and it's a great trip down memory lane, albeit at the time as a kid I hadn't a clue about PC Gaming and used to just tinker with the built in software :P

[@zord0nTV]

Quake results are so interesting! Imagine this nowadays. People would be fuming about no performance boost despite higher clock speeds and more cache ;)

[@another3997]

My original assumption was the S3 graphics card being the bottleneck, or the 66 Mhz FSB, as all the CPUs came out with the same numbers, within a small margin of error... until the last one. Which is strange. Nowadays a lot of younger people have no idea about bus speeds, cache, clock multipliers or even different CPU architectures. 🙄

[@mdrumt]

Love me some retro goodness!

[@philscomputerlab]

The best!

[@Trick-Framed]

I played it through on a Sega Saturn. Great game. The PC version was the best looking imo.

[@nihilyst]

Ha :-) tried exactly that experiment myself recently. Even used a Gigabyte Board (586TX3). I must admit, I sort of share your findings on this one. It was super interesting to see what could be done with going with higher and higher rated CPUs but the performance gain was not as much as I expected. I am glad that I didn´t try that back in the day when this was not just a hobby and I actually NEEDED a faster PC 🙂. In 1999 I jus twent with a new mainboard and a then fresh and strong Athlon Slot A instead and was very happy. But just as you said once: this is a great hobby to do just such experiments to see how all these "what if" experiments turn out. So much fun.

[@ironhead2008]

The K6-2 family's big party trick (and why a rig like this still might make sense) big party trick is that software tweakable multiplier and tweakable cache. You can REALLY slow this thing down on the fly on this board, down to 386 levels. Phil's done a few videos on that subject. Early PCI nVidia cards can still be had for less than obnoxious prices, as can the occasional Voodoo 1. Also, a setup like this might be good for playing around with early 3D cards with proprietary APIs like the ViRGE, ATI Rage Pro Turbo, and the Rendition Verite. A lot of those cards were horribly bottlenecked by the CPUs of the time and would benefit from a faster more advanced CPU (and some judicious overclocking in the ViRGE's case, those things had hilariously conservative clocks from the factory).

[@chrisrudi7162]

I also have two K6 systems. The first with K6/3 450 on Gigabyte GA-586STX2 (one of the first ATX Boards from 1997) and 128 MB SD-RAM. It would go up to 384 MB, but the performance is poor because only 128 MB are cached. Graphics card is a Radeon 9250 PCI 128 with 3dfx Voodoo 1 card. The second is Super Socket 7 with K6-3+ 550 @ 600 CPU. Graphics card Radeon 9800 Pro and 768 MB RAM.

[@davidp4456]

9800 pro? I thought the best compatible AGP card you could put in SS7 was the Radeon 9700pro (that’s what have in mine). Do you think these high end cards are bottled necked and wasted on SS7 and that you can achieve the same with a lower spec’d card? But which one is optimal, and above which there is no point in going? I have a 9800XT somewhere. I should check to see if it’s compatible.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

'Radeon 9250 PCI 128' YAY! Another "cheater" here! Metoo 😂

[@chrisrudi7162]

@@davidp4456 Yes, it's true, the CPU is actually far too slow for the card, but it was the best it could be. And then I thought to myself, "Build yourself a high-end Socket 7 system." I can't spontaneously say that it also depends on the chipset. There are Via, Ali, Sis in the segment and everyone has different characteristics. Some are not compatible with every graphics card. It works yes. I have a Via chipset on the board.

[@chrisrudi7162]

@@dallesamllhals9161 Yes, I bought two of these a while ago. One sold both together for 10 euros. Was a good purchase... But 1920 x 1080 Px isn't really fun with the K6 😵 The machine is just too slow for that.

[@Choralone422]

Great video! I think your results with the K6-2 400MHz on a 66 MHz FSB illustrate one reason why Intel abandoned the socket 7 platform when they did in favor of slot 1 where they could place the L2 on CPU card and bypass the FSB until the time they had the tech & yields to integrate the L2 into the CPU die itself. The 66 MHz FSB on socket 7 starts to choke performance when you get beyond a 3.5x or 4x multiplier. Boosting the FSB to 100 MHz in the Super Socket 7 boards helped and putting the L2 on the CPU package itself as the K6-2+ and K6-3 chips did helped a bit more. By the time those CPUs were released in spring of 1999 I had been enjoying the overclocking monster that was the Celeron 300A with it's full CPU speed L2 on a slot 1 based Abit BH6 board for many months.

[@philscomputerlab]

You are right. These CPUs start really flying when you crank FSB past 100 MHz...

[@johncate9541]

Absolutely. The K6-2 even on a Super-7 board at 100 MHz bus speed was bottlenecked by the slow L2 cache on the motherboard when you got above 400 MHz. I never recommended that CPU above 400. The K6-III was another story entirely. It would gain performance in a linear fashion because its L2 was running at full speed and would gain even more if you raised the bus over 100. When the K6-2+ and K6-III+ mobile chips, both with full-speed L2, showed up, you could get some crazy performance and overclocks. The holy grail was to get one working on an FIC PA-2013 at 6*124 (744 MHz) with the 2MB of L3 on the motherboard. (800 MHz was theoretically possible on an Aladdin 7 board, but those didn't support cache on the motherboard.) A few people did. I had the older VA-503+ with 1 MB L3 and got to 616 (5.5*112) on a K6-III+ 450. It was my primary rig for about a year and a half before I went to the 1.4 GHz Athlon. I did use these CPUs in a few laptops that only supported 66 MHz FSB. Because of the on-chip L2, it was completely viable to run them at 6*66 without a severe performance penalty.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

More power!!

[@weepingscorpion8739]

I was always fascinated by the K6-III+ but we went with a Pentium III machine. I recently however was able to get my hands on one so now I am just looking for a case so I can get the K6-III+ machine built. I have plans to put a Voodoo 3 in it. Yes, I know that the machine will likely bottleneck the V3 but for high end gaming I have Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon machines. Also, Tomb Raider is being remastered so it will be available on modern systems. I still want to try it on a DOS PC with the Voodoo patch, however. :)

[@philscomputerlab]

Seeing Tomb Raider running on Voodoo silky smooth. Nothing will top that experience. It was literally seeing the future arrived at your home.

[@sjogosPT]

@@philscomputerlab Tomb Raider on pentium 3 1000mhz is silky smoth and with better image quality than voodoo. I tried a voodoo and picture quality was quite poor.

[@Trick-Framed]

It seemed so simple back then. Games were good. Hardware was dropping in price. I miss that.

[@another3997]

Yes, it was simple. Technology was moving so fast, your CPU and graphics card were simply guaranteed to be obsolete the month after you bought it. Your DOS games would simply require editing your config.sys and autoexec.bat files, and you'd simply have to decide which IRQ went to which hardware, whether to enable DMA or not, and occasionally, you simply bang your head against a wall trying to figure out why it simply isn't working properly. 😉

[@philscomputerlab]

🤣 32MB RAM: Your machine doesn't have enough conventional memory to run this game... Fun times.

[@Trick-Framed]

@@philscomputerlab I never thought of those things as a bad time. Forced me to think. Forced me to read manuals. Forced me onto BBSes. And BBSes were always fun. Slow as they were.

[@Trick-Framed]

@another3997 I miss modding autoexec.bat files. I used to make installation discs for friends that didn't know their way around DOS. I miss that. IRQ was easy. Make sure the right card is in the right slot, and your jumpers are set correctly. As for 32mb not being enough? Only if you are using mixed mode memory.

[@jwoody8815]

AMD K6-2+ 550MHz (@ 600MHz) "Little Tooth" on a Super Socket 7, my last update to my K6-2 before I moved to an Athlon MP 1800+, the K6 series were famous for running on boards they werent really designed for.

[@philscomputerlab]

Nice!

[@rodhester2166]

Tomb Raider, one of my favorite games, I still have the original 5 games in their big boxes. Also have the playstation games

[@dallesamllhals9161]

9:13 YAY! My IWILL P55XB2 is on the list 🙂

[@philscomputerlab]

Awesome 😎

[@dallesamllhals9161]

@@philscomputerlab ..SEMI-Awesome! it's a Rev.1.21 = Do you know AC/DC: High Voltage? 😕 (Poor little K6-2 300MHzAFR@400Mhz back in the days)

[@captainwasel8377]

I always enjoy watching your videos, keep up the great work Phil.

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks 👍

[@captainwasel8377]

@@philscomputerlab you're welcome 😁 looking forward to see more retro parts.

[@registrazioniduemillaotton6030]

Love those Intel i430TX motherboards! Excellent period correct boards for the right price can give so much performance for MS-DOS but also Windows 95/98!

[@dallesamllhals9161]

And then there's "cheaters" like me: Radeon 9250 PCI instead of my org. ET6000* 😛 *Don't worry i still have it ;-)

[@another3997]

​@@dallesamllhals9161People who cheat are called "cheats". An individual who cheats is called "a cheat". Cheetahs are big cats, and surprisingly, they aren't known to cheat. There are plenty of PCI graphics cards that support DOS and Windows 95/98, so sticking with period correct hardware isn't usually necessary... unless you have a game that specifically requires a particular card or if there's no Glide wrapper for it.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

@@another3997 Sry' West-Jute(DK) here. No spek engrish! ..did I write it: like i'm ashamed?!? I ♥ CPU-bottlenecks ≥ GPU-bottlenecks - to this day! EDIT: Oh, right...my '98 Voodoo² IS - of course - stil there. Iwill P55XB2 = 5 PCI slots 🙂

[@wettuga2762]

Interesting to see how different CPUs and settings/software impact the performance so much. I actually go for the easier route and simply use overpowered CPUs, like a Pentium III (100Mhz bus) for Windows 3.11/95/NT4, a Pentium 4/Athlon XP for Windows 98/2000 and a Xeon E5450 for XP/7. I also use slightly overpowered GPUs when possible while trying to "obey the laws" of period correctiveness.

[@rodhester2166]

Such a great video. thanks

[@clintcolombin]

I have a baby AT similar to this, the GA-586AT3. the limited FSB is horrible. those K6-2 & 3 processors really need to be on a board with faster fsb options.

[@WaybackTECH]

Of course from a practical stand point, I agree with your recommendation. Enthusiast stand point it is fun to max things out and try different combinations just to see what will happen. K6-2 was used by Evergreen for upgrade cpu's and I think that is the real reason for the 2x multiplier hack that AMD made. Kind of not something I remember them broadcasting to the world at that time.

[@randomexcessmemories4452]

I personally follow the "if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing" school of thought. I hope to one day have a retro build for every era, each as maxxed-out as I can possibly make them. It's just more fun that way! To me, at least.

[@philscomputerlab]

Do it! It's a great hobby and will fill you with joy.

[@BittiPomo]

the prices have risen lot since 2014-2015 when i was hunting parts from secondhand stores locally in finland (examples pentium MMX any model were 0.2 euro and 2d card 1-4 euro)

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes. Cheap parts right now are from the 775 era. Core 2 Duo and PCIe graphics cards.

[@jak8274]

The Sold Out release indeed doesn't include the audio tracks. The music and in-game cutscene audio are redbook CD tracks and that version in particular doesn't include them.

[@philscomputerlab]

How did that slip past QA? Mind boggling.

[@RetroGamingNook]

I agree it’s a hassle. GOG should support those of us still gaming on original hardware. Older GOG installers had more of the original files to assist with older system installs.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea it's a shame. And who knows how long archive.org remains up and running...

[@mbwoods2001]

I have 2 compaq pc's, a prolinea 4/33(a 486 sx/33) which upgraded to dx2/66, and a deskpro 200mmx also upgraded to 233mmx, only a little speed bump there!😂 Whenever if i get a pc, i always check to see whats the fastest cpu that the mobo can take and then I'll buy the chip and fit it.😁

[@rebeccaschade3987]

I wonder how these CPUs would have performed on the Asus TX97-X motherboard. That's also a TX-chipset board, but it can do 75MHz bus, and in some cases 83MHz as well, although I never managed to make that stable back in the day. I did run my K6 200 at 225MHz with 75MHz bus though, and it made a noticeable difference in performance. In my system I had upgraded from an S3 Trio 64V+ to a Matrox Mystique 220 and a bit later I added a Voodoo 2 8MB. It was a really nice system, and that Asus motherboard was super stable despite running at an unofficial bus speed.

[@philscomputerlab]

The higher FSB will give you a nice performance boost approaching Super Socket 7 levels...

[@superchief64]

I have a Trident 512k ISA video card that I put into a Pentium III system just for fun and wow it really did slow things down quite a bit. I look forward to your upcoming video on that subject! :D

[@razorsz195]

Hopefully when i find an AT case i plan to base it around K6, i feel its overshadowed by super socket 7 and prices can shoot up where a pentium 3 is cheaper to get into, though i remember my dad saying while the 486 PC aged that he wished he had this "K6" processor and reading up about it, it was big, K5 is also interesting and usually forgotten and would be nice to compare it to its successor and the platform it replaced. I just bought an ATI Mach 64 2MB and i think a 200-266Mhz K6 will be a nice machine so i can run the resolution higher and can always manually adjust the multiplier :)

[@philscomputerlab]

Yup you nailed it. AT boards without AGP get shunned. But they are a nice upgrade for an older 486 system for example and more flexible.

[@kjrchannel1480]

Jumpers were good given you could get the right voltage and be able to use any CPU for the same socket back then. It was up to the user to make them supported more or less. Not a complicated bios code.

[@idahofur]

Funny how socket 7 lived on into atx boards to support other processors.

[@LuisGuzmanJr]

I love this video content from you. Very informative! I prefer to have a period balanced system that is just right for DOS gaming and, in the case of Socket 5 motherboards, Windows 95.

[@FA-vc3hq]

Would be an interesting video to compare performance on VIA VP3/ MVP3 platform

[@h.b_h.b]

Games released by Sold Out Software are often heavily modified, music may be missing, the installer may contain additional DRM protection, video files may be cut or of much lower quality (so that two CDs fit on one), official patches often do not fit. In general, it's best to avoid games from the Sold Out series.

[@O.Shawabkeh]

Interesting, thank you

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes and it's annoying when you old find out later...

[@Olivyay]

Sweet memories. I also had a 430TX, originally bought in 1997 with a K6-233, then upgraded to a K6-2 running at 400 MHz with the secret 6x multiplier which provided quite a performance boost in general use, unfortunately not so much in games. The absence of AGP also limited the choices of graphics card upgrades; I chose a GeForce 2 MX, my brother with the same platform went for a Voodoo3 which was a better choice. It still served me well until I had the money to buy a Socket A system.

[@AtariBorn]

What's up Phil? Loving the content. You gotta play around with some Cyrix CPUs. It's the one avenue I never explored back in the day.

[@philscomputerlab]

Hey nice seeing a proper comment from you 😁 I do have a few Chris CPUs. They are actually more collectible and therefore often more expensive but don't offer anything amazing to the table 😂 For sure something I can cover...

[@whiskeyjuliet]

Very interesting video Phil, I don't know about "maxing out" retro systems but I defiantly enjoy tuning them up to get the most out of what I have. Super Socket 7 / AMD K6 is a really interesting combination too loads of ways to get more out of what you have. Write Combining, cherry picking drivers, getting the DOS memory management just right, AMD's 3DNow! optimised executables for many games. Great tips on the max cacheable memory too, got to love the ALi Aladdin V chipset for having such a large amount of cacheable RAM and AGP ports!

[@philscomputerlab]

You are 👍 Socket 7 is retro life

[@yorgle11]

Interesting how the filtering is different with those sound options. From what I've read the Sound Blaster Pro has a low pass filter, but it's different depending on the version of the card. Maybe the ESS card doesn't have a filter, so they added a software filter for that card? Or maybe it does have a filter, but the code to control it is different from Sound Blaster, and that's the option that was compatible with the card you're using.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea it's interesting. Afaik the SB Pro has a filter and in many cards you can toggle it through software.

[@TurboMMaster]

Makes you wonder how this kind of pushed Socket 7 machine will run Heroes of Might and Magic III - I remember that game runned terribly on my Pentium 166MMX :D

[@logipilot]

I have an 8-bit xt-class vga isa card. Perfect for 286 games on a pentium 3 ;)

[@Pholiage]

I have a Socket 7 machine also based on the 430TX chipset. I have a P200Mhz MMX in it along with 64megs of ram. I recently picked up a CT3670 Awe32 and fully populated the memory banks to 28megs. The high mem soundfonts sound awesome in games. I believe you should just make a system separately if you want to play more modern titles (post win 98). Games were made for the older hardware so many times it's either incompatible or just doesn't work at all. I understand that not everyone has the room for multiple machines. But then I would recommend PCemu or something similar.

[@another3997]

To be honest, for most people, the best option for playing old games is still virtualisation or emulation. Buying and maintaining old hardware is expensive, time consuming and takes up a lot of space. Obviously if someone is interested in the hardware itself, that's another matter, but nostalgia is often for the software, not what it runs on.

[@Pholiage]

@@another3997 Yeah that is true. But I like to tinker. So I don't mind the investment of finding parts etc. I managed to score some new old stock parts from a collector. So the mentioned system I have is mostly unused. I also managed to find a complete unopened IBM Aptiva Pentium II system with monitor and peripherals. But it's in storage atm as I don't space on my "retro" desk. So I have move the system I have there in order to make room. So yeah it's a hassle. But when you fancy playing old stuff it's worth it. RIght now I am heavily into Worms 1. Just something about the first game :)

[@philscomputerlab]

At least for more demanding Windows 9x games, emulation isn't a good option yet. PCem needs the highest CPU to emulate a Pentium II. For DOS though I agree with you. Many of us enjoy playing with the hardware as much, or even more, than actually gaming 😊

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes, mucking around with the hardware is what I enjoy most. I do like playing the games but for me it's the hardware action that gives me the most joy when working in the lab.

[@flightsimdeskuk]

I agree with your conclusion. Pentium MMX for older DOS games. Pentium III for later DOS games and Win98. Pentium 4 also good for Win98. Win XP I have an early i7 with GTX 750 Ti

[@dallesamllhals9161]

Never had AMD have you?

[@flightsimdeskuk]

@dallesamllhals9161 Of course I have. Most of my PCs over the years were AMD. Including my current one. I Was simply agreeing with Phil to leave the MMX for the early DOS stuff (and AMD has no equivalent that offers the same flexibility) and use the faster platforms (whether that be AMD or Intel) for the more advanced games. That said for Win98 though I have found Intel chipsets to be more compatible than AMD chipsets. For WinXP Athlon 64 kinda runs out of steam for later games, and Intel was clearly beating AMD once they came out with the Core series processors. AMD is a good option for most retro builds. Indeed in some cases performance is better. Do what you want to do really. I have both

[@dallesamllhals9161]

@@flightsimdeskuk I stand corrected! ☮? EDIT: "For WinXP Athlon 64 kinda runs out of steam for later games" Mnaaah! Opteron 180 here in '06! No loss of steam way into Win 7 years!

[@dexterpedroche]

Ladies and gentlemen, come with us on a wondrous journey back to an amazing time when Intel and AMD shared the same socket and motherboard!

[@electrofreak0]

Just letting folks know a Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered was announced yesterday for Switch

[@krnivoro1972]

Maybe having a Super Socket 7 with a Pentium MMX and swapping to a K6-"X" when needed, is not a bad idea for a DOS/Win98 era PC. You can have both worlds in the same machine. Old (speed sensitive) games with the MMX (Setmul tweaked), and the K6-2/2+/3 with 100 MHz FSB when you want to run more "modern"games. Changing the processor often can be a pain in the neck, but using a thermal pad makes it easier now. I've tested Pentium II and III and they are not suitable for speed sensitive games, even downclocking or disabling caches and stuff. They keep being too fast, or the game freezes, like Monkey Island.

[@krnivoro1972]

I might add: Generally Pentium MMX have the heatsink glued to the processor, so it's even easier to insert and remove.

[@memadmax69]

If I remember correctly, the amount of cacheable ram was actually determined by the size of the L2 cache.

[@Super123456789Kuba]

To me Socket 7/Super Socket 7 platform is very fascinating to me... And Pentium IIIs, Athlon XPs, and Athlon 64s are better, sure, but for me it's always a thing to wonder, like how the K6-2 could handle running something like Mobil 1 British Rally Championship (1999), since on a game box they mention the K6-2 as their minimum CPU to run it. Or how it could handle Quake III, or UT99. But the Pentium MMX is also good for my bucket list of old DOS games that I haven't played yet. So that being said - I would love to see a video about maxing out The Super Socket 7 Motherboard. Curious to see how's that performing.

[@sjogosPT]

The plataforms you mentioned are great platforms. I have a special love for Pentium 3 because they are pretty damn fast and very compatible with alot of games from DOS to early XP Era. Same on Athlon XP if you have a motherboard with ISA slot. The only problem is the speed sentitive games, but i think the best way is to have a really fast machine (pentium 3 or athlon with a ISA slot) and see whats not runing. Then make a slower machine for these games. I think is fascinating "playing" with hardware. I find myself enjoying playing arround with hardware than actually playing games xD.

[@MagicManfred]

Great video, loved the incremental CPU upgrades! Also totally agree that a Slot 1 or Slot A system would still demolish this, but for the people who can only have one "authentic" retro system, I think it would be most exciting to see how far this could still improved with some significantly better graphics card from the time, like a Riva TNT2 or even Geforce 2, Radeon SDR/DDR, Savage 4 or something like that. Are you planning something like this?

[@philscomputerlab]

What you'll find is that many 3D games still require a decent CPU. Some graphics cards do better in a low CPU environment, especially Voodoo and early NVIDIA cards with early drivers.

[@MagicManfred]

@@philscomputerlab While it's true that any socket 7 CPU will bottleneck in 3D games, that S3 Trio64 won't even show the true extent of your CPU upgrades, there's clearly still room for more FPS in that system. A Riva TNT2 for example will of course not produce the same FPS here as it would in a Pentium 3 system, but you would definitely see measurable performance improvements over keeping the Trio64, that's why I asked.

[@zarkeh3013]

Used to sell those Voltage Regulator shim adapters and AMD K6 CPU in the day. It was a cheap way to get a pick-me-up before saving enough for the big next computer. Today, I like the idear of maxing out the odd piece, like a K6-iii+ in a laptop. Thnx AMD and other Socket 7 CPU makers! 'Twas a lot of fun until Intel went with a Slot One and later Rambus. **shrugs** old things are fun things but emulated things are fine too.

[@railsrust]

The biggest problems with going with higher performance is that you really start to lose compatibility with older software, and a lot of motherboards just simply will NOT accept the faster K6 processors. I think it's best to see basic Socket 7 as a platform that excels with DOS (especially with MMX), and that it just HAPPENS to be pretty good with early 3D. Best to pair either a Voodoo 1/2 or a PCI Voodoo Banshee and don't expect much more than that from it.

[@philscomputerlab]

Though at least with the mobile K6 you can set the multipliers through software. Let's you put it back to slow mode at a whim. Great to get under that Turbo Pascal speed bug...

[@sjogosPT]

Socket 7 is not good for 3D unless you like playing 320x200 or have a voodoo and games that support it. I tried tomb raider and quake and they suck on Pentium MMX (Software). Back in the day was great because it was all you had, but today is much better to play this games on a fast pentium 3. Pentium is great for other games, but not for software rendering titles in high resolution.

[@ironhead2008]

With the K6-3+ I have to wonder if the onboard L2 is more of a detriment. It'd be interesting to test it with 128 megs of ram and see if there's a change in performance with the 3+