I read that after the 440bx, the mainboard chipsets for intel processors had serious problems getting any real speed advantage over their predecessor.
See graph (it's compared to an overclocked 440bx though).

Via apollo pro 133A is not necessarily crap, I have one such board here (a plain chaintech 6aja4 clone I think) and it behaves nicely. Just one isa slot, it was the time these got out of fashion.

Yeah that graph basically spells out why 440BX became so famous with enthusiasts back then. It has excellent memory performance. Funny thing is that a 440BX overclocked to 133 MHz is still more stable than all of the Super 7 boards I've used are when at stock settings. 😀 Only the AGP bus gets overclocked cuz 440BX for some reason has a 1/4 PCI divider but no 1/2 AGP divider.

I'm sure that the problems with some VIA Apollo Pro boards are down to the board manufacturer. Lots of low quality boards built with VIA chipsets. BIOS writers who mess things all up and just poor quality circuitry. I once ran into an Apollo Pro mobo that was so bad that a PCI sound card just wouldn't work. Tons of static and slowdowns. Was just crazy. I installed the PCI Latency patch for VIA chipsets that's out there and it solved most of it. The chipset was programmed very improperly by the BIOS.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

There is a reason to go RAMBUS on the PIII. From what I recall back then if you wanted 133MHz FSB with an intel chipset, you pretty much had to use the i820 or i840. The i815 which came out later was gimped because you couldn't upgrade beyond 512mb. i840 can go to 2GB.

en.wikipedia.org wrote:

Ironically, the 440BX offered better performance than several of its successors. The i810 and i820 chipsets were unable to better the 440BX at the 100 MHz FSB speed. The i820 was plagued with a requirement for high cost RDRAM to reach good performance, along with a string of reliability issues involving an SDRAM-to-RDRAM memory translator hub. And, unofficially, the 440BX could often be taken to 133 MHz FSB.

As I recall Windows 98 with default processes running would sit on about 50MB & a system with over 512MB of RAM was unheard of, pointless..

Interesting gerwin, quite a difference in performance using different chipsets...old 440BX on top, I guess the 440BX is a bit of a legend 😀

There is no doubt about that. A while ago I jokingly reffered to the BX as a p.o.s.... and almost got kicked off the board.

It is just lately that I read about it. At the time (2000) our supplier wisely offered us a 440BX with coppermine CPU, that still runs without anyone complaining of slowness. And set with that one can nicely skip the next generation of mobo's+CPU's, which appear IMHO as: no more ISA slots, i8x0 rambus, hot and slow early Pentium 4's, KT133 and the leaking capacitor years.

Is there any potential problems using 2 Voodoo2 based cards from different manufactures in SLI?

No that shouldn't be a problem... a lot of the post 3Dfx drivers can handle it. Go to falconfly.de (its in english) and you will find most of them there. I think i'm using the fastvoodoo2 4.0 Gold Edition on my 98 partition. I would check for but i'm out of town and posting from my phone. Good luck and lets us know how it does.

P.S

Did you ever figure out what your gonna sub that banshee for? 😉

prophase_j wrote:

Did you ever figure out what your gonna sub that banshee for? 😉

😁 Well I'd really like to give the Banshee a try, as I said I'd like to stick to 3DFX but if I have problems I would consider one of those dual processor ATI cards released in 99, vague, I know

You must be reffering to the ATi Rage Fury MAXX. They used AFR, or Alternate Frame Rendering; it was their answer to 3Dfx's SLI. AFAIK it worked okay, although its pretty much worhtless unless your running 98 since the design of the NT kernal simply won't allow you to access both GPU's on the AGP bus. I stll think you would do good with a TNT2.

prophase_j wrote:

You must be reffering to the ATi Rage Fury MAXX. They used AFR, or Alternate Frame Rendering; it was their answer to 3Dfx's SLI. AFAIK it worked okay, although its pretty much worhtless unless your running 98 since the design of the NT kernal simply won't allow you to access both GPU's on the AGP bus. I stll think you would do good with a TNT2.

Well I have a TNT2 lying around it's just that they sooo common.

TNT2's are pretty good cards. You could also go with a Geforce2 GTS like I had mentioned before. Even the MX versions aren't too bad. I suppose you could go with a Radeon too.. but speaking from experience a 7000 isn't far off the voodoo's.. aside from 32bit color. If it was me, I would go with Geforce4 4200 and on non-glide stuff crank the AA up.

prophase_j wrote:

TNT2's are pretty good cards. You could also go with a Geforce2 GTS like I had mentioned before. Even the MX versions aren't too bad. I suppose you could go with a Radeon too.. but speaking from experience a 7000 isn't far off the voodoo's.. aside from 32bit color. If it was me, I would go with Geforce4 4200 and on non-glide stuff crank the AA up.

Prophase you bugger...you convinced me! I'm bidding on a FX5700, even though it's not from 99' it should assure excellent DX & GL quality/performance.

Is it true that the older games on new cards won't have as good quality as the older cards though?

Also I have a surprise..............I acquired a 440BX!!!

My concern is that it has 3 ISA slots when I only need one, is it true that the ISA slots each occupy a IRQ even when no device is installed on the port? This may be an issue considering I have 1 AGP device, 3 PCI devices & an ISA sound card installed...

MartinC wrote:

My concern is that it has 3 ISA slots when I only need one, is it true that the ISA slots each occupy a IRQ even when no device is installed on the port? This may be an issue considering I have 1 AGP device, 3 PCI devices & an ISA sound card installed...

Nope, that's not true. Additional ISA slots with nothing installed do not require any resources.

I think you be gravy with that FX. Based on what I have read the FX series is the best choice for DX 6 and 7, and also very capable for OGL too. It was also co-developed with the ex-3Dfx engineers, after Nvidia bought them out. Right now I'm running an ATi 9800xt, which is a chronilogical competitor to the FX line, but the second it gives me any trouble im going with an FX. Acutally the reason I got it over a FX was because I found one with a nice aftermarket cooler for cheap. They have tons of power and you can force filtering on the older games making them look better than ever.

I tried an FX5200 on my 440BX board once, and it gave lockups while running 3dmark2001. Maybe it does better on another mobo. As far as I know the FX5xxx series are the last one that fit on the AGP 2x slot of a 440BX, as the 6 series require AGP 4x. The FX5200 is all features, but no speed. The FX5700 should be better in that regard.
Personally I stick to my Geforce 440MX because it is one of the last that supports higher refresh rates in DOS (VBEHZ), and because I could modify it to run silently without fan. Before that I had a Geforce 2 MX, which was similar but slower.

gerwin wrote:

I tried an FX5200 on my 440BX board once, and it gave lockups while running 3dmark2001. Maybe it does better on another mobo. As far as I know the FX5xxx series are the last one that fit on the AGP 2x slot of a 440BX, as the 6 series require AGP 4x. The FX5200 is all features, but no speed. The FX5700 should be better in that regard.

I think I'll roll the dice on this one, the yearly FX5's had heating issues, maybe that was the cause of your 3DMark lockup? I would also have to run the AGP bus overclocked though so it's a risk...I can only try, if I have lockups I'll be forced to switch to the Apollo chipset, still have that Mobo

Here is the 440BX:

Plextor Ultraplex 40 MAX SCSI CD-ROM + Adaptec 2940UW Pro SCSI Card

Installation..