After hours of driver hunting, i found the perfect mix, and so far it's working well with both the voodoo 5 and the FX5200 (somehow, i perfer the FX5200, but that's probably because i can hit 30fps solid with NSFU at highest detail.. curses!). The VIA 4-in-1's that came with my mobo (and the agp driver, most important here), the lastest ATI Catalyst IGPGART (i have a IGP320 northbridge), and the lastest Amigamerlins or Forcewares. Not to forget, Creative's drivers for the sound card and every single minor patch and hardware update on Windows Update (no sp2! ) Personally, i think the IGPGART and the VIA drivers didn't do much but the weird AMD patch on WU might have been the biggest factor. Strange, but it's working now. I played THPS2 for 30 minutes (15 2-minute runs) and some normal driving around in NFS(U1,U2,HP2,PU). NFS 4 LIFE! Thanks @Voodoo5, for recommending to see if it was this system and not the card. I would have cried hard tears if it was the voodoo, i've owned it since it was new.

Well, if it's the motherboard and the CPU then it's just another reason to buy a new one, hopefully one supporting the 3.3v agp. I've been thinking of getting a new athlon xp-based system anyways, because the low FPS in many of the newer games is just killing me

And it's not the memory, memtest86 passes the memory perfectly. Perhaps i could just be missing a driver or have a bad version? Will go check all the drivers for the system..

Well, i figured it out. Plugged it into the k6-2, installed the lastest Evolution drivers, and it works like a champ with THPS2, 800x600 at 2xAA (anything more resulting in _some_ fps dropping). Infact, i just played about 15 minutes of it and it's still running, paused and still working with little heat added to the system. But after plugging in the sucky-sucky FX5200 into this computer and removing a network card, the games still freeze! I think now that the PSU is the problem; it was quite hot when i did a finger check of nearly every component in the case. I believe this is overheating and stopping the computer in it's tracks (overheat protection? I doubt it, because this mobo doesn't do that at all, unless the PSU is advanced.) I got about 40 more seconds of gameplay at 1024x768, 4xAA.

So, on another note, is there a PSU that anyone would like to recommend to me? Heck, the topic might even need to be moved from the voodoo 5 section now, considering that it's been ruled out of the picture. I'd put it back in, but maybe i can squeeze out the same performence with my FX5200 (yah, right!)

Yes, i'll try that with my old K6-2/98 machine and hope it works. The thing is, it has a 520mb hard drive and it's going to be hard to find a game that fits on it.. i'll think of something.

Wait, is there anything else i can try on this machine without having to take away the voodoo (Please don't make me use my FX5200.. please? )

Did some more testing, THPS2 at 1024x768, noAA worked for about 2 1/2 minutes, at a solid 30fps cap, never once going below. oddly enough, Halo worked from the very beginning to just a minute after the Cheif loads up the pistol (longer then 2 1/2 minutes, I think ), 640x480 noAA. Somehow, I think this may be a problem with the card and not any drivers, although when i was on 98 it seemed to work pretty well (never tested much on it, though)

Apparently whenever I get into a game (mainly DX games but i haven't tested anything else besides DX 6.1-9.0b games), my entire computer freezes up somewhere between 2-10min of gameplay. With a laser temperture checker that I borrowed from a friend, the temp does not go into any dangerous zones, only about 6c warmer with a full load (it will not tell me the real temp in the case, just sets a 0 and tells me if it's + or - that number.. not very helpful) and the power.. well, i have no idea what condition the power supply is, i do not understand the voltages at all Games themselves run pretty nice, UT2003 gets about 30fps on a flyby benchmark and is overall smooth and THPS2 is perfect at 1024x768, 4xAA. Turning on AA also seems to shorten the time it's alive, though, so perhaps the card is just dying out? Still running on stock cooling, stock clock, 1.18 bios, lastest R6 Amigamerlin drivers.

Yeah, i like to run on.....