advance9 motherboard & 4xagp cards

[leong]

Hello to everyone. I need help and i will appreciate it if anybody answers me. I have an "advance-9" motherboard with agp 2x slot and via chipset. I have a voodoo3 3000 agp card installed on it but i am thinking of finding another card because it isn't supported anymore and i am tired of updating 3rd party drivers. What card do you suggest? is there a geforce2 mx/400 compatible?  what car do you think will reach "the limits" of this motherboard and exploit it mostly? Can i put an agp 4x card in it? sorry if i write mistakes. please, anybody gimme some tips.

[r21vo]

about limits, it depends on your cpu and ram. I guess you've got qdi advance-9 mainboard with via apollo pro 133 cipset and some socket370 cpu (actually many people refer this mb to be painfully slow), so upgrading to gf2mx won't make very big speed boost.

you can put in universal agp (2x/4x) cards, such as gf2mx and run them in agp2x mode without problems.
About supported cards, gf2mx actually also is no more supported by nvidia, and that their drivers - forceware - are universal is a myth, new drivers on old cards make them painfully slow - they are useless.

[leong]

hey, thanks friend. You guessed right, that't my exact motherboard. If i put into it an agp 4x card, for example the geforce2 or geforce 4 will the windows recognise it fully? i don't think so. For example if the card is 64 mb, will the windows xp and the mainboard  recognise it as 32mb? my ram memory is 256 mb at 100mhz frequency. Well, i guess i will keep my voodoo3 3000 and go on... i also have a celeron 633 mhz which i consider overclocking it with speedeasy program the qdi motherboard offers. what do u say? is there great danger of burning it? do you suggest i overclock aslo the voodoo3 with a utility? will it really make a defference if i synchronize it from 166mhz core clock to 175? thanks again pal

[leong]

sorry again, what other universal agp cards do you suggest i try? around 2- 4x agp (i don't think 8x agp is worth of buying -i'd rather buy a whole new pc:D

[r21vo]

agp mode (2x/4x/8x) impacts ONLY performance, and frankly, not very much. If you put a card with universal connector in your mainboard it'll work ok - there will be no limitations, software will recognise it fully. As you have a c633 the performance will be the same for both 2x and 4x modes.
Also you should know that there different versions of AGP, 1.0(2x) and 2.0(2x/4x). usually support 3.3V signaling rate, but 3.0(4x/8x) only 1.5V. So this means that almost all agp8x adapters won't run in your board.
check out http://www.ati.com/support/faq/agpchart.html

Overclocking your system could be conseriderable, only i see you are a novice in these things and you could accidentally harm your system The best shot for performance i guess would be raising FSB to 133mhz, but to do that you must have ram that can do 133mhz (PC133) and good cooling for cpu.
As i said, some people report that your mainboard runs rather slow compared to similar ones, maybe consider replacing your mainboard.
OC'ing voodoo3 won't give big performance boost, i don't recommend you to do that. But if you really want to oc your v3, then make sure it has good cooling, because it runs very hot even on default frequencies

About other videocards that could run in your system... there are many, for exampe one of the best would be gf4ti4x00 (i've got one in my main rig), only your system would be far too powerless to max out this monster... If you really want to change vga, i can suggest gf2/gf3/gf4 series, radeon 7500/8500/9500/9700. Don't stick to cheap old nvidia tnt's, they are even slower than your current voodoo3.

Actually buying a new system would be more rational, for example you can get some cheap and good enough mainboard for AMD platform and buy some athlon/duron cpu. If you've got PC133 ram then i would suggest to take mainboard with via kt133a chipset, because it's one of the best which supports SDRAM (your type of ram) - then you won't have to buy new RAM. If you've got PC100 ram, then better buy a mainboard with new type of memory - DDR - and sell old system.

[leong]

hello again friend, many thanks to your reply, you've been truly helpful and enlightening to me. Well, i got some other questions, i hope you can also gimme some guidance. Sorry for the trouble.
1)well, i checked my c-mos and saw the exact cpu speed adjustments. My current cpu speed is 633mhz (66x9,5) -what is 66x9,5?- There are also adjustments as 667mhz (66x10) up to 800mhz (66x12). What do you suggest? Can i put it to the 800mhz as it is or do i need additional cooling? And what fan do you think would be best? Coz my system is old enough and i may cannot be able to find any fan available. I also noticed some other things. In the cpu speed section i also saw an option saying: Jumper Emulation
              Multiplier x10
And something else i noticed is an option "Bus Clock" and another "Bus Clock +33mhz". Which one of the two would be better? One of the two must be selected at a time. Default selection is "bus Clock"
3)Do you have any idea what is a hard disk drive's s.m.a.r.t capability? i have this function disabled
4)My current system temperatures are 30 degreecs celsium and my cpu temp is 89 degr.c. Just mention them in case they help you
MANY THANKS AND SORRY FOR THE NUMBER OF QUESTIONS. HOPE YOU HELP. HAVE A NICE DAY MAN

[r21vo]

well, let's start one be one...
1) 66x9,5 - it's a FSB (front side bus) speed multiplied by cpu frequency multiplier. This setting results your cpu speed - if you take a calc you'll see that 66x9,5=627 which is almost 633, the setting you've got now.
FSB frequency impacts all system parts, meanwhile CPU frequency multiplier impacts only cpu. FSB speed is used also for RAM (random access memory), so if you've got a PC100 RAM (memory which can do 100mhz) and you are running on a 66mhz FSB then it's not working at full speed, only at system bus speed - 66mhz.
If you want to get better performance then the best shot would be increasing FSB speed, but even little FSB increases will much more impact CPU frequency, because the changes will be multiplied by your multiplier setting - currently 9,5. For example if you raise your FSB speed to 70mhz then cpu speed will be 665mhz, but your cpu might not be able to handle so high frequency.... To balance this you can lower multiplier setting, for example 70x9 will be 630! Almost the same cpu frequency as the default setting only the FSB speed is higher, so ram will work faster. For example 75x8,5 will be 637,5 and this setting will bring more speed. The best setting of course would be 100x6,5=650, but i'm afraid cpu could't handle so high FSB as it was designed for 66mhz FSB.

I'm almost hearing you say "then what can i do?" I would suggest testing - increasing fsb speed and testing system to see if it's stable on such setting. The best i guess would be increase fsb using some software, because if your system becomes unstable and locks up you just need to press reset button and all settings will reset to ones set in bios. So take software like CpuCooL, configure it acording your mainboard (you need to set correct PLL chip in settings) and start testing Testing should be done like this - raise FSB a little bit, then test some 10 minutes with some test which heavly uses CPU, for example winbench or 3dmark and see if system is stable. When you've reached setting your system becomes unstable, decrease FSB speed to one that was before and test again.
Also you should know that raising you FSB impacts not only RAM and CPU speed - it impacts also AGP and PCI frequencies, because they are connected to FSB speed. If you raise FSB the AGP/PCI frequency will also raise, if you add to FSB a little bet more, AGP/PCI clock also might raise a little bit, but at some point it'l drop again close to default setting because system will change divisor value which impacts AGP/PCI clock. For example for 66mhz bus PCI divisor is 2 which results 33mhz (default) PCI frequency. The point here is that you can't use all FSB settings because some of them can result PCI frequency which can cause unstable hardware or even damage some parts. Generaly i can advise that PCI frequency should be under 40mhz. I know this sounds a little bit complicated, but in practice it isn't. These settings you'll see in CpuCooL, in part where you set FSB speed, it'll show how high PCI frequency it'll result, so remember not to set settings on which PCI frequency is higher than 40mhz.

About CPU fans, you can put any heatsink and any fan which fits and can cool the CPU properly. Also keep in mind that it's better to put some thermal compound between CPU and heatsink to eliminate air between them which has high thermal resistance.

About "Jumper Emulation;  Multiplier x10" i'm not sure, but it could be setting which overrides CPU multiplier setting.

About "Bus Clock" and "Bus Clock +33", these settings i guess where in RAM configuration part, "Bus Clock" means that RAM speed will be the same as Bus Clock (FSB), the other setting means that RAM speed will be FSB speed +33, this means that you can run CPU at 66mhz and RAM at 100mhz if your ram can do 100mhz. Generaly it's better that RAM and FSB speed is synchronous, but maybe FSB+33 setting could be faster on a socket370 system you've got. To check this you can use some benchmark and compare results on both modes.

"s.m.a.r.t" is a technology fro hard drive health monitoring, it doesn't impact performance. It stands for "Self-Monitoring Analysis Reporting Technology" (hard drive feature; warns of problems before total failure).

Sytem tempertature 30C is almost normal, a bit high but nothing you should worry about.
Cpu temperature at 89C is totally too high, if it's not a mistake i wonder how did it's still alive. Temperature this high can kill your CPU! Shut down computer, and check inside. Touch heatsink to check if the temperature really is that high. Check if your CPU fan is working, because normally CPU temperature should be 35-55C. For example by Athlon 2500+ usually runs at temperature even below 40C! Keep your system cool if you don't want to run into problems - keep that in mind

Also I suggest you to read some manuals about computers, and if you can't understand try to use google Also i can suggest you howstuffworks.com - there are some manuals written for newbies, and you can use dictionary.com or acronymfinder.com if you can't understand some acronyms. If then you can't figure something out then stick to forums

actually kinda long post... well, i tried to explain some basic things to you

[secretfj]

for CuMine Celerons, i think 1.1G is their limit..
so maybe overclock your CPU to 100 Front Side Bus (100 X 9.5 = 950MHz)
This is safe for many Celerons with stock voltage, stock multiplier(actually it's unchangable for most Intel CPUs) and stock cooling (I have done once with my old Celeron 600, it can runs at 1.08GHz [limited by the PC-100 memory]
when using 100FSB, celeron's power is fully given and your system will be very very good compared with your old config, then you can play games with a V3 3000 more happily~~ BUT, overclocking can be risky. Check your cooling solution before you do anything (old and malfunctioning fan can make your CPU hot even in stock speed, not to mention overclocking)

P.S. i am also a socket 370 + V3 3000 user, i am thinking of an upgrade too..
i will suggest cards like 9200 or FX5500 because they support the newest(or almost newest) DirectX Standard, if you can find S3 Deltachrome or XGI Volari V3XT/V5/V8, then they are good cards too

[leong]

Well, my deepest thanks for both of you friends, especially for r21vo. Well, i believe i understood much of the things you said and find all this information very, very helpful. I just wanted to mention that my cpu temperature is indeed 89 c (not fahreneit) and i possess this pc for about 8 years now! Do you think there's a possibility that my fan is not working? well, to tell you the truth, i am not even sure if i have a fan. Well...Nah! I don't have one!! I will try to test some things in the near future and hope to be able to get in touch with you again, for your great guidance. The lucky newbie, leon g

[r21vo]

it's reported that c600 overclocks much more better that c633, c600 can run at 100mhz FSB with stock voltage and cooling while c633 seems can't. Anyway, testing is the only way to check that