Want to max an old ASUS mobo!

[baldurga]

Hi to everybody.

I have and old ASUS board, an SP97-V. Its aspects are:

- AT form.
- Chipset SIS5598
- 512 Pipelined burst SRAM
- 50, 60, 66, 75 and 83 (unofficial) bus
- up to x3.5 multiplier
- up to 256 EDO/FPM RAM (SIMM)
- NO AGP!
- updated with last BIOS 1.08

Right now I have:

- K6-2 500: using the x6 trick and the unofficial 83Mhz I achieve 500Mhz. Don't know if I'm overclocking the PCI bus.
- 128Mb Ram (4x32 EDO)
- Geforce 2MX PCI
- Win98SE

And my questions:

1.- If I'm not wrong, I have the maximum procesor that it can handle, isn't it?

2.- Going to 256Mb will help? Is it worth (cost $60 aprox)? In this aspect there is something that worries me a lot. I'm not sure the chipset can handle in the cache (or something like this, don't remember exactly how to tell you) the 256Mb, being in a performance drop. I think this also happen with VX or TX Intel chipsets, that weren't able to cache above 64Mb of RAM, being HX the only capable. Any help in this question will be really helpfull.

link: http://www.karbosguide.com/ (sorry, can make it clickable. This site, in chipset section, explains it better if you have any questios)

3.- I'm at the top of graphic performance? Remember, I don't have AGP! So my current guess is that drop something more powerfull is a)hard to find in PCI format and b)probably not worth bearing in mind the limitations of the PCI bus.

Any suggestions are welcome. Please feel free to ask whatever you want. Thanks in advance.

DIY: read, buy, test, learn, reward yourself!

 

[Crashman]

The 5598 was a very weak chipset, the best you could do is get an Intel TX chipset board with the higher bus speeds. Of course there's the infamous MVP3 from VIA, and the TX Pro from ALi...

The TX chipset was the trouble free one, it supports the same memory modules as the BX chipset, I had one with one 256MB PC133 and one 128MB PC133 in it's slots.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

 

[baldurga]

So, my guess I'm at max are quite true ...

If I understand you well, a TX mobo and SDRAM (133Mhz) will boost the performance (and using the same K6-2 500 and GF2 MX). By how much do you think?

DIY: read, buy, test, learn, reward yourself!

 

[Crashman]

It's really hard to say, because I've never been able to nail down performance problems on the 5598. I've seen that chipset run anywhere from a little slow to extremely slow depending on the configuratioon.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>