Adventures of the 939 build

[Toothless]

What CPU is in your 939 system?

I think I have a few spare here, 3700 Sandi Core and some 3200's.

I did run for many yrs a 4800+ on a GA-K8NF9 Sli Motherboard with 8600GT's but since sold them all off.

Not sure yet. As I was taking apart the other old system I found it it's a Asus P4P800-E board and now I'm considering putting the 939 rig on hold and trying this one.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

4 sticks of DRAM will make it drop from DDR400 to DDR333. If you want DDR400 back, you'll be overclocking the memory controller. They can get grumpy doing that.

Other problem is that nForce chipsets don't have drivers for newer operating systems. XP is really the best operating system...which is not an absolute crappy operating system because no internet browsers continue to support it. 939 ends up being kind of worthless unless you just want to play older games on an isolated system.

 

[Durvelle27]

4 sticks of DRAM will make it drop from DDR400 to DDR333. If you want DDR400 back, you'll be overclocking the memory controller. They can get grumpy doing that.

Other problem is that nForce chipsets don't have drivers for newer operating systems. XP is really the best operating system...which is not an absolute crappy operating system because no internet browsers continue to support it. 939 ends up being kind of worthless unless you just want to play older games on an isolated system.

Not true
nForce has Vista drivers that work under Windows 7 as that’s what I’m using

 

[phill]

single core cpu with a gtx1080 - yes!!!

Now that would be a correct way to use the term bottleneck!! Respect for sitting through the benchmark, must have been painful!!

Still gotta love the 939 era.. Love my DFI boards

 

[agent_x007]

4 sticks of DRAM will make it drop from DDR400 to DDR333. If you want DDR400 back, you'll be overclocking the memory controller. They can get grumpy doing that.

You can bypass that 400MHz limitation using Reg. ECC memory.
Proof : LINK
@phill It wasn't that bad, I "cheated" by switching sources on my monitor between my main PC and test rig

 

[phill]

@phill It wasn't that bad, I "cheated" by switching sources on my monitor between my main PC and test rig

I would go with that's just common sense and a good call!!

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Not true
nForce has Vista drivers that work under Windows 7 as that’s what I’m using

Come to think of it, I don't think I ever tried to install Vista on it because I didn't have a license to do so. I do remember trying newer nForce drivers from NVIDIA that introduced crackling to the onboard audio. I think I used the drivers directly from the motherboard manufacturer and all was well.

You can bypass that 400MHz limitation using Reg. ECC memory.

It's not a "limitation," it is a default behavior of the socket 939 memory controllers. If 4 double-sided DIMMs are installed, anything higher than DDR333 is overclocked.

 

[Melvis]

Not sure yet. As I was taking apart the other old system I found it it's a Asus P4P800-E board and now I'm considering putting the 939 rig on hold and trying this one.

Ahh ok fair enough, save the best to last ? The skt 478 compared to the 939 is a complete snail, its a night and day difference between the two. I still have some skt 478 CPU's and boards here.

 

[Toothless]

Ahh ok fair enough, save the best to last ? The skt 478 compared to the 939 is a complete snail, its a night and day difference between the two. I still have some skt 478 CPU's and boards here.

Now my issue is I'm missing the molex connectors for the PSU to drive the HDD. I might have to move some things around to see how to get it going.

 

[Durvelle27]

Now my issue is I'm missing the molex connectors for the PSU to drive the HDD. I might have to move some things around to see how to get it going.

Could always upgrade the PSU

I definitely had to as the original was only 385W with no SATA connectors

Gave it a little life with a Antec 450W

 

[Toothless]

Could always upgrade the PSU

I definitely had to as the original was only 385W with no SATA connectors

Gave it a little life with a Antec 450W

Between jobs and have stuff to pay off.

When I fix my other rigs, I'll invest some time and $$$ into these older machines and see what they can do.

 

[Durvelle27]

Between jobs and have stuff to pay off.

When I fix my other rigs, I'll invest some time and $$$ into these older machines and see what they can do.

Luckily for me I had a couple PSUs already sitting around so I didn’t have to go out and buy another

But for now I’m going to see how far I can get it to clock and how it does in recent games

 

[delshay]

@OP & all users on 939 platform with 4GB ram win7 64bit.

Can someone please test any Vulkan game to see if it works without crashing. & before anyone asks, yes you can run games that require 8GB+ on 4GB of ram, do YouTube search.

You can bypass that 400MHz limitation using Reg. ECC memory.
Proof : LINK
@phill It wasn't that bad, I "cheated" by switching sources on my monitor between my main PC and test rig

Err you can run unbuffered 4GB ram @400MHz+, but you limited to 2T command. Reg/ECC memory should allow 1T command, but you may have to drop a little speed.

 

[agent_x007]

@delshay Vulkan and S939 ?
Piece of cake (I ran Vulkan on FX-62 and X6800 last year ).
For added challange, I used used board with AGP support (really, worst board for OC BUT it was already plugged-in..) ;D

^You didn't mentioned anything about 8GB of VRAM
CPU-z valid : https://valid.x86.fr/dhl3hv

 

[delshay]

@delshay Vulkan and S939 ?
Piece of cake (I ran Vulkan on FX-62 and X6800 last year ).
For added challange, I used used board with AGP support (really, worst board for OC BUT it was already plugged-in..) ;D
View attachment 107804
^You didn't mentioned anything about 8GB of VRAM
CPU-z valid : https://valid.x86.fr/dhl3hv

Thanks, something is wrong with my 939 build, as it locks-up Vukan Games but vulkan demo works. Looking into this.

 

[agent_x007]

Thanks, something is wrong with my 939 build, as it locks-up Vukan Games but vulkan demo works. Looking into this.

Try forcing two thread operation in game options.

 

[delshay]

Try forcing two thread operation in game options.

I'v never seen this option in the game menu, can you post screenshot.

Do you also have "Wolfenstein 2 the new colossus" this is also a vulkan game. This game just won't start with a FX-60.
You can run this game on 4GB ram also, do YouTube search.

 

[agent_x007]

 

[eidairaman1]

Should be a way to disable that

You can't get it to install on Windows 10, because you tried 64-bit version (which requires instruction "CompareExchange128", that Athlon 64s doesn't support, untill "F" revision and AM2 socket).
Use 32-bit, it should go through installation.

 

[delshay]

View attachment 108939

Will test this after a few hardware updates.

 

[Toothless]

Alrighty, so I do have a PSU that'll let me run the 939. After quite a few boot loops it finally clicked USB drivers on so keyboard works, but then gets stuck telling me bad drive is bad. Nice.

Chip is the 3800+, it's got 4GB DDR in it, and yeah. It boots and posts damn good.

(Used a 750Ti for display.)

I don't exactly have time nor money to work on this piece of history, so if anyone wants some of this goodness let me know and shoot a price. I'd rather have someone that'll love it than have it sit in one of my boxes.

 

[GoldenX]

Not true
nForce has Vista drivers that work under Windows 7 as that’s what I’m using

They even work on 10, but the IGP performance is really bad.

 

[delshay]

@delshay Vulkan and S939 ?
Piece of cake (I ran Vulkan on FX-62 and X6800 last year ).
For added challange, I used used board with AGP support (really, worst board for OC BUT it was already plugged-in..) ;D
View attachment 107804
^You didn't mentioned anything about 8GB of VRAM
CPU-z valid : https://valid.x86.fr/dhl3hv

After this long time i'v almost fixed the problem. It's a mixture of software & hardware faults. I have not yet used your suggestion/option you posted later in this thread yet. I'm getting around 20fps with an FX60 using Vulkan, but it will improve. It still locks-up but not as often, & this is the first time i'v got it just playable via Vulkan API with an FX60. Thanks again you have been a great help.

 

[Ruru]

About RAM requirements, no problem here with Doom on Phenom II X4 955BE, 4GB DDR2 & GTX 780. Little slowdowns here and there, but overall it's more than playable.

 

[Vario]

Check for leaky capacitors. 939 were the days of the Great Capacitor Plague. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague