Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2015-06-26, 01:24

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Found an HIS Radeon X1950XT video card I don't really know what to do with. It's the PCIe version which pretty much makes it useless. Also found a bunch of home theater magazines from 1995. Some interesting stuff in there. Articles about CRT projectors, subwoofers, Dolby AC3...neato! 😀

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Re: Latest Dumpster Find - 3GHz laptop in mint condition!

Posted on 2015-06-26, 01:08

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

DAMN DUDE! pop in 2gb of ram and you could run or dual boot with windows 7 given the correct optimizations. This laptop only supports up to 1.5GB of RAM. 512MB is soldered to the motherboard and the single DIMM slot takes up to 1GB. Win7 on this machine isn't very fun. Video performance is quite …

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Re: Doom 3 timedemo shootout with period correct hardware.

Posted on 2015-06-23, 01:37

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Back in 2007 when I was using an Opteron 185 as my main system, adding a 2nd 8800GTS barely improved the performance of most games, even at 1600x1200. Fast forward to 2015, throw more processor ponies at the situation, and SLI pretty much doubles the performance, even at ridiculously low resolutions …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2015-06-20, 00:18

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I listened to Ghostbusters and Up on Cripple Creek on a jukebox.

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Re: Doom 3 timedemo shootout with period correct hardware.

Posted on 2015-06-19, 21:38

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Skyscraper wrote: I did finally test a Pentium 3 system. Ha! Nice. 1.68GHz...man I wish my Advance 12T would give me FSB options higher than 150MHz.

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Re: make old PC useful on modern internet/windows 7

Posted on 2015-06-19, 21:32

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Anyway, I *believe* VP9 uses SSE4 at the very least because the Core i series CPUs are far more efficient at decoding it than previous CPUs. I "benchmarked" a few of my CPUs by playing back VP9 encoded YouTube video using Chrome's HTML5 player, and the results were quite interesting. Opteron 185 ( …

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Re: make old PC useful on modern internet/windows 7

Posted on 2015-06-18, 18:36

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've always wondered about that with SSE3, since it was largely a Prescott update (and AMD's implementation, at least on K8, is not as "complete," because they dropped all of the Prescott-specific stuff). With GPU decoding, my P4 has no trouble with 1080p Flash video. My dual socket 604 machine can …

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Re: My 3DMark01 Mega Thread

Posted on 2015-06-18, 02:58

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I learned an important lesson the other day: that pretty much any motherboard newer than Socket 939 can handle a 1T command rate with 4 DIMMs. For years I'd assumed that any system running more than two memory modules would require 2T timing for stability. I was dead wrong; this only seems to apply …

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Re: make old PC useful on modern internet/windows 7

Posted on 2015-06-16, 06:52

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

well checked the 939 opty supports SSE3, so there is that, so I'll try to find a PCIe 939 board, if the GTX 960 wont work, I do have a 9500GT DDR2 I could use in it SSE3 isn't really important. SSE2 and SSE4 (found on the Core i series and AMD FX CPUs) are what matter the most. AFAIK no program …

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Re: Doom 3 timedemo shootout with period correct hardware.

Posted on 2015-06-15, 06:29

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I was able to wring a little more performance out of the q6700 by tightening up the memory timings. Turns out that 667MHz @ 4-4-4-12-1T is faster than 800MHz @ 5-5-5-12-2T. Core 2 Quad Q6700 @ 3.33GHz/1333FSB (8MB L2), GeForce GTX 560 (341.44), 8GB DDR2-667 4-4-4-12-1T, Asus P5N-E SLI (nForce 650i), …

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Re: My 3DMark01 Mega Thread

Posted on 2015-06-13, 08:40

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Here's the Q6700 running Windows XP:

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Re: My 3DMark01 Mega Thread

Posted on 2015-06-11, 08:04

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Here's the trash picked 775 system in its final configuration with a fresh install of Win7 x64: Core 2 Quad Q6700 @ 3.33GHz/1333FSB (8MB L2), GeForce GTX 560 (341.44), 8GB DDR2-800 5-5-5, Asus P5N-E SLI (nForce 650i), X-Fi Ti, Win7 64. http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m139/Standard_Def_Steve/q6700 …

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Re: Doom 3 timedemo shootout with period correct hardware.

Posted on 2015-06-11, 07:59

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Now we're cooking with gas! Here's the trash picked 775 system in its final configuration, with a Core 2 Quad and a fresh install of Win7 x64. This machine will probably handle basement HTPC duty. I'm not entirely sure why, but the Quad seems to be much faster clock for clock than the C2D E6600, at …

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Re: Phoronix tests P4

Posted on 2015-06-11, 01:57

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't think the FX is crappy, but it sure catches a lot of flak on tech forums. You know, with people calling it AMD's Pentium 4 and all.

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Re: Phoronix tests P4

Posted on 2015-06-11, 01:13

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So AMD's "crappy" FX-8350 encodes H.264 video over 19 times faster than a P4. That's actually quite amusing. 🙄

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Re: Geforce FX under Windows 7 64x

Posted on 2015-06-09, 05:59

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had a machine with an FX5200 running Win7 years ago--pretty sure it was x64. Not a great experience with Aero enabled. The UI was always choppy, and full screen video--even plain old DVD--was not at all smooth. It ran a heck of a lot better with the basic theme. That particular FX5200 was one of …

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Re: Windows 10 upgrade plans?

Posted on 2015-06-03, 05:45

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by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Definitely upgrading my primary and secondary machines, at the very least.

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Re: My 3DMark01 Mega Thread

Posted on 2015-06-01, 07:58

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Athlon 64 3700+ overclocked to 2.64GHz, GeForce FX 5200:

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Re: Doom 3 timedemo shootout with period correct hardware.

Posted on 2015-06-01, 07:56

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Ever wonder how well Doom 3 runs on a Titan X? I certainly do. Here's an FX5200. Athlon 64 3700+ @ 2.64GHz, GeForce FX 5200 128MB/64-bit (81.98), 2GB DDR-400 CL2, Gigabyte K8NSC-939, onboard audio, XP SP3 640x480 Medium: 19.0 fps 1024x768 Ultra: 6.5 fps 1280x1024 Ultra: 4.5 fps http://i103. …

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Re: Lowest system you tried for everyday main PC

Posted on 2015-06-01, 05:35

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In 2004 I spent a few months in Jakarta. The only computer I used there was a 133MHz Pentium with 64MB of RAM, Win98, and a 56K dial up connection to the Internet. Not exactly the easiest computer to work with, even back in 2004. I did have some "fun" with that machine though. I used to buy movies …

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