P4 and Core 2 in DOSBox

Posted on 2013-04-25, 17:02

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by Standard Def Steve

in DOSBox General

in DOSBox General

I normally set DOSBox to run at 8000 CPU cycles. The other day, I was running it on a 2.4GHz P4 and was kind of surprised to see CPU usage in the 4-72% range. On my 1.83GHz C2D laptop (same game at 8000 cycles), CPU usage was only 0-8%. I know there's a big difference in IPC between Netburst and …

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Re: My 3DMark01 Mega Thread

Posted on 2013-04-18, 06:35

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Couldn't resist. Here's how my Surface Pro handles 3DMark01. 🤣 Intel Integrated finally beats 9800Pro/Tualatin.

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Re: My 3DMark01 Mega Thread

Posted on 2013-04-16, 01:10

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Didn't expect to see this thread again! 8K is a pretty amazing score for a 785MHz processor...WOW. Looks like cache size really does affect 3D'01, because my old Coppermine 1000/133 could only score 7620 with a 9800 Pro. I guess I may as well post the updated score for my tweaked-to-perfection …

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Re: 440BX Question

Posted on 2013-04-12, 16:41

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had installing bolder heatsink, but I got some problem to installing Slot 1 CPU. How about P2B-F multiplier limited to x8.0? So some people said not all PC133 SDRAM support this, it is true? Is PII Klamath unlocked multiplier? The P2B-F's x8 multiplier won't matter. If you install a Celeron 1400 …

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Re: VIA AGP impact on GUI performance

Posted on 2013-04-08, 01:04

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

From my experience VIA can be tuned to performance but it requires manual adjustments. Completely agree with this. Properly tuned 694X is just as fast as i815, plus it supports far more memory. I'd have to say it's my favorite PIII chipset. I'm glad VIA finally kicked the bucket...best thing to …

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Re: VIA AGP impact on GUI performance

Posted on 2013-04-07, 08:12

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You know, I wonder if VIA's AMD chipsets have a (slightly) better AGP implementation than their Intel offerings. I mean, even PT880 Ultra, one of the last AGPsets VIA made for Intel processors, is slow when paired with an NVIDIA GPU. Yet, I remember reading very positive reviews for VIA's K8T800 …

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Re: VIA AGP impact on GUI performance

Posted on 2013-04-07, 03:10

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't have any experience with VIA SS7 chipsets, but I can say that GUI performance absolutely SUCKS when an NVIDIA card is used with the following VIA chipsets: Apollo Pro 133/694X (PIII/PIII-S) Apollo Pro 266 (PIII with DDR support) PT880 Ultra (P4 and Core 2) The two PIII chipsets also had …

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Re: Suggestions for Desktop pentium M build

Posted on 2013-04-04, 21:27

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I use the same motherboard for my Pentium M rig. It hosts a GTX-260 Core216 and a PM 745 @ 2.4GHz. Very fast and stable combination. In fact, it's always felt (and benchmarked) faster than any of the single-core K8 machines I've built. I'm not sure how much of this has to do with Win7 being the OS; …

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Re: Best Graphics Card for an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ machine

Posted on 2013-04-04, 20:48

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I ran tests for this years ago. You're right, VIA AGP (or something about their chipsets) affects GUI performance. It's tangible and measurable. I don't believe it's limited to NVIDIA cards. What's interesting about NVIDIA on VIA is that 2D performance starts off nice and fast, but after 5-10 …

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VIA AGP impact on GUI performance

Posted on 2013-04-04, 16:48

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

***This was originally a reply to Smack2K's thread *** This is off topic, since the OP already chose a Radeon 9800 (excellent choice, BTW). One thing I've noticed with VIA boards and NVIDIA cards is the dreadfully poor 2D GUI performance. All three of the VIA boards I tried (694X, Apollo Pro 266, …

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Re: PIII-powered 2000-2004 gaming box & video playback benchmarks.

Posted on 2013-03-31, 17:35

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

That makes sense. The cache-related items in the BIOS are only for ECC and enabling/disabling caches. I don't believe this board has any hidden settings, but I'll have to take a look later on. I used to have a S754 Gigabyte board that revealed hidden BIOS settings after pushing a key combination. …

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Re: Last year of gaming to support Pentium III?

Posted on 2013-03-31, 17:05

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

2004 for me. My 1.59GHz PIII+9800Pro setup handles nearly all of my 2004 games just fine at 1280x960 or 1440x900. I never bother with AA, of course. There's something insanely great about replaying games that used to struggle on my pricey P4-1800/Radeon 9500Pro on a PIII I built for $40...at twice …

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Re: PIII-powered 2000-2004 gaming box & video playback benchmarks.

Posted on 2013-03-30, 17:39

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Hmm, it looks like Tualatin's L1 cache has some sort of hidden frequency divider. While playing around with Cachechk the other night I noticed that the L1 cache bandwidth actually increased by 657MB/s when I decreased the CPU speed from 1596MHz to 1585. The L2 cache and main memory were unaffected-- …

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Re: Your most shitty motherboard?

Posted on 2013-03-29, 03:06

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm sure I'm missing a few here, but: -Asus SPAX(?) an OEM ATX board used in older HP K6-2 machines. It only supported 66MHz FSB processors, used a SiS chipset with a painfully slow IGP and the worst integrated audio I'd ever heard. Memory bandwidth was absolutely pathetic, especially when the IGP …

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Re: Best PCI VGA for a K6-III+

Posted on 2013-03-22, 18:08

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

d1stortion wrote: Having a lot of RAM is useful when operating with disabled swap file. Wasn't there a cacheable RAM issue with PII CPUs as well? IIRC the Klamath PIIs could only cache up to 512MB of memory. Deschutes could handle up to 4GB.

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Re: PIII-powered 2000-2004 gaming box & video playback benchmarks.

Posted on 2013-03-15, 02:08

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I just gave KMPlayer a shot. It actually seems to be a little slower than my usual CoreAVC/WMP11 combo (slightly higher average CPU usage). But then again, so is MPC-HC. I know people love to hate WMP, but at least on an older XP box, it's quite efficient. Speaking of H.264, if you're running Win7, …

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Re: Willamette performance?

Posted on 2013-03-13, 00:37

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Pentium 4's problem is its power consumption at the highest grades. Physics didn't work out for the architecture. 90nm Pentium M is definitely at its clock scaling limit at 2.5 GHz. They typically won't go much beyond 2.2 GHz unless you pump a lot of extra voltage in. This is probably why they …

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Re: Absolute minimum rig for browsing and such; what do you guys think?

Posted on 2013-03-06, 20:16

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

... The limiting factor was Youtube videos and Flash-based web players. It is only a matter of time before web bloat overpowers the dual Tualatin 1.4 GHz ... I agree, my single Tually still provides a quite decent browsing experience, but feels on the edge of being defeated by the contemporary (as …

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Re: PIII-powered 2000-2004 gaming box & video playback benchmarks.

Posted on 2013-03-06, 01:16

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

This may be just a wall of irrevelant text for you, but I'm trying to help to improve your rig's video playback performance. If you take the effort to try it out, don't hesitate to share your experiences and opinion here. I'd like to see how a nicely equipped P III deals with true 720p H.264 / x. …

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Re: When hardware "retro"? Your personal rules

Posted on 2013-03-01, 17:43

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

PIIIs, Athlon XPs, and S423 P4s are all retro hardware to me. As far as usability goes, I would argue that even though it was created during the height of the Pentium 4 era, the Pentium M is still a usable CPU for modern day to day usage, provided you don't do anything ridiculous like attempting to …

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