Re: Cyrix appreciation thread

Posted on 2012-03-25, 01:31

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hah, the MediaGX is what killed Cyrix. It certainly looked good on paper though, and apparently National Semiconductor really thought so too. A problem with big companies like that (Nat. Semi.) is that there is too much red tape, progress is slow, and takes 3x more employees (and 5x more money) …

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Re: S3 VIRGE Terminal velocity in dos.

Posted on 2012-03-25, 00:07

by

by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe easiest way to confirm edo operation would be a game with optional hardware cursor, though I do not know any which could run on the Virge. Fillrate benchmarks might be useful too. If the card performed even slightly better than 4 (16 bit) pixels per clock, it would definitely be doing single- …

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Re: Best video card with Dos / Win 3.11 / Win 98 support

Posted on 2012-03-23, 23:46

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The PowerVR version looks similar to the S3D one in many areas (though it runs a lot smoother -and without the bugs of the GX2 ViRGE). I can't seem to find many pics (or any videos) of the Rage version, though I'm positive that's the one I played back in the 90s and early 2000s (my dad must have …

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Re: Best video card with Dos / Win 3.11 / Win 98 support

Posted on 2012-03-23, 05:53

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I imagine whether you can stand an old ATI card will depend on what games you want to play. I can think of several that won't look good unless you have Glide. I know of some that will look and perform best on NVIDIA OpenGL. What does Rage 128 do better? I can't think of anything. It may not even …

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Re: Cyrix MII-433GP Build

Posted on 2012-03-22, 23:05

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

My RISE CPU has arrived, however the screen doesn't turn on when it is placed into an Intel 430TX board. Does anyone know if they will work in a 430TX board? For the working RISE chips that LZF is selling, he mentioned that he tested them in a VIA MVP4 board. I didn't buy one that he particularly …

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Re: S3 VIRGE Terminal velocity in dos.

Posted on 2012-03-21, 23:18

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Stupid me for blindly using sdram math. After re-learning EDO I think it will be best to not state any bandwidth numbers at all, since I don't see a way how to determine when burst mode can be used. Rather then 2 cycle operation I am more likely to believe actual memory clocks are lower then …

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Re: Cyrix appreciation thread

Posted on 2012-03-21, 07:54

by

by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The speed of CPU/graphics communication could be an advantage, but that would obviously be limited by the feature set of the graphics controller/accelerator. (if it's slow/weak/feature-poor, that speed isn't going to help much) On the other side, there's also the performance disadvantage of sharing …

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Re: S3 VIRGE Terminal velocity in dos.

Posted on 2012-03-20, 23:28

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh boy, the work is never over. I ignored it since many memory chips can significantly surpass their declared timings. Or that is what I gathered in my post EDO days. The oc seems to go over the top tough. I got also 40ns board which is limited by the chip at ~86 MHz. Yes, 50 ns EDO RAM working …

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Re: Best video card with Dos / Win 3.11 / Win 98 support

Posted on 2012-03-20, 21:31

by

by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I imagine whether you can stand an old ATI card will depend on what games you want to play. I can think of several that won't look good unless you have Glide. I know of some that will look and perform best on NVIDIA OpenGL. What does Rage 128 do better? I can't think of anything. It may not even …

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Re: Best video card with Dos / Win 3.11 / Win 98 support

Posted on 2012-03-20, 07:04

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

He was probably referring to compatibility differences between Voodoo4 and Voodoo3. I'm not sure that there are any. Both have their problems with some Voodoo1 games. Voodoo5 is my preference for most old games because of its Glide + 4X AA capacity. That is really a new level of quality for those …

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Re: S3 VIRGE Terminal velocity in dos.

Posted on 2012-03-20, 06:16

by

by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Another note: on Putas's page, he lists the 55 MHz ViRGE's bandwidth as 440 MB/s, but that's not right. The ViRGE in question is using 50 ns EDO DRAM (as seen in the photo -and is also standard for the Stealth 3D 2000). In this specific case Etron Tech EM614153A-50 chips are used, and those are …

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Re: S3 VIRGE Terminal velocity in dos.

Posted on 2012-03-20, 05:19

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

my experience is opposite: http://www.vintage3d.org/virge.php Nice work here Putas. Did you do your video card tests and recordings with ViRGE cards at default speeds or overclocked like Putas did? (I've also seen some references to the ViRGE 325 actually being rated for 80 MHz operation, so lower …

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Re: Best video card with Dos / Win 3.11 / Win 98 support

Posted on 2012-03-20, 03:02

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Why use anything other than Voodoo3? It's best to have Glide support, and most of the pre-2000 D3D and OpenGL games tested against 3dfx the most. They have excellent VGA signal quality, extremely fast GUI and VBE. There are Win3.1 drivers. For maxing out performance for Glide-specific games, …

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Re: Best video card with Dos / Win 3.11 / Win 98 support

Posted on 2012-03-19, 08:20

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

For high spec card in systems without AGP slot - a TNT2 M64 PCI or Matrox Millenium II G200 PCI. ET4000 VLB or PCI is equally good. Other options include Riva128 and TNT for AGP solution. Edit : I'm not familiar with ATIs in this regard, and I'll leave that to others who are more knowledgable. How …

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Re: How important are early Pentiums?

Posted on 2012-03-19, 08:11

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On the issue of Speed-sensitive games mentioned early in this thread, it should be noted that even several late-90s windows based games are subject to problems with "too fast" CPUs/systems. I don't have a list handy, but WipeoutXL comes to mind (the 256 color software renderer mode seems to run fine …

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Re: Cyrix appreciation thread

Posted on 2012-03-14, 21:01

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There were some dual socket 7 board too though. (not sure how many CPUs supported multiprocessing, but most/all of the Pentiums seem to have done so) Ooooh yeah! http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=31331 :cool: I was looking around, and it looks like the K5 and 6x86 classic supported the OpenPIC …

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Re: 3D Accelerator Video Captures

Posted on 2012-03-14, 08:33

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Loads of S3 Savage3D captures. It's a surprisingly usable card, particularly compared to any Virge. Although I imagine the fact that I have the advantage of drivers with lots of revisions behind them is coloring my opinion. :) That may be part of why I remember my Rage Pro working well too . . . we …

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Re: PowerVR Fun Thread

Posted on 2012-03-14, 08:18

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

don't buy into the lame delusional hype Dreamcast fans tell you about this 'great' PowerVR chipset (same chipset used in DC, but in card form and arrived way too late). Well compared to its predecessors, Dreamcast is mind blowing. :D 480p, VGA out, >30fps in lots of games.... Compared to N64 and …

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Re: Cyrix appreciation thread

Posted on 2012-03-14, 08:07

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

$50 including another motherboard (aside from the VX board)? Correct. An MMX would have been faster, but getting another motherboard meant I was able to build my younger brother a computer for nothing :) So you already had a free case/PSU/monitor sitting around you could use for your brother's …

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Re: Cyrix appreciation thread

Posted on 2012-03-13, 23:52

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by kool kitty89

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Had Cyrix extended the architecture to a pipelined dual-issue FPU derived from the same FPU logic, the performance probably would have roughly matched the P6 FPU clock for clock... they apparently did just that with the MIII Jalapeno/Cayenne core -along with 3DNow! and 256k L2 cache... and went …

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