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

Posted on 2015-08-02, 20:03

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I stayed up all night and watched all three Back to the Future films on laserdisc in the nice, cool basement. Sure, I could've watched it on Blu-ray, but it was way too hot upstairs. Plus, something just feels incredibly right about watching BTTF (and Indiana Jones, Jaws, ET, Wargames, Close …

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Re: Any of you on Windows 10?

Posted on 2015-08-02, 05:44

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

I know I said I was going to wait until Windows "10.2" before upgrading my main computer, but I just couldn't sit still today and totally upgraded it. It's been nothing but smooth sailing on the three other computers I upgraded, so I figured why the hell not. I still can't get over how quickly it …

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Re: What machines did you use in High School?

Posted on 2015-07-31, 19:18

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by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

The student labs at my school all used Apple IIe and Mac LC II machines until 1997 or so. Then, a massive upgrade to Compaq Deskpro P200 systems running Win95. During my senior year, one of the labs received a bunch of PII-400 and PIII-550 Deskpro EN towers as a part of the big multimedia push of …

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Re: Any of you on Windows 10?

Posted on 2015-07-31, 18:19

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

Yeah, just upgraded three of my systems to Win10. So far so good. I'll be keeping my main system on Win7 a while longer. IIRC, OS X wasn't fully baked until 10.2 or 10.3 rolled out, so I'll probably wait til Windows "10.2" before upgrading the main system. 😀

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Re: Doom 3 timedemo shootout with period correct hardware.

Posted on 2015-07-31, 02:05

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Yeah, SiS chipsets aren't as fast as nVidia and Intel. Also not helping is the fact that AMD's video drivers just aren't as lean as nVidia's. On my PIII-S system, my 6800GT almost always comes out ahead of my x1950Pro AGP. At 640x480, the difference in driver efficiency really shows. Even the newest …

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

Posted on 2015-07-30, 00:40

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Completed Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow on my turbocharged PIII rig and just started two other favorites: Painkiller and Thief: Deadly Shadows. I just can't help but be impressed by how well this old rig--on which I spent way too much money--runs these games.

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Re: Great PC! But can it run Crysis?

Posted on 2015-07-23, 16:12

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It seems that a very fast processor is required at this stage :) 100 fps seems so close, yet so far... I'd say the DX10/VHQ test at 1080p is more GPU limited than anything. I was able to break the 100 fps barrier on my main rig by lowering the resolution and keeping everything else the same. It's …

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Re: Great PC! But can it run Crysis?

Posted on 2015-07-20, 06:26

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Here's a Socket 939 Opteron machine. Opteron 185 @ 3GHz 4GB PC3200 CL2 Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe - nForce4 SLI x16 chipset SB X-Fi Titanium Fatality Win7 x64 SP1 Single GeForce 8800GTS 640MB DX9 - Low - 800x600 84.69 fps http://i.imgur.com/PXOJTHn.png Single GeForce 8800GTS 640MB DX9 - Very High - …

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Re: Great PC! But can it run Crysis?

Posted on 2015-07-19, 07:45

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Here's my main machine. i7-4930K @ 4.5GHz 32GB DDR3-2133, 9-11-11-1T GeForce GTX 970, driver 353.30 Asus Rampage IV Gene - Intel X79 chipset Win7 x64 SP1 DX10, Very High:

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Re: Great PC! But can it run Crysis?

Posted on 2015-07-19, 03:09

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

And here's a Socket 939 system. Athlon 64 3700 @ 2.64GHz 2GB PC3200 @ 440MHz, CL2.5 GeForce 6800GT, driver 307.64 Gigabyte K8NSC-939 - nForce3 250gb chipset XP SP3 and Win7 SP1 Test 1: WinXP, Low, 800x600 http://i.imgur.com/EmsaL4X.png Test 2: Win7, Very High, 1280x1024, DX9. A complete slideshow. …

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Re: Great PC! But can it run Crysis?

Posted on 2015-07-18, 07:25

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Mmm. I love a good benchmark thread. Here's my turbocharged PIII running Crysis in Fugly Mode (800x600 Low, DX9/XP) Full specs are: PIII-S at 1575MHz. 150MHz FSB 2GB PC3200 @ 300MHz, 2-2-2-6 GeForce 6800GT, driver 307.83 SB X-Fi ExtremeMusic QDI Advance 12T motherboard/VIA Apollo Pro 266T chipset XP …

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Re: Best PCI GFX for P-III?

Posted on 2015-07-17, 17:49

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I took that screenshot a year ago, but iirc it was Catalyst 5.6

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Re: Best PCI GFX for P-III?

Posted on 2015-07-17, 17:09

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

All in all, I think that you can have a very respectable DX8 gaming experience with a PCI card. I have a 128-bit Radeon 9250 on the way, and I'm curious to find out how it stacks up. Just to reiterate what others have said, you need to get a 128-bit card. I have another FX5500 that is 64-bit, and …

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Re: My XP box!

Posted on 2015-07-16, 06:41

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yep. I used to run Dolphin 3 all the time on a 3GHz Opteron 185 on S939. That rig was able to run New Super Mario Bros at a full 60fps, even upscaled to 1080p. I was quite amazed at how much better it looked emulated on a PC than it did on the Wii itself! BTW, I used to have that motherboard myself. …

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Re: CPU Challenge - Windows 98

Posted on 2015-07-11, 02:34

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I finally got around to running this on my decked out Dimension T550. Celeron 1.4GHz on a Lin-Lin adapter on an Asus Slotket on the Dell version of the Intel SE440BX-3 motherboard. 512MB PC100 2-2-2 Voodoo3 3000 AGP Aureal SQ2500 Vortex 2 PCI audio SB AWE64 ISA audio Win98SE 320x240: 111.2 640x480: …

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Re: Doom 3 timedemo shootout with period correct hardware.

Posted on 2015-07-10, 19:15

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

How's about a first-gen i7 based laptop? Normal clock speed for the 720QM is 1.6GHz, but I saw it boosting to around 2.4GHz during the benchmark. HP Envy 17, Mobile i7-720QM (1.6GHZ w/ Turbo), 8GB DDR3-1333 9-9-9-24-1T, Mobility Radeon HD 5850, onboard audio, Win7 x64 http://i103.photobucket.com/ …

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Re: CPU Challenge - Windows 98

Posted on 2015-07-09, 03:42

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's really interesting. So a P2-400 is nearly 3x faster than a K6-III 400 in this game. 😲 I'll have to run this test on my own dedicated Win98 box, a Celeron-1400/BX.

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

Posted on 2015-07-09, 03:14

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It is pretty easy to determine if Flash is using the GPU. HTML5 is mysterious. If you have an nVidia graphics card, you can use GPU-Z to check the Video Engine load. If it shows 0% during playback, then your CPU is doing all of the work. You can also right click on the video window, select Stats …

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Re: My 3DMark01 Mega Thread

Posted on 2015-07-07, 01:56

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I doubled the 3DMark score without even having to double the clock speed. I love it when that happens. Mobile T5600 @ 2.93/1066, GTX 560, memory at 887MHz 4-4-4-12 Just as with Doom 3, the overclocked T5600 is now very close to the performance of the Q6700 @ 3.33/1333FSB, which scored 42889. http:// …

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Re: Doom 3 timedemo shootout with period correct hardware.

Posted on 2015-07-07, 01:48

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Despite being an engineering sample, the mobile T5600 overclocks quite well. The performance scaling is just awesome, too. I nearly doubled the framerate by overclocking it to 2.93GHz. And despite only having 2MB of L2, IPC is much greater than the desktop e6600 with 4MB L2. In fact, this is …

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