Dual Tualatin 1.4 nearly beaten by single 1Ghz Coppermine?

Posted on 2015-07-02, 17:36

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So I was running some benchmarks on a 1Ghz Coppermine board I have, its a motherboard from a Dell Dimension 4100 and is essentially a Dell branded D815EEA board. the board has 512MB CL2 SDRAM and a Voodoo 5500 GPU, it uses the i815E chipset. the weird thing is that in games its almost matching up to …

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Re: New member, first build Dual Pentium Pro

Posted on 2015-06-30, 18:27

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

the Pentium Pro is great, Ive found it to be pretty balanced, as its 16bit performance is fast , but not fast enough to be detrimental to those Sierra/Lucasarts CPU sensitive games (the ones that have big issues playing on anything faster than a Pentium) but its 32bit performance is fast and really …

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Windows 98SE on a Pentium Pro 200

Posted on 2015-06-23, 23:52

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So Ive been thinking of installing Windows98SE on a Pentium Pro 200 (actually overclocked 180Mhz 256k) , 64Mb EDO machine. Right now its running Win95B ,but Im finding 95 to be a rather buggy affair, WIn98SE isnt bug free either , but should be more stable than Win95 which has been having issues. …

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Re: PowerVR Fun Thread

Posted on 2015-06-02, 06:21

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

One issue I've encountered oddly is with MDK , the Powervr version has strange corrupted. Colours , I know the PCX is fine as other games work and im using the latest drivers Anyone know the reason or solution to this?

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Re: PowerVR Fun Thread

Posted on 2015-06-01, 15:34

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

hmm , well with the Voodoo1 in that same machine Quake2 gets 27.5 frames (640X480), I also overclocked the FSB a bit from 60 to 66 , turning it into a PPro200Mhz (Im using Arctic Silver 5 , and also put an extra fan on the cooler ,so it should be fine). the small overclock brings the PCX1 to 15.8fps …

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Re: PowerVR Fun Thread

Posted on 2015-06-01, 11:49

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

hmm , well , I put the PCX1 card into this system (with a VS440FX motherboard and WIn95B) , with the drivers I downloaded from VOGONS and the Turok demo gets an average of 22.5fps in the benchmark. I would have to imagine this isn't bad , Tomb Raider and Biohazard (PowerVR version) are likewise very …

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Re: 3dmark99 MegaThread

Posted on 2015-06-01, 00:29

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Ran 3DMark99 on my new Pentium Pro build (probably the closest machine Ive had to my first PC which also most likely used a Pentium Pro) VS440FX Motherboard Pentium Pro 180Mhz /256k 64MB EDO (might expand it to 128mb when I get the chance) ATI Rage Pro 8MB DIamond Monster 3D 3dfx Voodoo1 PowerVR …

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Re: PowerVR Fun Thread

Posted on 2015-05-29, 07:26

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Hey guys I need an opinion Right now my PCX1 card is sitting in a dual tualatin machine, but its a much newer machine than the card. I do have a newly assembled Pentium Pro 180 /256k machine and thought it might be more appropriate. Does a Ppro have enough CPU grunt to utilise a PCX1 decently? The …

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Re: Which is best to keep?

Posted on 2015-05-21, 18:00

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

the Tualatin system , which will run Win9x era games the best (on the other hand the PIII 700 system's lack of speed wont help much for DOS games as its too fast anyway). the dual PIII is very cool , but not as useful.

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Re: Asus P2B-DS Build

Posted on 2015-05-21, 10:21

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I like old SMP machines, gives them a rather lofty feel to them even if the SMP function isnt the most useful for a retro enthusiast in most cases. one thing I would do though is maybe get a different GPU , like a Geforce 1 or 2 , 2MX can be a bit anaemic at times

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Re: Is Voodoo 3 3000 bad with 2D windows games?

Posted on 2015-05-18, 19:59

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

its the CPU or bad drivers/OS installation , the Voodoo 3 is actually a really nice 2D card for those kinds of games, decent speed and sharp output, with good compatibility too.

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Re: Thermal compound for retro CPUs

Posted on 2015-05-14, 08:33

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I use Arctic Silver 5 and it works well on anything from a Pentium , to an Athlon (hard CPU to keep cool) to Core2Duo

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Re: Windows NT 4.0 on Pentium 133

Posted on 2015-05-14, 08:24

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ive ran NT4 on a P133+ 64MB SDRAM and it ran very well , in fact I would say it was more responsive than Windows 95 in many ways, certainly more stable. of course a PPro or PII are better choices, but the P133 works quite well

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Re: How many of you guys still use CRT monitors on all your retro computers (and maybe your modern ones too)

Posted on 2015-04-29, 21:50

by

by Darkman

in Milliways

in Milliways

I still have the 17inch Apple Studio Display (which I think is just a re branded Mitsubishi diamond monitor). I could have potentially gone for the 21inch version , but I simply don't have the space as this monitor is sharing a desk with a 24inch LCD used for my modern PC. The monitor is actually …

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Re: Does the VGA cable matter?

Posted on 2015-04-26, 15:07

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes with older ISA cards, on a 386 for example, I would just try out a few cards until you find a decent combination between your card / cable and monitor. For Socket 7 machines, Matrox and Voodoo 3 AGP cards output a very strong signal. After that it's all DVI, which makes life easier. One of the …

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Re: PowerVR Fun Thread

Posted on 2015-04-23, 13:17

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Voodoo2 is the best 3d card I can think of that would be appropriate for a 486 (fast drivers and a multitexture pipeline to ease up on the bus with). I wouldn't recommend any PowerVR card. Yeah, even on a 233 PMMX computer games using a PCX2 card are barely playable and top of that, the compatible …

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Re: PowerVR Fun Thread

Posted on 2015-04-23, 08:56

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

quick question to the PowerVR experts here (which Im not one of) . which are the best drivers (in terms of performance/compatibility) for a PCX1 (specifically the Apocalypse 3D). right now Ive got 1 of the PCX1 cards Ive got, running in my Dual Tualatin 1.4 system under Win98SE. with the latest …

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Re: Does the VGA cable matter?

Posted on 2015-04-21, 09:15

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

a quality VGA cable will make some difference , though how good your monitor/graphics card, as well as the length of the cable. For instance the S3 Virge card I used had significantly worse output at higher resolutions (the screen would actually judder at any res above 800x600) while using an IXOS …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-04-17, 22:16

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got a bunch of cards "as is" so to speak , its quite a nice selection of cards, not shown here is a 2nd PowerVR PCX1 card that came with this lotm but is currently in one of my systems cards of particular value to me are the 2 PCX1 cards , the QDI Rendition Verite 2200 , the Rage Pro PCI and the …

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Re: tom's Hardware piece about building a vintage PC

Posted on 2015-04-17, 12:35

by

by Darkman

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

wow, there are alot of mistakes and choices I would not make personally, no 440BX? Katmai for optimal Warcraft II gameplay? "socket 270"? 40GB on a i815 chipset (which will support much more)? I get that this is meant more for beginners , though in that case there are easier systems to put together …

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