Re: What is the memory "sweet spot" for a Pentium III Windows 98 SE retro-gaming system?

Posted on 2014-10-29, 21:06

by

by j7n

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

MSIE6 is useless on the web because of low performance and no support for current standards. Opera 10 is still a capable instrument when we need to solve problems with games or technical issues, compared to getting up and walking to another computer. With 16 MB of cache it might seem like the …

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Re: Least lagfest Flash player

Posted on 2014-10-29, 00:45

by

by j7n

in Milliways

in Milliways

I see I've misunderstood you. A video player instead of browser is also invaluable for me, when I desire precise control over the video. One generally cannot precisely seek with the Flash based player and its "fat" seekbar nor framestep. If there is something on the video demanding close attention, …

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Re: Least lagfest Flash player

Posted on 2014-10-28, 18:42

by

by j7n

in Milliways

in Milliways

What are the useful differences in Flash "developer builds"?

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Re: What is the memory "sweet spot" for a Pentium III Windows 98 SE retro-gaming system?

Posted on 2014-10-28, 18:38

by

by j7n

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've found that starting at 512 MB I already have to use the tweaks that limit disk cache size, or the computer will lose performance over time. A computer with more than that amount of RAM will still work, but I might not be able to open a DOS box after a short while, which makes it pointless to …

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Re: Least lagfest Flash player

Posted on 2014-10-24, 20:09

by

by j7n

in Milliways

in Milliways

I think VLC might have GPU acceleration (DXVA) on Vista+, but I have not tried it. SMPlayer will work as long as the developer keeps it updated as Google make their changes. There is handy menu item under Help for downloading an update to "YouTube code", without reinstalling the player. It takes …

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Re: Least lagfest Flash player

Posted on 2014-10-24, 18:20

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by j7n

in Milliways

in Milliways

I am using Flash Player 11.4 in Opera and Firefox. It is 9.3 MB, considerably less than the latest version. To use this version in Firefox I had to set 'extensions.blocklist.enabled' to false. Its built-in GPU acceleration cuts CPU usage approximately in half. Composing the webpage and overlaying …

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Re: 1024x768 Games Nvidia GPU Scaling

Posted on 2014-10-20, 10:12

by

by j7n

in Windows

in Windows

Yasashii It might be possible to output a centered image without scaling using the "Custom Resolution" feature rather than "GPU scaling". Under Change Resolution, where you can pick from a list of preset resolutions, there should be button called "Customize". There you might be able add a preset …

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Re: Your favorite retro apps?

Posted on 2014-10-09, 20:11

by

by j7n

in Milliways

in Milliways

ACDSee ACDSee 2.x and 3.0 has the fastest image scrolling and zooming. Modern image viewers are no longer coded with efficiency in mind since PCs are fast enough anyway. Perfect for 100-400 MHz PCs. I can pick and drag a loaded image and still follow it smoothly on such a weak system. IrfanView …

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Re: Extremely slow VIA Nehemiah CPU

Posted on 2014-10-09, 18:30

by

by j7n

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wonder if there is a way to make a patch to fake EncodePointer atleast. Pretty stupid for a program to fail to run for something as useless as "EncodePointer" This patch allows to run programs compiled for XP SP2 (but not SP3). I am using it on another computer which has SP1 installed. …

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Re: Extremely slow VIA Nehemiah CPU

Posted on 2014-10-03, 23:12

by

by j7n

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My observations are the same now, sliderider. The heatsink was slightly dirty. But after removing it I saw a shiny pad underneath, which consisted of a foil and a dark grey thermal compund (presumably). I noticed that the foil had an uneven surface and a fingerprint in the middle. The CPU package …

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Re: Extremely slow VIA Nehemiah CPU

Posted on 2014-10-03, 11:43

by

by j7n

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thank you Matth79. RMMA will be a useful program for me. The cache was working . DDR RAM is installed. Swaaye is probably correct. After reseating the heatsink and (loud) fan, the performance is now in the expected range of around 500 MHz PIII and significantly worse in floating point, in line with …

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Re: Extremely slow VIA Nehemiah CPU

Posted on 2014-10-02, 13:31

by

by j7n

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The HDD is in Ultra DMA Mode 5. The speeds I am getting are quite good for a laptop and the overall system performace. It is also slow when not accessing the disk.

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Extremely slow VIA Nehemiah CPU

Posted on 2014-10-02, 12:29

by

by j7n

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have received the following old laptop: ECS EliteGroup G230. It's chipset is VIA VT8622/3 CLE266 / VT8235. It has a VIA Nehemiah CPU installed running at 1.0 GHz, but it is extremely slow. Installation of a stripped down Windows XP took about 3 hours. Playing a regular MP3 file causes 35% CPU …

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Re: RIP 32 bit PC gaming?

Posted on 2014-10-02, 02:29

by

by j7n

in Milliways

in Milliways

You can browse net comfortably with a Core 2 from 2006, even watch HD movies and youtube. Web browsing sounds like it should be an easy task for a PC, but my experience is quite the opposite. Web page authors assume that everyone has a modern gaming PC. Recently there was a thread touching slow web …

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Re: Rally 2K in Winxp

Posted on 2014-09-26, 18:23

by

by j7n

in Windows

in Windows

Thanks for the reply. I've got a single core CPU. I tried it on 2 PCs (1.6 and 1.8 GHz cpu) and the sound was sped up in both. Edit: Conroe-L and Yonah (laptop) don't have HT as far as I know (I upgraded from P4). I also tried to set the audio sampling frequency on the PC to 44,100 Hz, to match the …

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Re: Rally 2K in Winxp

Posted on 2014-09-25, 18:03

by

by j7n

in Windows

in Windows

Has anybody noticed a change in sound pitch for all or most car engines with Patch 6 (v5.30)? The pitch has increased significantly, and all cars sound like toys. Is this a more accurate reproduction or a compatibility issue? Nothing in the sound files has been changed, swapping to an earlier ral. …

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Re: Yamaha S-YXG100 PVL Installation

Posted on 2014-07-06, 17:53

by

by j7n

in Milliways

in Milliways

Responding to a PM by moturimi1. In my version data1.hdr is 76,685 bytes. The version has to be the same. If I recall correctly, since it's been a while, I changed it so that it would install PVL when it's not supposed to, and not when it should. In my case there was a very good reason for this part …

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Re: WinXP and Office XP/2003 Updates after April 2014

Posted on 2013-12-30, 12:04

by

by j7n

in Milliways

in Milliways

XP Was My Idea are excellent critical articles. Thank you for sharing. The classic Windows UI was indeed consistent, easy to "feel", and fast at that. Modern GTK applications are worse in all these aspects. And what remains of the classic interface in NT6, when it is enabled by killing the new …

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Re: WinXP and Office XP/2003 Updates after April 2014

Posted on 2013-12-29, 07:55

by

by j7n

in Milliways

in Milliways

gerwin wrote: Because it is the last 'Gates style' OS, before Ballmer took charge. What are the key elements of a Gates style OS?

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Re: Half-Life vs. Unreal

Posted on 2013-12-15, 02:00

by

by j7n

in Milliways

in Milliways

Half-Life is my favourite FPS. I was blown away by Half-Life: Uplink (my first contact with HL) back in the day. Such an awesome demo! Those are exactly my thoughts. I was a bit disappointed that this chapter didn't appear in the final game, nor was the main character aiming to preserve the base. …

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