Thanks for the quick review 😀.

Yea, I've downloaded the latest drivers a while back in anticipation. The only other reviews of the card I've read mention problems with the SP/DIF. I wondered if that had something to do with the lousy brand capacitors on the card... all "Canicon" brand (known junk), all 7mm high, but 4mm, 5mm, and 6.3mm wide. I think I'll definitely have to put the time into re-capping it now.

I read something about that; most of the complaints are about no 5.1 surround in digital mode (only stereo), a few seem to have low volume issues. A recap could fix the low volume, but have no idea about the digital surround; it wouldn't hurt to try, though (and yes, Canicon is a bottom-of-the-barrel capacitor brand 😵 ).

In case anyone is wondering what's happened with The Rebuild, here's a quote from a post I made in another thread:

Sorry for not updating my build threads as of late, but as I said before my personal life has taken an unexpected turn. The feud that has plagued my relatives for years has reached an inevitable and sad climax, and now local law enforcement and the legal system are involved as well. Maybe now they will realize the kind of ugly and dangerous game they were playing with each other, and see how silly and stupid it really was to do so 😐

I will get back to the P4 when time allows.

Got some game timedemo results, all run at 32-bit color:

Quake

640x480 - 508.7

800x600 - 421.3

1024x768 - 299.8

1152x864 - 242.4

Quake II

640x480 - 390.1

800x600 - 380.9

1024x768 - 306.8

1152x864 - 248.8

Unreal Gold

640x480 - 127.5

800x600 - 123.7

1024x768 - 121.6

1152x864 - 119.0

With Quake and Quake II the fps is what I would expect, but Unreal Gold shows that my little P4 Northwood is now losing steam very fast. Doom 3 results confirms this.

Doom 3 Version 1.3.1 (Ultra Quality)

640x480 - 46.3

800x600 - 46.1

1024x768 - 42.5

1152x864 - 38.8

I also did some timedemos with the original version of Doom 3. It is indeed a bit faster ^^.

Doom 3 Version 1.0.1 (Ultra Quality)

640x480 - 54.3

800x600 - 52.4

1024x768 - 45.1

1152x864 - 40.2

My guess is that the introduction of EAX 4.0 in version 1.3 is one of the reasons why fps has dropped. And before anyone asks, there will not be any results from Quake 3 - it's multiplayer only and I don't do multiplayer, much less buy any just for timedemo results. Sorry.

I also have this item that I got back in February from the same guy that sold me the two Asus P3 boards & CPUs. It's the Pinnacle Studio AV Version 7:

He told me it was complete and I've verified that. I was tempted to install it in the Pentium 4 build to see if it works (it hasn't been used for quite a while), but after reading the manuals I decided no to. It's a full analog video capture setup with 704x480 max resolution and MJPEG compresion; I suppose it can make decent videos out of VHS tapes but I already have a DVD recorder w/hard drive that does the job much easier, cleaner, faster, and with better image quality. I'll just keep it in storage until I can figure out another use for it.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

And before anyone asks, there will not be any results from Quake 3 - it's multiplayer only and I don't do multiplayer, much less buy any just for timedemo results. Sorry.

What's this single player option then?
Also you could try open arena.

Playing against bots is not what I consider a single player option, regardless of what id Software or others like you call it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_Arena

And no, OpenArena doesn't qualify either:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenArena

If Quake 3 had a single player campaign like Return to Castle Wolfenstein does then it would have be fine (and yes, I already have a copy of RTCW).

Once again, no multiplayer only games for me, not even if they have a "pseudo single player" option with bots. That's final 😠 !

Those Zoran MJPEG chips are very hit or miss. Drivers are usually non-existent for anything but Windows 9x, plus the MJPEG compressor "roasts" video. The analog capture side with the Philips chip may still be decent if the card lets you capture raw uncompressed video using DirectShow. Even then there are better analog cards out there with working drivers. Pinnacle cards are notoriously lousy in many ways and usually aren't recommended for any serious capture work, especially VHS.

NJRoadfan wrote:

Those Zoran MJPEG chips are very hit or miss. Drivers are usually non-existent for anything but Windows 9x, plus the MJPEG compressor "roasts" video. The analog capture side with the Philips chip may still be decent if the card lets you capture raw uncompressed video using DirectShow. Even then there are better analog cards out there with working drivers. Pinnacle cards are notoriously lousy in many ways and usually aren't recommended for any serious capture work, especially VHS.

Are Philips SAA713x cards still king of Analog capture? That was basically the successor to the BT878 for analog capture (Well Conexant also released an updated chip, I forget the model, but they say the Phillips was superior)...

I captured video with it using Virtualdub in Windows 7 x64 (Huffyuv), worked great. The trick is to get the later NXP x64 drivers... I was dropping frames with the early Phillips ones.

NJRoadfan wrote:

Those Zoran MJPEG chips are very hit or miss. Drivers are usually non-existent for anything but Windows 9x, plus the MJPEG compressor "roasts" video. The analog capture side with the Philips chip may still be decent if the card lets you capture raw uncompressed video using DirectShow. Even then there are better analog cards out there with working drivers. Pinnacle cards are notoriously lousy in many ways and usually aren't recommended for any serious capture work, especially VHS.

Thanks for the extra info. I've never owned or used video capture cards before so I know nothing about what's good or not good. I had something in mind for the Pinnacle, but from what you tell me it just won't work as I wanted so I'll just leave it in the box. At least my DVD recorder does a great job making DVDs out of VHS tapes (and the Pinnacle was a freebie ^^).

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Playing against bots is not what I consider a single player option, regardless of what id Software or others like you call it: […]
Show full quote

Playing against bots is not what I consider a single player option, regardless of what id Software or others like you call it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_Arena

And no, OpenArena doesn't qualify either:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenArena

If Quake 3 had a single player campaign like Return to Castle Wolfenstein does then it would have be fine (and yes, I already have a copy of RTCW).

Once again, no multiplayer only games for me, not even if they have a "pseudo single player" option with bots. That's final 😠 !

Just about every FPS has bots trenchantly. But that being sad I agree with you. If it's not a cheater it's a five year old, if it’s not a five year old is someone with a crap connation you're playing with 🤣
But why not OpenAren? Its free and open source and has a long history of being used for benchmarking.

frisky dingo wrote:

But why not OpenAren? Its free and open source and has a long history of being used for benchmarking.

Don't care for it (or Quake 3 for that matter). Period. End of story.

Go ahead and have the last word if you want. I won't bother to answer you anymore 😠

I've installed just about all the software and games I want on XP including Office XP Professional, GoldWave 5.70, Yamaha S-YXG50 version 4.21.03 WDM, Warcraft 3 + The Frozen Throne expansion pack, and more. I even got my favorite OpenGL screen saver working, Superquadrics. Here's a very short (and crappy) video:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5q5lm1rml0dc5ng/Sup … ics_ss.mp4?dl=0

All I have to do now is to make a backup of XP SP3 with Norton Ghost 2003 and prepare for a Linux install. After trying out several LiveCD distros I've settled for Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon edition, it just works great and is easy to get used to ^^. A close second is Knoppix 7.4.2.

[rant]Why Linux? And why now? To be quite frank, I'm disillusioned with Microsoft at this point. Their Windows 10 upgrade attempt through KB3035583 was not very endearing at all to me - and I don't care that it's free, I don't want it. This is my computer hardware and I get to decide what's best for it, not Microsoft or anyone else for that matter. Selfish, maybe; true, you bet 😏

Unless Microsoft does create a true desktop PC OS in the near future (instead of these washed down smartphone-based concoctions), Windows 7 will be the last MS OS I'll ever use[/rant]

Linux Mint is finally up and running. Had a few issues (mainly with how the OS works and software is installed) but there are plenty of Linux support sites around and everything has been taken care of (for now anyway 😅 ).

With this final step done, I can confidently now declare this rebuild finished. Overall performance, usability and compatibility are better than expected, and I'm pretty sure the experience I gain from learning a different OS will be very valuable and useful as well 😎

I've also started winding down my participation in the forums; I won't stop posting completely, just reduce it to a minimum. Two reasons for this - Real Life issues have become ever more difficult (the frightful resolution of my relatives' feud in particular has taken a lot of my time and resources) and apparently I have become Persona non grata with some forum members lately (I won't mention any names and know that it's entirely my fault after all 😐 ). I will still keep track of certain topics, such as Gemini000's ADG (keep up the good work Kris, I thoroughly enjoy it ^^).

Finally, I also plan to maybe do one more retro build, but only if the circumstances allow it. I haven't lost my love for old PC hardware, just don't have as much time as I used to; I also keep my projects to areas that I know and/or understand pretty well, which means no one here will see anything earlier that a S7 Pentium 1 or later than a S478 Pentium 4 from me (and ATX based as well, not AT). This keeps doubts and headaches down to a minimum. I also plan to hang on to my small collection of computer hardware by any means necessary - only an unstoppable act of nature can possibly take it away from my hands 😏

Hope things get better for you man! Good to see that your p4 is being loved and used, I am putting together an intel D850GV based RDRAM system and and an Intel d845gebv2 both with 1.4ghz Willamette processors. It will be fun to see how 512mb of DDR266 CL2 fares vs 512mb of RDRAM 800 CL40.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Got some game timedemo results, all run at 32-bit color:And before anyone asks, there will not be any results from Quake 3 - it's multiplayer only and I don't do multiplayer, much less buy any just for timedemo results. Sorry..

Q3A is actually one of the easiest benchmarks. Just download the demo it's free.

Load the game. Open console and enter timedemo 1
Then what I do is set the quality to high, then adjust the resolution. Then go to demo, tab, tab, enter and off it goes 😀

Sorry Phil, even multiplayer-only demos are not acceptable. I simply will not touch them (yes, I hate multiplayer that much).

I'm also going to ignore such requests from now on. It helps me keep what's left of my sanity intact 😵

Once again, I'm sorry.

What commands did u use to benchmark unreal gold ?
I tried with timedemo but doesn't work.

Hit the ~ key during the castle flyby intro and type: timedemo 1

To turn it off, hit the ~ key again and type: timedemo 0

Works just fine with Unreal Gold 226 and Oldunreal's 227i Patch

Here are some screenshots from Linux Mint 17.1 (click on pics for original size):

Found my old copy of WinQuake recently, and curiosity compelled me to install it and run timedemos on the P4 Northwood.

640x480 - 128.0 FPS

800x600 - 97.2 FPS

1024x768 - 68.2 FPS

Not bad, fairly decent performance; sure plays and looks like DOS Quake as well 😀

Unfortunately I can't go any higher than 1024x768, the Video Options menu doesn't have any other modes available:

I believe the reason is that the Nvidia 169.28 drivers query my Acer S202HL widescreen monitor as to what screen resolutions it has, and only makes those available; anything else gets dropped. And WinQuake doesn't have 1152x864 available as an option for reasons unknown. Here is a screencap of GLQuake's Video Options menu showing what modes are available:

That list pretty much reflects what I can select for the Windows desktop also. Oh well 😒 😐