elianda wrote:

One point is that disabling just L2 changes the speed only marginally regarding to DOS stuff. L1 has much higher impact and this means it is also more useful. So the tunability by switching L2 is somewhat limited.

You're right. It has a high impact (the L1), but nevertheless disabling the L2 is not less important due to flexibility to play not few sensitive games... http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_C … sensitive_games

For example, playing Syndicate is quite well with only L1disable, but for Wing Commander it's way to fast, here i definitely need the L2disable. For me, the K6 series is predestined for using the full capability of changing multipliers and caches...

dr.zeissler wrote:

Jazz ist FAR too fast and Bash has no INTRO.

So I did check again, and both these games work with none of the described issues on my system. This is a K6-II @500MHz/100MHz FSB on a DFI K6XV3+/66 (2A5LED4G BIOS) with a Voodoo 3000 AGP.

Perhaps the chipset/FSB/BIOS settings or GPU have more to do with this than the CPU.

Please make a video of this.

Sorry, no can do. You will have to choose to believe me or not. 😀 FWIW, I am not the only one who reported these games working fine.

Multi ?, FSB?

I mentioned these in my earlier post. It's 5x100MHz.

One thing I noticed, regarding Monster Bash - sometimes the intro will be skipped. I think what happens is that if the CPU is clocked fast, and you press a key, it registers two key presses instead of one, and skips the intro. I tested this about 10 times, at the copyright screen. If I tap a key lightly, I see the intro (Johnny shooting a zombie). If I hit a key hard, it goes straight to the blood curtain and the main screen.

The same thing happens if I want to view the intro from the main menu (by pressing 'V'). Too hard a press and it skips it. And I can get the same behavior in DOSBox. It's definitely not a K6-specific issue.

Thx!

With these old games you got to be careful what you're testing.

One thing that is very frustrating is when people ask to test something, but we:

- don't have the games
- we all know that we will have to pirate them to test them
- the person ask to test them doesn't make them available for testing
- don't know if the game has other issues unrelated to what you're asking

For example Turrican 2. That game is a bastard to get running on ANY machine. There are pages and pages on DOSForum about this. So that just wastes time and doesn't help anyone figure out if it's the K6 or not. The game runs fine BTW!

Now we can't endorse pirated games, but this has bugged me enough that I don't do such tests anymore. It's such an effort of time and mucking around. I really feel that the person asking to test something needs to zip everything up so it's ready to go, plus has confirmed these games working on a period correct 386 and DOSBox first. But we can't do that, so yea, don't!

Often it turns out that everything actually works and that the person who thinks they don't run because of the K6, hasn't done something else properly, like wrong memory configuration, wrong installation folder and whatnot, or runs some odd setup like four sound cards, non MS DOS, replaced memory managers, runs them from Windows (my pet peeve) and other rookie things that easily cause issues.

I know that they work with disabling the caches and rebooting, but I don't like that.

And this just sums it up. I mean disabling the caches is the highlight of these CPUs! It's what makes them so compatible!

Hi Phil, you are right, lots! of dependences!

Bumping this old thread to inform you that I've updated the original post to include my own MVP3 results using the DFI P5BV3+ that was graciously repaired by Keropi!
The results are... rather uneventful, both the Aladdin V and MVP3 appear to be on par, but I am thankful that I have the numbers to show it now.

Side note: of interest is minimum fps not going below 60, estimating from the results it looks like a piii/athlon 1.2ghz would be enough to keep things full speed for whats been tested except for unreal tournament that would need about a piv 2.0 and serious sam 2 a piv 3.0, matched with whatever undetermined gpu that wouldn't be a bottleneck.

Is 60 fps what most of you consider minimum playable these days? How did you survive before modern video made its way into the cinema? Movies were nominally shot at 24 fps.

No, it's just now long since possible to gear up to max things out for older games, with the question/quest of what's the least hardware you can get away with to do so. At least I find it fun to calculate for it.

feipoa wrote:

Is 60 fps what most of you consider minimum playable these days? How did you survive before modern video made its way into the cinema? Movies were nominally shot at 24 fps.

Its not really the same thing, most films still are 24fps. by its nature Film has built in motion blur that pc graphics still struggle to do well.
Even early hand drawn animations used to fake motion blur using dry brushing. Its more comparable to how fluid you felt early stop motion/claymation was.

I bring this old post back to life because I have doubts about which system to choose between two that are the candidates and are similar to those examined.

System 1
IBM PC 300GL
BX chipset - Slot1 Pentium II/III limited to 66Mhz Bus (CPU range from 133Mhz of PII underckolocked to mendocino 533) - S3Trio - PCI slot ISA slot.

PRO: Very quite - Very nice - create a full IBM workstation together with a Model M keyboard and a beautiful IBM Trinitron 17 "monitor.

CONS: No AGP slot, only 66Mhz bus (but i can try to solder a resistor to abilitate 100Mhz)

System2
Single board computer With ISA and PCI. Socket7 TX chipset. Bus ranging from 55 to 83 mhz. Multiplier from 1.5 to 6x. Chip 69000 ghraphic card.

PRO:
it sit in an Amiga 4000 full working at that makes a wonderful total gaming/software ‘90 machine in a very compact space. can install test and have fun with a great number of Socket7 cpu that i have P1, PMMX, K5, Cyrix, K6-2, K6 III. Can be swapped for an SBC 486 class for retrofeeling easely.

CONS: Limited power maximum is 83Mhz X6 for the K6 IIII Cpu. If i want to use a PCI graphic card different from 69000 onboard i must uninstall card and use it in a backplain... very annoying.

Target: Games and some software from early ‘90 to 1999/2000. Not so much 3D games that require AGP card that is impossible on both system.

Someone can help me choosing the best?? Tnks

Pentium3s are like 486s - totally uninteresting for retro use unless for nostalgia. If you have a s370 board you are better off with a via c3, if you need something more powerful you are better off with a Pentium 4. Via C3s are comparable to K6+s, just different sockets and eras of mobos. I run both and very happy with them.

kolderman wrote on 2020-05-04, 06:27:

Pentium3s are like 486s - totally uninteresting for retro use unless for nostalgia. If you have a s370 board you are better off with a via c3, if you need something more powerful you are better off with a Pentium 4. Via C3s are comparable to K6+s, just different sockets and eras of mobos. I run both and very happy with them.

Nostalgia is a great recipe of our/my passion 😀
My IBM is slot1 not socket 370. Using IBM for me is a way also to preserve and not use so much retro fragile hardware like Amiga4000. And as i say IBM make a great looking rig with Model M and trinitron IBM monitor. But using IBM means not "PLAY" swapping different cpu to test an learn... it's a hard choose, so i need your help to the right choice.

I expect someone to tell me some details that I don't know and that make my choice easier

Slot1 can be made into s370 with an adaptor. I believe many via c3 work in those slotket adaptors. You said you want to target games from 90 to 2000? I would suggest target 90 to 98 with one of the cpus I mentioned. 99 onwards needs something more. Pentium mmx is also a goppod choice but might only stretch to 97.

98/99 will be ok for me, my primary taget are first half ‘90 years (after that years i can use a more modern PC like P4 because i think ISA is no longer necessary) , as long i con go forward with a unique machine is better but not strictly necessary .

kolderman wrote on 2020-05-04, 06:27:

Pentium3s are like 486s - totally uninteresting for retro use unless for nostalgia. If you have a s370 board you are better off with a via c3, if you need something more powerful you are better off with a Pentium 4. Via C3s are comparable to K6+s, just different sockets and eras of mobos. I run both and very happy with them.

For me it has been the opposite. My 486 33Mhz and my P3 have been the perfect retro PCs for me. There isn't really anything I can't run with these PCs from dos/win9x period and that includes speed sensitive games.