No such thing as a PII 223. 233Mhz is the correct speed. It is possible that the motherboard was displaying the speed improperly or there was a BIOS setting for "stability" or "compatibility" that slightly underclocked the processor, but more likely, it is an incorrectly remembered detail. 😉

Yes to the 2nd question. There may have been a BIOS setting to change how much system RAM the onboard graphics used, which may have helped in certain situations with minimum RAM settings. Didn't seem to help with Racer though. 🤣.

I don't think 223Mhz cpus exist even if it wasn't a P2 and you generally couldn't underclock the FSB below 66Mhz.

Thought as much, cheers for that guys.

I picked up a PII 233MHz CPU from the post office today so the journey's begun 😀

Hang on...

4MB integrated video with a Pentium II? Not very likely. The first integrated chipsets for Intel CPUs (i810, SiS620 etc) only arrived by the time you had Pentium 3 and Celeron Mendocino systems which ran much faster than 233 (or 223...) MHz. Theoretically it would be possible to stick a Pentium 2-233 on say a Gigabyte GA-6WMM Slot 1 i810 board, but that's a very unlikely combination, particularly as due to Intel pricing policy, the early P2 CPUs were more expensive than vastly better performing Celeron CPUs at the time of the i810.

So I think it's far more likely you had a socket 7 CPU with integrated VGA. SiS had been doing that since 1996. That also provides more speed options...

The Cyrix MII-300GP ran at 3x75=225MHz. You only need a tiny clock error to get that to display at 223MHz. I suspect you might have had an MII 300GP running at 3x 75MHz on a (Gigabyte) motherboard with SiS5596 or 5598 chipset, such as the Gigabyte GA-586MS.

I have an HP Vectra with a PII 400 and integrated Matrox G100 with 4MB. I believe it has the Intel 440LX chipset.

clueless1 wrote:

I have an HP Vectra with a PII 400 and integrated Matrox G100 with 4MB. I believe it has the Intel 440LX chipset.

That's not integrated, it's onboard. The difference matters: onboard chips are basically the same as chips on a card, with their own RAM. That board would behave identically to a board without onboard VGA with a Matrox G100 AGP vard. Integrated VGA shares system RAM. TS clearly describes losing 4MB of system RAM to VGA, which means it's integrated.

dionb wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

I have an HP Vectra with a PII 400 and integrated Matrox G100 with 4MB. I believe it has the Intel 440LX chipset.

That's not integrated, it's onboard. The difference matters: onboard chips are basically the same as chips on a card, with their own RAM. That board would behave identically to a board without onboard VGA with a Matrox G100 AGP vard. Integrated VGA shares system RAM. TS clearly describes losing 4MB of system RAM to VGA, which means it's integrated.

Good point, I missed that nuance.

That's interesting to note dionb. Having 4MB reserved for the GPU was definitely a thing, I remember being really irritated that I couldn't play Episode 1: Racer on my own PC after being impressed seeing it with my friend at the local Tiny store. Of course looking back now I'm sure I could have played it just by running the main exe file but this was all brand new to me back then.

I always assumed I had a Slot 1 cpu as apposed to Socket 7 but thinking back now I can't say for sure that was the case. The next PC I owned had a Slot 1 CPU so I might be mixing the two up.

I'm going to end up building a Socket 7 and Slot 1 setup now I just know it 😵

🤣. Yup. I decided to rebuild my first (non-OEM) PC recently as well. Now I have 7. It really didn't help that a local warehouse was throwing away a pallet of old PCs. It was like walking into a pound where they are running low on kennels.