dionb wrote:

A bit of dissent on the video cards: those cards listed are all way out of period for this system. Yes, they will work, and do s […]
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A bit of dissent on the video cards: those cards listed are all way out of period for this system. Yes, they will work, and do so faster than period stuff, but if you just want 'fast', get a generic ATX box with motherboard with AGP etc...

More correct and more interesting:
- Voodoo3 3000 PCI. Not cheap, but spot-on in terms of what a gamer with one of these boxes would have bought. Gives you GLide as well.
- Matrox G450 PCI. Cheap & easy to find. Performance similar to V3 3000, but no GLide, only D3D and (if you can find a good driver) OpenGL. Does give you Matrox' EMBM though.
- TNT(2) PCI, perhaps a TNT2-M64. Nice standard nVidia drivers, in same ballpark as other two in performance, but less quirky.

I agree with your reasoning. I think the same way, the only thing is that I have found a 9250 and I've already taken it. But I have also an S3Trio64 on the motherboard and a VirgeDX on a PCI card, could I use these as "consistent" cards with the period? Which one is more suitable? I thought then of using the 9250 for games that require more power, in the end it would never be a bottleneck for my right IBM?

AlessandroB wrote:

[...]

I agree with your reasoning. I think the same way, the only thing is that I have found a 9250 and I've already taken it. But I have also an S3Trio64 on the motherboard and a VirgeDX on a PCI card, could I use these as "consistent" cards with the period? Which one is more suitable? I thought then of using the 9250 for games that require more power, in the end it would never be a bottleneck for my right IBM?

In 2D Virge and Trio are pretty much identical, and the Virge's 3D is infamously slow, so not much point in adding that one. If you already have 2D on the motherboard, a Voodoo 2 would be a good (if expensive) option.

The R9250 probably won't be the bottleneck, but tbh I simply wouldn't use this system for anything needing more GPU oomph (and probably counldn't anyway due to the weak CPU/FSB you're stuck with)

I have also a sis6202, but i think is slow....

About 9250, even if it is too fast for the system, is it better to put a 9250 than another slower one like mystique, MX400, ecc?

SiS 6202 is slower and older than the onboard Trio64, it's a chip that belongs on a 1996-era SiS 5511 chipset, or similar system. Same goes for the Mystique (although that's far better than the 6202).

As for 9250 vs MX400, they're both 'too new' and so much faster than what the CPU can handle it probably doesn't make much difference. The main issue here is drivers, but I'm not really into the early 2000s stuff (which these cards are) and have forgotten which worked better in the day. Tbh, I'd go for whichever is quieter.

9250 is fanless, in this ibm the louder one is the hard drive, there is only one very quite fan that cool the cpu and the PSU, very very nice machine. does not matter if is not fast as the 2000 games require, this machine is for games that require an ISA OPL card, for windows games that can handle a generic sound card, i have my P4 3Ghz.

Anything SiS made in the graphic domain just suck in performance from my experience. They've made nice chipsets, but I don't regret their video chips 🤣

Any good 3D accelerator, even "too new" would be welcome in that system to play late 90's 3D games.
If half life, unreal, quake 3, etc are your thing, with a 3d accelerator this computer will be able to run them ok (maybe not constant 60fps with high res, but definitely over 30fps)

Deksor wrote:

Any good 3D accelerator, even "too new" would be welcome in that system to play late 90's 3D games.
If half life, unreal, quake 3, etc are your thing, with a 3d accelerator this computer will be able to run them ok (maybe not constant 60fps with high res, but definitely over 30fps)

is the reply that ilooking for

Hi to everyone.

I want to compare my IBM PII with another computer i have (P233MMX) by lowering his frquency, i want to know, for example, if my IBM PII at 166Mhz is faster or slower than my P233MMX. I know that at the same frequency the PII is faster than a P1MMX but... how much? There is a simple banckmark to "tune" the PII frequency to match the P233MMX power?

Tnks

AlessandroB wrote:

Hi to everyone.

I want to compare my IBM PII with another computer i have (P233MMX) by lowering his frquency, i want to know, for example, if my IBM PII at 166Mhz is faster or slower than my P233MMX. I know that at the same frequency the PII is faster than a P1MMX but... how much? There is a simple banckmark to "tune" the PII frequency to match the P233MMX power?

Tnks

There are early revision PIIs that ar multiplier unlocked, if you can find one of those 266/300MHz CPUs you may be able to downclock to 233MHz.

Alternatively there are 233MHz PII CPUs but they are uncommon, I don't own one.

I have a PII 266 that is unlocked. But put my P2 at 233Mhz i’m pretty sure that is a lot faster than a P1MMX same frequency. My PII go until 133Mhz tested. I eant to find a frequency that match the p1 speed. Can ba the Quake timedemo the right comparing banchmark?

Pentium MMX and Pentium II are pretty much equal in IPC so at same clock your speed gains will be coming from better chipset, and more/faster cache.

Really? PentiumII is a P6 architecture, respect a Pentium1....

AlessandroB wrote:

Really? PentiumII is a P6 architecture, respect a Pentium1....

Penitum II is a Pentium MMX with onboard L2 cache.

appiah4 wrote:

AlessandroB wrote:

Really? PentiumII is a P6 architecture, respect a Pentium1....

Penitum II is a Pentium MMX with onboard L2 cache.

They're completely different architectures, internally. The P2 is more like a PPro with advanced features such as out of order execution and speculative execution. It does include MMX, though.

I read some reviews of the time and we are all right. The two CPUs are very different but in the practical use of DOS games they actually have comparable performances at the same frequency. In the 32bit software and optimized the pentiumII is much faster. I set my PentiumII 266 at 233Mhz and the performance in a games until end ‘90 can be comparable

gdjacobs wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

AlessandroB wrote:

Really? PentiumII is a P6 architecture, respect a Pentium1....

Penitum II is a Pentium MMX with onboard L2 cache.

They're completely different architectures, internally. The P2 is more like a PPro with advanced features such as out of order execution and speculative execution. It does include MMX, though.

Ipc wise they are equivalent bar l2 cache is what I mean.

appiah4 wrote:

Ipc wise they are equivalent bar l2 cache is what I mean.

I'd say even that goes a little far. OP is unlikely to see a significant performance delta, though (depending on what they're doing).

Some news ...
After buying this computer I immediately installed a PII 266 to have an unlocked CPU. I thought I couldn't mount CPU PIII because if I couldn't change voltage in any way I would have burnt them. Yesterday having time, I took from the warehouse its CPU which was originally mounted by IBM and analyzing it I discovered that it is a Celeron Mendocino 366Mhz SL376.

This means that my motherboard, even if blocked at 66Mhz of BUS, supports the CPU with a lower voltage than the PII, or 2V, which is the voltage required by the mendocino.

At this point I tried a PIII 500/512/100 SL37D and it works perfectly (at 333Mhz) being a 2.0V Katmai core.

So I deduced that I can mount Katmai up to 600Mhz (66 * 6 = 400Mhz real).

My question is: will I also be able to mount the 1Ghz slot1 (Slot 1 because the 370-> slot1 adapter does not fit in there), probably giving it an overvolt 1.75V-> 2.0V ?. Would there be BIOS incompatibilities?

The only 1GHz Slot-1 CPUs are the Pentium III 1000 (10x100) or 1000EB (7.5x133), neither of which will work on your board because they need 1.75V or 1.7-1.75V, respectively. Even if you could modify the VID pins to deliberately overvolt it to 2.0V (not recommended as it will reduce longevity), they may not work at all as they are Coppermine core and the BIOS may not initialise them properly. Moreover, the 66MHz bus means they'll run at 667MHz or 500MHz, respectively.

So the fastest pentium III I can install is the 600 Mhz which would work at 400Mhz. The Celerons, on the other hand, have seen that they can go up to 533 Mhz. In games, I think the 533 Mhz celeron is faster than the PIII running at 400 Mhz right?