Hi, I built a win95 gaming rig with a M559 motherboard with that infamous UTRON chipset that is susposed to be slow, it has a 200mmx chip in it right now, sega rally 2 is playable but I tried 4x4 evo on lowest setting and it was pretty bad. Video card is a PCI voodoo 4 4500, I wanted a use a more period correct voodoo rush but it died on me. anyways would you choose a k6 233 or pentium MMX 233 for this board?
Just a side note, but keep that PCI v4 4500 safe. Those are very rare these days and worth a few hundred bucks to collectors. A 233mhz k6 or Pentium isn't going to benefit much from anything that fast. A TNT, Banshee or Voodoo 2 would be more period correct and aren't too hard to come by. The V4 is probably fine, just be gentle with it. 😀
Also, 4x4 Evo is just too new for such a slow CPU. You're meeting the minimum requirements, but the game is from 2000, when CPUs were as much as four times the clock speed of the CPUs you're using.
I don't think it will make a huge difference which of the two CPUs you use. They're going to work better for older games, especially on Windows 95. For anything slower than a k6-2 or pii I would stick to games made before 1998.
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.
MMX 233 is faster than K6 233, but as the poster above says, if you're going to run something this new on these CPUs, it will make little difference. In fact, that K6 233 might actually be slightly slower than the MMX 200 you have in there already and moving from an MMX 200 to an MMX 233 is not worth it. System requirements from back then can often be misleading since our tolerance for lower framerates was higher. As such, many a times you might try a game on the minimum requirements and be dumbfounded as to how this was considered playable. That V4 is also completely wasted in there and it's also a very expensive card, keep it and sell it in a few years to fund your retro habits xD.
Grab a Voodoo 2 if you can and you should be set for games in 1996-1997 (and 1998, but most of them will be slow!) .
Eh...voodoo 2 reigned supreme in 1998. And a k6 233 is pretty good for that year too. I know cuz I was there.
Sure. But have you actually tried any demanding games that came out that year on a K6 233 recently? Stuff like Unreal and Half-Life really leave a lot to be desired with wild swings in performance, especially in the case of the latter where framerates can drop to single digits once you encounter a few enemies. Voodoo2 will kick ass, especially at 640x480, but it needs a powerful CPU to pull that off.
Don't take my word for it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnPHL4cbzLM
Towards the end of this video you can see performance for both of these games on a V2 SLI system with an MMX 233, which is a bit faster than a K6 233 in 3D games like I said earlier (I think the K6 is more in line with an MMX 166 in these sort of loads).
Garrett W wrote on 2020-01-23, 09:39:V2 SLI system with an MMX 233, which is a bit faster than a K6 233 in 3D games like I said earlier (I think the K6 is more in line with an MMX 166 in these sort of loads).
SLI is wasted on 233MHz but I'm not too sure about the 233MMX being that much faster. Especially in integer calculations the K6 233 should beat it.
Do you have the parts at hand and would you care to run a benchmark?
yeah that seems a bit harsh on the k6-233 to flat out call it slower than a pmmx 233. the k6 is known to have a slower fpu and it does drop the ball on memory benchmarks but if those things don't bottleneck it it can bench right up there with a p2 233. this is what the speedsys rating shows and i think it's faster in pcpbench clock for clock than pentium mmx, as well. and i can't imagine that many ever even optimized their code for the k6, apart from the arguably questionable 3dnow! later on. and needless to reiterate but unreal and half-life run badly on either cpu.
btw, if don't know if the BIOS on OPs board is k6-aware; if not, SETK6 would be needed to turn on write allocate and get that little bit of extra performance.
Pretty sure I made it clear I was talking about 3D games which, by and large, rely on the FPU and not on integer calculations.
Yes, the K6 is faster in integer, but it's kind of a moot point here.
Doornkaat wrote on 2020-01-23, 11:32:SLI is wasted on 233MHz but I'm not too sure about the 233MMX being that much faster. Especially in integer calculations the K6 233 should beat it.
Yes, even a single Voodoo2 is relatively wasted on CPUs like these, that wasn't the point here. I merely found this video and the uploader even ran the games at lower resolutions (512x384 for Unreal) so as to show that no matter what these games are bottlenecked by the CPU. Again, I didn't say the MMX 233 is that much faster, but it is faster than a K6 233 when it comes to 3D games. At the end of the day, all of these CPUs are somewhat slow for 1998's demanding games (not to mention OP's games), even though at the time they might have seemed fine, our metrics and goalposts have shifted in the years since.
Doornkaat wrote on 2020-01-23, 11:32:Do you have the parts at hand and would you care to run a benchmark?
I do, but I don't want nor need to run benchmarks. These things have been done to death by now, the original K6 is slower clock for clock in 3D games against a Pentium MMX and a Pentium II is much faster than both of them. There's not a ton of difference between a K6 233 and MMX 233, just like there isn't a ton of difference between an MMX 166 and an MMX 233, at some point diminishing returns started weighing in due to the 66MHz FSB and L2 cache being on the motherboard instead of the CPU among other things.
Thanks for the help, i'll probably hold off then or get the 233MMX since I want the best 3d games performance. the 200mmx I have now has a non removable intel heatsink but is low profile and barely clears the 3.5 drive bay so if I do upgrade i'll have to carefully pick a cpu cooler that would fit the k6 or 233mmx and not hit the drive bay. I also agree with keeping the voodoo 4 safe, I know its overkill for this so i'll keep my eyes out for another voodoo card.
Honestly set your game expectations back also, your rig is more monster truck madness than 4x4 off road
Garrett W wrote on 2020-01-23, 14:46:Pretty sure I made it clear I was talking about 3D games which, by and large, rely on the FPU and not on integer calculations. Y […]
Pretty sure I made it clear I was talking about 3D games which, by and large, rely on the FPU and not on integer calculations.
Yes, the K6 is faster in integer, but it's kind of a moot point here.Doornkaat wrote on 2020-01-23, 11:32:SLI is wasted on 233MHz but I'm not too sure about the 233MMX being that much faster. Especially in integer calculations the K6 233 should beat it.
Yes, even a single Voodoo2 is relatively wasted on CPUs like these, that wasn't the point here. I merely found this video and the uploader even ran the games at lower resolutions (512x384 for Unreal) so as to show that no matter what these games are bottlenecked by the CPU. Again, I didn't say the MMX 233 is that much faster, but it is faster than a K6 233 when it comes to 3D games. At the end of the day, all of these CPUs are somewhat slow for 1998's demanding games (not to mention OP's games), even though at the time they might have seemed fine, our metrics and goalposts have shifted in the years since.
Doornkaat wrote on 2020-01-23, 11:32:Do you have the parts at hand and would you care to run a benchmark?
I do, but I don't want nor need to run benchmarks. These things have been done to death by now, the original K6 is slower clock for clock in 3D games against a Pentium MMX and a Pentium II is much faster than both of them. There's not a ton of difference between a K6 233 and MMX 233, just like there isn't a ton of difference between an MMX 166 and an MMX 233, at some point diminishing returns started weighing in due to the 66MHz FSB and L2 cache being on the motherboard instead of the CPU among other things.
Well, I dug up this old test comparing K6 200 and P1 MMX 200 https://www.anandtech.com/show/194/ and it paints a different picture. Depending on hardware configuration and game sometimes the K6 takes the lead, sometimes the MMX. I can't see a clear winner. The K6 233 is definitely faster than a P1 MMX 166.
kolderman wrote on 2020-01-23, 08:45:Eh...voodoo 2 reigned supreme in 1998. And a k6 233 is pretty good for that year too. I know cuz I was there.
Indeed. I was running a K6 233 (@ 225MHz to get a 75MHz system bus) and a Voodoo 2 at the time, and it worked pretty well. It didn't have the FP muscle that the Pentium did, but it played Quake 2 well enough.
bp
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Doornkaat wrote on 2020-01-23, 18:11:Well, I dug up this old test comparing K6 200 and P1 MMX 200 https://www.anandtech.com/show/194/ and it paints a different picture. Depending on hardware configuration and game sometimes the K6 takes the lead, sometimes the MMX. I can't see a clear winner. The K6 233 is definitely faster than a P1 MMX 166.
Indeed, I was mistaken. Here's something recent from Havli:
http://www.hw-museum.cz/article/5/cpu-history … 1995---1999-/12
Lots of interesting data in there, but since gaming is the one we care the most about here, you can see that the K6 233 is just a little slower than the MMX 233, it probably lands right on the MMX 200, it's definitely faster than the MMX 166. This is also reflected in the K6 166 vs MMX 166. In any case, all of them are a little too slow for later games and the difference is imperceptible between these CPUs.
OP, if you can find a good deal on a Voodoo Banshee, it might be a great fit for you CPU and system. It can be faster and slower than a V2, depending on the game used, but in your case, it probably won't be all that different. It also features pretty much the same 2D core as the Voodoo3 which works really well for 2D and DOS games and also offers great image quality.
