Win98SE and AMD K-6-II speed check \ VOGONS

Win98SE and AMD K-6-II speed check

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First post, by JayAlien

Posted on 2020-10-14, 01:56

JayAlien Offline

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Location: Wisconsin

Hi All,
I have an 'early' Win98 build with the following specs:

Win98SE
SBLive!/AWE64
Voodoo 3 3000
256mb ram
AMD K6-II 400Mhz
ASUS P5S-VM

I had initially built this with a Pentium 233 MMX to roughly equate to a PC I had around this time period (only with way more RAM, I had 32-64Mb back in the day), but after finding it slow, I upgraded to the AMD K6-II 400. I still find this PC very slow (I build a few old PCs, this is not a case of 'oh this is slow compared to my modern Win10 PC).
For example, I recall playing a lot of UT99 on my original PC with a Voodoo 3 and K6-II 333, whereas on my modern recreation UT99 is unplayable, very sluggish on lowest settings @640x480.
I have a PCI Geforce 6200 256 I could use, but it's not really in keeping with the time-period.
Any ideas what's going on here? A run of 3dMark99 @800x600 gets me 1548 3DMarks, and 3624 CPU 3DMarks.
Thanks,
J

Edit: Added motherboard to spec list

Last edited by JayAlien on 2020-10-14, 20:50. Edited 1 time in total.

386sx25 SBP2 2M
P75(486) SB16 8M
P133 S3 Vir DX A64g 32M
P233MMX R128Pro A64 64M
Pii400 TNT2 Live! 128M
P3-1G V5 M80 256M
P3-1.4G R8500 A1 256M
A3200 9700Pro A2 512M
X6800 X850XT A2ZS 1G
E8600 X1950XTX A4pro 2G
QX9650 3870 Xfi 2G
i7-975 GTX570 Xfi 3GB

Reply 1 of 8, by kolderman

Posted on 2020-10-14, 02:14

kolderman Offline

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Can you just try the geforce to see if it makes the difference?

Reply 2 of 8, by melbar

Posted on 2020-10-14, 06:23

melbar Offline

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Which mainboard you are running? With VIA (MVP3 or MVP4) or Ali ALADDiN V (which revision ?)

With 256 MB ram, you don't have write-back cache strategy (except you use K6-2+ or K6-3(+) with on cpu L2 cache). see here: http://www.amd-k6.com/cacheable-ram-on-socket-7-platforms/

I have with my K6-2 500Mhz, VIA MVP3 board, with a Riva 128 PCI and a Riva TNT2 AGP, 64MB PC-100 ram (with write-back strategy) , 3Dmark 99 (default setting 800x600) :

with Riva128: 922 (3Dmarks) , 5878 (CPU 3dmarks)
with RivaTNT2: 2588 (3Dmarks) , 5971 (CPU 3dmarks)

For example, look also this thread:
Voodoo 3 3000 AGP under performing?

#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 3 of 8, by JayAlien

Posted on 2020-10-14, 20:55

JayAlien Offline

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The motherboard is an ASUS P5S-VM, however it's one of the HP ones, I don't think I have all the BIOS options available to me. It looks like the chipset is SiS530/5595.

What prompted my initial post, was I'd just installed System Shock 2, which looking at the recommended specs should be easily playable on this PC.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/system-shock-2/techinfo

at lowest settings, I'd estimate I'm seeing about 10fps @ 640x480. Looking that the other threads you posted, my 3dMarks seem pretty standard for this build, but most gaming seems very sluggish.
Thanks,
J

Reply 4 of 8, by melbar

Posted on 2020-10-14, 21:19

melbar Offline

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Ok,
according to wiki the SiS 530 can cache up to 256MB ram so that is not the problem...

The member Skyscraper has benched this chipset against the other availables:
"Super 7" SiS 530 chipset.

Here i have a chart of a review to system shock 2.
With a P2 -333 it should be fine...

The attachment system shock2.JPG is no longer available

#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 5 of 8, by JayAlien

Posted on 2020-10-15, 01:39

JayAlien Offline

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Location: Wisconsin

That chart is quite telling. Perhaps I'm expecting too much, it might be time to replace with a Pentium 2 or Pentium 3 system, maybe P3 @ 1000Mhz.

Reply 6 of 8, by melbar

Posted on 2020-10-15, 13:12

melbar Offline

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Have installed shortly system shock 2 to these my example PC's:

K6-2 500, clocked @400MHz, VIA MVP3 chipset (512kb L2 cache), 64Mb RAM PC100, Riva TNT2 32Mb SD-RAM.

Example Screenshots.

The attachment IMG_K6-2_400_140855.jpg is no longer available

The attachment IMG_K6-2_400_140910.jpg is no longer available

The attachment IMG_K6-2_400_141022.jpg is no longer available

Last edited by melbar on 2020-10-15, 13:16. Edited 1 time in total.

#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 7 of 8, by melbar

Posted on 2020-10-15, 13:14

melbar Offline

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Joined: 2016-01-31, 13:38

Athlon 1200, clocked @550MHz, VIA KT133 chipset, 512Mb RAM PC133 (clocked: 100MHz), Riva TNT2 Pro 32Mb SD-RAM.

Example Screenshots.

The attachment IMG_K7_550_144652.jpg is no longer available

The attachment IMG_K7_550_144808.jpg is no longer available

The attachment IMG_K7_550_145050.jpg is no longer available

#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 8 of 8, by JayAlien

Posted on 2020-10-15, 16:09

JayAlien Offline

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Joined: 2019-02-02, 04:33
Location: Wisconsin

Melbar, thanks a lot for spending this time on this, this is so helpful. It looks like moving from a 400Mhz CPU to 550Mhz is netting almost twice the framerate. It's easy to forget the pace of change between about 1995 and 2005 in terms of processor speed and what they could achieve. A new CPU one year may have struggled on a game released even 12 or 18 months later. Your post has reminded me that I'm trying to play a 1999 released game (possible a quite demanding one at the time), on a CPU from early 1998. This seems insignificant in retrospect, but a CPU from 2000 or 2001 will likely run this game far more smoothly.
Again, thanks for the time and effort you put into this,
J

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