Very nice, a fine machine you got there!

SIS Socket 7 chipset deserve more loving, they are quite decent actually 😊

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Very nice, a fine machine you got there!

SIS Socket 7 chipset deserve more loving, they are quite decent actually 😊

Yeah, one thing I just noticed though. The southbridge seem to be slower than on the Triton chipset.

Integer, cache and memory benchmarks score higher on the SiS (using 7zip bench and speedsys). But I noticed a few benchmarks were a little slower compared to the Triton: Quake 640x480, and Descent 2 640x400 and 800x600 (no-cockpit resolutions). What could explain this? Then I saw one benchmark result that seems to explain it: speedsys VESA Memory Speed. On the Triton my TNT2 M64 gets 73571. On the SiS, the same video card gets 37092. 😲

So there are some situations where VESA speed is not fully bottlenecked in SVGA DOS on a 200Mhz CPU. Cool 😀

Looks great. I have a DX4-100(120) machine I just built from bare parts. It was such a fun thing, I shot a video and I need to finish it.

Not going to wimper on about it, but there is technically a section where your supposed to post system specs, but who the hell knows anything, I don't

Anyways my machines is a VLB enabled system, EXP-4045 OCing the DX4-100 by AMD (8k WB cache) to 120/40 mhz. It has a Stealth SE and 32 MB of memory (I could put 128, which would be INSANE).

Other items include the latter era AWE64 like AWE32 (Forgot the CR number) basically, drops the OPL chips and packs most stuff into the standard AWE64 chipset

then I have a DTC (I really want to find out more about this company, their old headquarters are on street view) dual channel EIDE M/I/O board on VLB, which is actually pretty fast.

I have some 2GB Caviars running OS/2 and PC-DOS (Go IBM, I am rather near to their headquarters) on two drives (I don't dual boot, I just swap drives because I am lazy)

It screams through benches, and it almost renders Quake playable. Duke 3D actually runs better than BOOM/Zdoomdos in that I can run it at a higher framerate at 320x400 on high detail than either ZDOOM or BOOM can run DOOM at 320x200. It really flies with the S3 driver for DOS (Thanks Phil, never knew it existed) and if I had a CRT to support the barbaric refresh rates, it could go up to 1280x1024 with 256 colours.

What the frack, only one isa slot on a sk7 board?

Nice system clueless!

I only now notice that this is a uATX board! Now that opens up some possibilities for something more compact. You can also consider HTPC type cases.

POD200MMX TNT2 M64 32MB PCI Audician 32 Plus DreamBlaster X2 […]
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POD200MMX
TNT2 M64 32MB PCI
Audician 32 Plus
DreamBlaster X2

This is a killer combination right there, nice build clueless1.

The motherboard is out of some old HP-something, that's why it's uATX and that's why it's so limited (few BIOS options, can't disable L2, etc).

Guess what guys? I started thinking, I have a DX2-66 with lots of speed steps, including the classic Wing Commander. So all the POD200 speed zones aren't that critical. First, I clocked the RAM from 66 to 100Mhz, which helped a little with some of the faster games, like Screamer 2. Then I said what the heck and threw the K6-2 in. I didn't want it too fast, just fast enough to play Screamer 2 smooth in SVGA. Right now it's at 100x3 and seems to play pretty good.

Seems like Screamer 2 is one of the ultimate DOS SVGA benchmarks? I also test System Shock SVGA full screen and USNF SVGA. I wonder what the best CPU speed will end up being? I bet Phil's working on another video to answer that. 😉

Merry Christmas everyone.

clueless1 wrote:

Seems like Screamer 2 is one of the ultimate DOS SVGA benchmarks? I also test System Shock SVGA full screen and USNF SVGA. I wonder what the best CPU speed will end up being? I bet Phil's working on another video to answer that. 😉

Could be an interesting topic 😁

I don't think those games are speed sensitive. Although sometimes you can't easily tell, like in some games the AI gets weird, or enemies that take infinite damage and other quirks. I do remember that Screamer 2 setup program craps out on machines that are too fast.

I love that case!

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

Seems like Screamer 2 is one of the ultimate DOS SVGA benchmarks? I also test System Shock SVGA full screen and USNF SVGA. I wonder what the best CPU speed will end up being? I bet Phil's working on another video to answer that. 😉

Could be an interesting topic 😁

I don't think those games are speed sensitive. Although sometimes you can't easily tell, like in some games the AI gets weird, or enemies that take infinite damage and other quirks. I do remember that Screamer 2 setup program craps out on machines that are too fast.

Right! I've also read about mouse sensitivity dropping in Descent 2 with very fast cpus. When I get some time, I'll start ramping up my K6-2 in the 350-550 Mhz range and see if I can notice any weirdness. My goal is fast enough to run the most demanding DOS games smoothly without any weirdness. 😉 You should do a video sometime, you've got a much more expansive inventory of hardware to test with.

kanecvr wrote:

I love that case!

Thanks. I thought it was pretty cool. Literally brand new in box, complete with screws, feet, rails, etc in sealed plastic bags. 😀 Only some dust and cobwebs inside that I needed to clean out.

Interesting thing I'm considering. If I run the K6-2 at 500Mhz, the most demanding SVGA games are very smooth. Like USNF, Screamer 2, and Descent 2. System Shock is glass smooth too as long as you play with the HUD, but full screen, it *still* gets choppy at 500Mhz.

When I disable L1 on the K6-2 500, it performs like a fast 486DX2-66. So that gives me an option for some VGA games that might get a little wonky at 500Mhz.

This would leave my real DX2-66 to handle all other games that need a slower system. Manipulating L1, L2 and Turbo gives me lots of options between 286 and a slow 486. I literally can play Lode Runner, Ultima 1-7, Wing Commander 1-2, any Sierra/LucasArts adventure game, up to Doom I in the same system.

The only thing I don't like about this idea is retiring my POD200MMX. It's such a cool CPU. 😀

My wife got me a 2nd Audician 32 Plus for Christmas, which went into my 486 along with the DreamBlaster S1, so now both systems have Audicians and DreamBlasters. 😎

All that's missing is an MT-32 for the 486. Someday...