aitotat wrote:
Thanks!
How many of those benchmarks are 16-bit programs?
That's a good question... Personally I like to be able to play games from the early 90s. I grew up with the Sierra adventures, Lucasarts Adventures, Wing Commander Series and Dynamix games. So these are "top of my list".
In a nutshell if you are looking to play games meant for a average 286 and slow to average 386SX I recommend you go with the Slot 1 solution.
If you like a bit more grunt for games that run well on an average to fast 386DX and average 486DX to slow 486DX2, then you should pick the Super Socket 7 platform.
The choice of CPU is also important on the Super 7 platform. E.g. the Cyrix 6x86 is a really fast cpu once you disable the cache. It can be used to have a perfect 486DX2-66 which is brilliant. However the lowest you can go is a very fast 386-DX40 which is too fast for many speed sensitive games such as Wing Commander or Test Drive III.
I haven't got a Pentium chip, but hoping to add some results down the track. I am also looking at sourcing a Cyrix chip that can do 100 FSB. The 366 model of the MII is seems to be a good candidate...
Great Hierophant wrote:It is much more difficult to show the speed benefits of disabling L2 cache only. Newer titles and benchmarks are more likely to show a significant effect.
Yes the difference is really only noticeable when you start playing with demanding SVGA games...
From here onward I can continue with far less tests, because I was able to draw these conclusions:
- When L1 and L2 are disabled, clock speed and FSB have little impact on performance. Two tests (One with max. clock and one with min. clock) are sufficient to give you an idea what "slowest machine" you can hit with your setup.
- When only L2 is enabled, clock speed and FSB have do have an impact on performance. So for this setting, a few tests at farious frequencies are recommended. Three tests (max. clock, average clock and min. clock) give you a good idea of what is going on!