First post, by Kamerat
- Rank
- Oldbie
I wanted to know how the VIA C3 Nehemiah performed against a Pentium III so I did a benchmark run with a couple of CPUs. One reason to choose the Nehemiah are the number of options for slowdown (compared to Pentium II/III CPUs) if you also want to run speed sensetive DOS games. Note that none of the CPUs that I benchmarked on the Azza PT-6IBT are official supported, but on the positive side the board support voltages as low as 1,3V.
Test setup:
Azza PT-6IBT (i440BX, Slot 1, Baby AT)
VIA C3 "Nehemiah" 1.2A (on MS6905 MASTER)
Intel Pentium III-S "Tualatin" 1400 (modified, on MS6905 MASTER)
Intel Celeron "Coppermine-128" 1100 (on MS6905 MASTER)
Intel Pentium III "Coppermine" 866 (on MS6905 MASTER)
Intel Pentium III "Coppermine" 800EB (Slot 1)
Intel Pentium III "Coppermine" 800 (on Asus S370-DL)
256MB PC133 3-3-3-5
nVidia GeForce FX5200 128MB 64bit
Western Digital WD200 20GB
Windows 98SE
DirectX 8.1b
ForceWare 71.84
SetMul 1.2
SoftFSB 1.7-g1
Chart:
Note the lack of the Nature test in 3DMark2001, I actually forgot that the FX5200 would run it just fine so I disabled it (I started to bench with a GeForce2 MX but it wouldn't cooperate). 😜
Conclusion:
For 100MHz bus a C3 at 1500MHz compares to a Pentium III at 700-800MHz in games.
For 133MHz bus a C3 at 1533MHz compares to a Pentium III at 733-800MHz in games.
A C3 at 1533MHz actually beats a Pentium III-S 1400MHz in Doom, the game seem to like high FSB very much.
Celeron "Coppermine-128" isn't very fast in Unreal Turnament.
I think the VIA C3 "Nehemiah" would do just fine with games up to 2000/2001.