VOGONS


First post, by F2bnp

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I've been sitting on these results for maybe more than a month now, but I finally sat my ass down and transferred my notes to a PC 😀. These were done purely for fun, it was something that had been troubling me for years, just where the hell the Pentium Pro lies in comparison to the other two CPUs.
Conclusion is usually very close to the Pentium II, but there are some very interesting results in there nonetheless.

Ideally, I would have also liked the following:

a) have at least the Pentium Pro with 128MB RAM, but I only had one set of 2x32MB sticks and this motherboard only takes 4 sticks. I don't think it makes a huge difference either way.
Pentium MMX is certainly more limited in this regard, but the 430TX can only cache up to 64MB, so...

b) maybe try the Pentium II with more relaxed timings, but I just couldn't be arsed to do it after so many tests I was just begging for this end 😜. I tried it with 2-3 games and didn't notice much of a difference, only slightly greater than margin of error. Of course, memory intensive games would probably benefit more than that

c) include other chipsets and CPUs in the mix, for example 430KX, but my other board just will not run at 233MHz so I can't draw any conclusions
K6-III+ at 233MHz on ALi Aladdin V and maybe even the 430TX board? yeah, I don't have that much time in my hands unfortunately and results would probably be close to the MMX 233 anyway

Hope you guys enjoy these, I had fun testing everything out.

Reply 2 of 31, by Koltoroc

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Quite interesting. I find it surprising how well the pentium pro actually does in games. It is much closer to the pentium 2 than I was expecting.

Reply 3 of 31, by luckybob

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giphy.gif

gonna keep be busy reading tonight!

If you REALLY want mmx on socket 8, get an overpriced overdrive chip. Those things run like raped apes.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 4 of 31, by Jade Falcon

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luckybob wrote:

gonna keep be busy reading tonight!

If you REALLY want mmx on socket 8, get an overpriced overdrive chip. Those things run like raped apes.

Just have to ask, how do you know how raped apes run?

Last edited by Jade Falcon on 2017-11-27, 20:15. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 5 of 31, by dexvx

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Good work.

What cache PPro did you use? I didn't see it in the word doc.

Reply 6 of 31, by luckybob

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Jade Falcon wrote:

Just have to ask, how do you know how raped apes run?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJP5f-fsHrs

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 7 of 31, by Jade Falcon

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luckybob wrote:
Jade Falcon wrote:

Just have to ask, how do you know how raped apes run?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJP5f-fsHrs

raw

Reply 8 of 31, by F2bnp

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dexvx wrote:

Good work.

What cache PPro did you use? I didn't see it in the word doc.

Hi, I should have clarified, that's a PPro 200 256K.

Reply 9 of 31, by mrau

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is there a specific reason for leaving the ppro memory timings on default?

Reply 10 of 31, by F2bnp

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There were no options in the BIOS to tweak them, as is to be expected with most Intel motherboards anyway.

Reply 11 of 31, by Scraphoarder

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luckybob wrote:

If you REALLY want mmx on socket 8, get an overpriced overdrive chip. Those things run like raped apes.

Checked them out on eBay and the prices are insaine! Something special a socket 8 motherboard delivers that you cant get on a slot 1 board to justify getting theese? Maybe for Quad socket 8 boards or an ALR 6x6 they make sense. I have 4 Powerleap s370 to s8 adapters, so i may try them in a Proliant someday with some Celerons or underclocked P3s if possible.

Reply 12 of 31, by Jade Falcon

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sk8 overdrives have the L2 running at full speed. But than again you could just get a Pii450 and have a much better system with AGP and SDram.

But I rather have the overdrive, if the rice is right.

Reply 13 of 31, by Scraphoarder

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Jade Falcon wrote:

sk8 overdrives have the L2 running at full speed. But than again you could just get a Pii450 and have a much better system with AGP and SDram.

But I rather have the overdrive, if the rice is right.

OK i see. They were the offsping of a Ppro and P2 love affair 😊

Reply 14 of 31, by Jade Falcon

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They are rather interesting, But sadly you can only use two of them in a system. If you have one of those ALR quad or 6 socket systems you can only use two overdrives.

ASCI Red, once the fastest system in the world used pentium II overdrives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCI_Red

Reply 15 of 31, by Munx

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I'm surprised how PPro handles 44KHz audio in Unreal.
Seeing how the game automatically switches to 11KHz when it cant detect MMX, I was expecting a huge 44vs11 difference.

My builds!
The FireStarter 2.0 - The wooden K5
The Underdog - The budget K6
The Voodoo powerhouse - The power-hungry K7
The troll PC - The Socket 423 Pentium 4

Reply 16 of 31, by Jade Falcon

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The Ppro is a rather surprising cpu in what it can handle.

Reply 17 of 31, by amadeus777999

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Nice work!

Reply 18 of 31, by auron

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some interesting results there. i wonder if the pentium pro suffers any penalty from running win98se (mixed 16/32-bit code), it would be interesting to rerun some of this on win2k. of course the pii has better l1 cache as well, i believe.

mmx seems nearly irrelevant in most cases from what i can tell, unless diablo 2 actually uses it, but i'd take the "pmmx>ppro" conclusion with a grain of salt for now. generally i think it would have been better to do all tests with the same amount of memory, 64mb to not penalize the socket7 system and use the same hdd for all.

Reply 19 of 31, by amadeus777999

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auron wrote:

some interesting results there. i wonder if the pentium pro suffers any penalty from running win98se (mixed 16/32-bit code), it would be interesting to rerun some of this on win2k. of course the pii has better l1 cache as well, i believe.

mmx seems nearly irrelevant in most cases from what i can tell, unless diablo 2 actually uses it, but i'd take the "pmmx>ppro" conclusion with a grain of salt for now. generally i think it would have been better to do all tests with the same amount of memory, 64mb to not penalize the socket7 system and use the same hdd for all.

What was the general loss in performance when running 16/32 bit code on the PPro? I can't imagine this being as vital as was propagated - seems more like a maketing "gag" of that era.