konc wrote:I think I already wrote what the problem with this system is, you need to change this particular setting and nothing else.
You have made your position abundantly clear. I believe that you have good reasons for your position. But I do think you're ignoring some relevant facts. Go back and take a look at that FPU benchmark I posted. That is *severely* off from what it should be -- which is clear from the fact that the Am386DX-40 is explicitly listed as one of the reference benchmarks, and that's the CPU I have in this system! That suggests to me there's something screwy going on. Furthermore, the fact that Warcraft I runs like absolute crap even when the CPU benchmark is coming in at the performance level just above an Intel 386DX-25 supports that line of thinking. Go take a look at Blizzard's stated system requirements for Warcraft I:
Operating System: MS-DOS 5.0
Processor: Intel 386DX 20 MHz
Memory: 4MB RAM
Graphics Card: VGA graphics, 256-colors capable, 320 x 240 resolution
DirectX:
Sound Card: Sound Blaster compatible sound card
Hard Drive Space:
Drives: 3.5" Disk Drive or 2X CD-ROM Drive
Controls: Keyboard & Mouse
Multiplayer: 14.4 Kbps modem or IPX network card
So, if the CPU is benchmarking at something like a 386 @ 27MHz, and the system requirement is only a 386 @ 20MHz, AND the game is unplayably, unbearably slow, it tells me that taking this approach is misguided.
konc wrote:Earlier on you wrote "2-2-2-2 worked but had no noticeable impact on performance", which I openly doubted. In this post you wrote that it didn't work at all.
I should've been more careful to record the results from every single change in settings. You're expressing some frustration at me for not doing so, and that's fair enough. But you can't conclude from my failure to do so that you've figured out the root cause of this system performance problem.
konc wrote:There is no other way to see a proper sysinfo result in the range of ~40.
I will tentatively believe you about this particular claim. Again, even if you're factually correct, I don't think it's the most relevant fact.
konc wrote:If it really doesn't work with 2-2-2-2, then you need to change your cache chips as well.
...or perhaps get a different motherboard/chipset. I've already tried 3 different sets of cache RAM: a 128KiB 20ns kit, a (different) 256KiB 20ns kit, and a 256KiB 15ns kit. Absolutely no difference in performance whatsoever, either in Warcraft I or in the cache benchmarking tool included in Phil's DOS benchmark suite.
konc wrote:Note that I'm talking particularly for the DX/40 processor, not a 2x33.
Noted. =)
konc wrote:You can theorize all you want about CPU or VLB problems, but that's not the case for your sysinfo result, I don't know any other way to say this more clear.
You're coming in loud and clear.
konc wrote:VGA performance is another thing of course, but how can you judge without bringing the CPU to normal numbers first?
Because I've been using computers since I was 5 years old(I'm currently 37 years old), and I'm extremely familiar with and sensitive to different aspects of system performance at an experiential level. I can tell when the CPU is fast, the video card is slow, vise-versa, etc. Putting in that ET4000 card *definitely* improved video performance, but it didn't make Warcraft I play significantly faster. Warcraft I is bottlenecked on something other than video I/O or sound I/O. Could be cache problems -- yes. Could be FPU problems. Could be a weird resource conflict.
konc wrote:If you still don't believe this I can post BIOS settings+sysinfo screenshots with only this option changed.
What I would be more interested in is seeing a video of you playing Warcraft I on the fastest speed setting before and after that change in BIOS setting.
Would you be willing to do that for me? I'd bet money that you will not see a significant difference in performance -- or at least, with the slower BIOS setting you will NOT see anything nearly as bad as what I'm seeing.
If I turn out to be wrong, I'll be completely shocked, and I will have learned something. I'll also eat crow in front of you. 😉