VOGONS


First post, by treeman

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I was looking through my cpu collection and found a pentium overdrive socket 7 166 cpu, So decided to try it out in my packard bell pb600 which was maxed out at a p133 cpu.

All went well, bios showing p133 but benchmarks confirm a p166. So naturally before swapping cpus I ran a quake time demo (low res). Got 25fps with p133 and 27.5 with p166. Very disappointing scores I think.

I also tried duke nukem and blood both in 640x480 svga modes.

1. duke nukem 20 fps playable
2. blood ~15 fps not enjoyable

I was expecting both games to play alot better! my amd 5x85 clocked to 160 with low cache timings gets 16fps on quake and about the same on duke nukem 3d! makes sense on quake since lack of fpu power on 486.

Anyway here are my full specs

Packard bell pb600
256 l2 built in cache enabled
72mb fpm ram 2x 32mb modules + 8mb inboard
S3 diamond monster 4mb (Im pretty sure) pci
Stock Aztec isa sb16 clone, something like that
added in a voodoo 1 for future projects
Booting off mechanical drive but playing games from cf card

I realise this is not the perfect hardware for gaming its one of those branded desktops with very limited bios options and probably not optimal chipset for gaming, however maybye I am. expecting too much from stock pentium 166.

I have a riva tnt2 16mb but I feel like adding that is going about it the wrong way?

I don't have any other pentium machines to compare with.

what you guys reckon about my results?

Reply 1 of 18, by vladstamate

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I don't know but 586 @ 160Mhz gets you 16FPS and Pentium 166 gets you 27.5FPS sounds about correct relative speed to me. You might not like the 27.5 FPS but relatively that is correct.

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Reply 2 of 18, by kixs

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Take a look in this thread (Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project):
Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project

and the link to the benchmarks:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lvF9n … dit?usp=sharing

There you'll see that P-166 can get around 26FPS in Quake. Depends on many settings in BIOS as some P-166 are faster, mostly MMX versions.

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 3 of 18, by treeman

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Yeah you guys are right, think my expectations were too high I remember as a kid pentium 166+ being pretty much bulletproof for any game to run smooth, but I never had such fast machines so perhaps it was all low resolutions I saw in action.

Im quiet happy with a p133/166 as my fastest system as long as it performs close to average benchmarks im more into 486 territory. Shame about blood not running good on high res but im reading about it now and it seems its a bit of a animal at 640x480 +

Reply 6 of 18, by derSammler

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treeman wrote:

I was looking through my cpu collection and found a pentium overdrive socket 7 166 cpu, So decided to try it out in my packard bell pb600 which was maxed out at a p133 cpu.

All went well, bios showing p133 but benchmarks confirm a p166. So naturally before swapping cpus I ran a quake time demo (low res). Got 25fps with p133 and 27.5 with p166. Very disappointing scores I think.

What a jump did you expect from a P166 compared to a P133? Also, only the CPU got faster, nothing else. FSB is still the same, so is RAM speed, graphics etc. If it was a P166 MMX, it would be more noticeable. But even then it's not much.

Reply 7 of 18, by wouterwashere

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Many socket 5 / 7 chipsets have only 64MB cachable memory. Having more memory than 64MB installed can hurt a lot, especially when you don't need that amount of RAM. If you have some other SIMMs, try to get together a respectable amount, more than the 8MB onboard, but less than 64MB.

What chipset do you have?

Reply 9 of 18, by treeman

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Ok so from my research ill say this.

I am considering a overdrive pentium 200, from what I read the improvement from 166 to 200 is not supposed to be that big and considering from 133 to 166 wasn't very big I believe it.

I do realise the built in non expandable l2 256 cache probably only caches 64mb and I dropped 2x32 modules which brings me to 72 with the built in 8. From my understanding it will only be slower if caching over the 64mb which in dos (what I used) no apps will.
I also stumbled an different post on vogons where a guy said evene using uncached ram vs hard disk is still faster.
But if everybody thinks so perhaps ill take out one of the 32mb modules and use a total of 40mb instead of 70?
The quake time demo says it loads 30mb into ram on startup anyway.

As for the voodoo, I only added it recently so didn't want to cloud my tests and keep everything 2d.
There is no 3dfx for duke nukem 3d, there is a alpha for blood which I will try to install and see how it goes.

Also I wanted to keep it 2d to also compare to how my 586 160mhz ran with the same pci card.

Think what I am mostly disappointed with is that duke nukem 3d in svga 640x480 got very similar rates and game play on the p166 and 586 160mhz

however looking at the results posted in the post above it looks like my p166 is performing on average with similar machines so its given me closure.

I probably won't play these games, with the exception of a little blood so it's more just about knowing the setup is performing how it should

the chipset it VLSI Super Core 82C590 chipset (591/592/593)

Reply 10 of 18, by gerwin

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For good framerates in these software rendered 3D games in modes 640x480 and up: Any pentium 2 or 3 will do much better when write combining is enabled, like at least twice the framerate. Unfortunately Pentium classic and MMX do not support this write combining.
See benchmark here: 50 to 133MHz FSB on a BX Mainboard

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Reply 11 of 18, by treeman

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yeah I was afraid of that, for duke nukem 3d it was made in 96 and pentium II being released in 97 I never want to go past socket 7 to squeeze eventing I can from it. But blood being released into 97 yeah it makes sense.

Socket 1 is probably out of touch for me, I have a 386 486 and P1 and I got no more room 🙁

Socket 1 were my favourite systems cpus back in the day and they still feel a bit too new for me haha

If the voodoo blood patch doesn't work or is bad like most people say ill prob throw in the riva tnt 2 16mb pci in and see if it helps

I should rename this to disappointed with how these games run in hign res on p166 🤣

Reply 12 of 18, by lost77

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You also have to understand, back then games where made to run at 320x240 on common hardware. That was probably a fast 486/slow pentium when Duke Nukem 3D came out and a midrange pentium when Blood came out. 640x480 wasnt really viable until 3d accelerators came about (unless you liked counting frames). The build engine had the VESA support so people could play at more oddball resolutions like 320x200 or 400x300.

Also your 5x86 was quite a bit faster than a 486 with its high clockspeed and increased cache. Its was like a mini pentium 😀

Reply 13 of 18, by treeman

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yeah that's the thing that i battle in my mind that duke3d was created at a time when there was no chance to run it smoothly at 640x480 until you waited about a year for a powerfull enough cpu, but yeah I understand it there were plenty of games that were coded badly or even ran choppy stock and that's how they were released. Because I never had a fast pentium machine in those days I guess it was stuck in my mind that having the fastest cpu from the time a game was released it would run smooth on all the highest settings... but thats not how it works in the real world I guess.

just took me 20 years to finally get that fast machine and try it out.

Yeah the 586 133 is supposedly equal to a p75 and clocked at 160 equal to a p90 (which is my favourite system) with a much weaker fpu and other non pentium aspects

Reply 14 of 18, by Half-Saint

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I ran Duke3D on a Pentium 200 without MMX and it ran fine. I don't remember how many FPS I got but it was smooth. Even did multiplayer a few times 😀

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Reply 15 of 18, by treeman

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yeah duke3d was playable in 640x480 as well, was just hoping to see a higher fps then a 586.

Its blood that is slightly less playable in this resolution.

however I think its psychology too, because I used to play heaps of games on my 486dx2 66 when I was 14 or 15 and they seemed fine because I never experienced them on better hw 20 years later playing high res 3d games on all sorts of systems and consoles I think we just notice more and have higher expectations when going to old hardware.

Anyway all the responses made me feel better that its not my build its right for a p1 and im happy with that, period accurate!

Also I just tried shadow warrior in 3dfx and wasn't that impressed but yeah works.

Screamer rally worked well which is actual 3dfx game so im happy with that!

still no luck with blood 3dfx but im working ok it

Reply 16 of 18, by appiah4

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Duke3D in 640x480 runs at 'playable' framerates on my P133 build with a Trio64+ graphics card but chokes hard at 800x600. My K6-2/400 handles 800x600 fine.

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Reply 17 of 18, by liqmat

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lost77 wrote:

You also have to understand, back then games where made to run at 320x240 on common hardware. That was probably a fast 486/slow pentium when Duke Nukem 3D came out and a midrange pentium when Blood came out. 640x480 wasnt really viable until 3d accelerators came about (unless you liked counting frames). The build engine had the VESA support so people could play at more oddball resolutions like 320x200 or 400x300.

Also your 5x86 was quite a bit faster than a 486 with its high clockspeed and increased cache. Its was like a mini pentium 😀

Hi-Octane was one of the first titles I came across where it had a 640x480 option and as pretty as it looked at that resolution, my system cried in pain. The original System Shock (CD version) was another.

Reply 18 of 18, by Deksor

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That framerate seems low to me, I can get in the high 20's at 800*600 with pentium mmx 200/233 (at least on the first level on the rooftops)

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