First post, by Der_Richter
So, i built another machine for a friend, from parts i had, so that he may use it to go to a retro lan-party. I wanted to make it durable and fast enough for most of the stuff he would want to run there, like Quake 3 and early Counter Strike and what not.
I built the following:
FIC Via Chipset Socket 370 Motherboard
Intel Pentium III Socket 370 1GHz. CPU (prod. year 2001)
512 MB PC-133 RAM
NVidia GeForce 2 MX400 GPU
Windows 98SE
SB Audigy2 sound (an OEM one without the markings that i found lying around, but it detects fine in the CT Drivers)
However, when running the machine through some of the games i've been using to test Win98 on my own machines, it seems to have a bit low performance still.
For instance, i choose to try REVolt (the rc car game) from 1999. Using 1024x768 resolution, The GF2MX drops to 40-ish frames per second at times, predominantly with other cars in view. At other times the frame rates are 100+.
Same story trying SiN, which should be not as needing of a game... Frame rates vary a lot. It can drop from 120 to 40-45 when entering certain rooms. Also, multiple enemies on screen drops it to sub-40s. This in a Quake2-engine game, which seems weird.
Also ran it through Unreal. There it keeps 100+ frames per second, but certain rooms can drop the rendering down to sub 30 frames per second.
Final tests where with Forsaken, where once again frame rates are 100+ but with portions of the game dropping it to sub-40s.
Notably, resolution changes have little to do with the portions of the games that are slowing down, and only seems to affect top framerates...
Is this normal behaviour or is there something going on here? I am suspecting that maybe the CPU hampers rendering somehow, but i still think 1GHz. should be enough to drive the games chosen... For instance the notoriously slowing down REVolt, have some recommended specs of like P200 and 4mb. 3D accelerator, and in my view that makes it hard to imagine it would choke up a 1GHz. PIII and a GF2MX400.
AGP Speed is set to 4X as the FIC doesn't handle 8X.
I have tested to replace RAM, HDD, Video boards (a TNT2 just keeps the portions of low frame rate and only lowers top frame rate).
Drivers are fine, updated and working.
Is this normal behaviour, or should i look at some adjustments? Would like to hand over as good of a unit as possible for my friend to enjoy the party.
Preserver, refurbisher, collector. In that order.