You're right. Radeon 9xxx was 9.0a, X8xx was 9.0b and finally X1xxx jumped to 9.0c. Unfortunately X1000 series dropped Win98 support, so there is no reason for me to have that card in a rig. Not usable for 98 and too slow for XP. If I need more performance then X800 XT for XP, I rather put there HD4770 for example, since it's really just a matter of swapping GPU and 4770 is much, much faster.

As mentioned in another topic, I tried to actually properly benchmark HL2 this time. And the results are not good for Win98.

This are graphics settings (really high, but I wanted to push it). I used timedemos from Anandtech with HL2 build 2187.

And these are the results for Win98...

...and WinXP.

Everything in machine HW wise was identical (current specs in OP, GPU for these tests was X800 XT), the only change is OS. Poor 98...

I'll be testing also Doom 3, I'm currently waiting for physical discs.

Srandista wrote on 2020-04-27, 18:12:

And these are the results for Win98...

OOF. I'm guessing some Win98 drivers were only an afterthought for this hardware.

You're comparing single vs dual core in an SMP enabled title.

Hmm, that's excellent point! I'll try to disable second core and re-run tests in XP, thanks!

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-04-29, 00:37:

You're comparing single vs dual core in an SMP enabled title.

Well, I tried it with just one core active and results are... exactly the same...

So HL2 is clearly optimized to Windows XP somehow. Just FYI, I used this guide to limit system to one core only and verified with CPU-Z that indeed only one core was active.

Srandista wrote on 2020-05-12, 18:14:

Well, I tried it with just one core active and results are... exactly the same...

Interesting.

Well here it is, another small upgrade. Even though there is NIC integrated on 4CoreDual-VSTA, for some reason it's just slower, 100Mbs card. I thought that I can handle that, but after some period of suffering while looking at 12MB/s transfer rate, I decide that there's a time to get a proper NIC, a Gigabit one. And by chance, one guy on local retro forum was dumping some of his excess inventory, with one of PC part being PCI Gigabit card with RTL8169 chip, offered for best price of... free :)

Drivers for XP could still be downloaded from official Realtek site, and they worked on first try. In same package are also Win98 drivers, but they were giving me VFAT BSOD, same like in following Vogons thread. At the end I solve this issue with older drivers, which I downloaded from here: https://www.helpjet.net/Fs-99823576-88304586- … 20-extract.html.

Was that upgrade worth it? Oh yeah, I went from measly 12MB/s to 40MB/s, and that's still on the same drive, old 80GB IDE spinning drive. I'm planning to install there some SLC SSD for a system drive, and VelociRaptor as a data drive, and on those, I'm expecting transfer rate to greatly improve.

Srandista wrote on 2020-05-26, 18:14:

Well here it is, another small upgrade. Even though there is NIC integrated on 4CoreDual-VSTA, for some reason it's just slower, 100Mbs card. I thought that I can handle that, but after some period of suffering while looking at 12MB/s transfer rate, I decide that there's a time to get a proper NIC, a Gigabit one. And by chance, one guy on local retro forum was dumping some of his excess inventory, with one of PC part being PCI Gigabit card with RTL8169 chip, offered for best price of... free 😀

Drivers for XP could still be downloaded from official Realtek site, and they worked on first try. In same package are also Win98 drivers, but they were giving me VFAT BSOD, same like in following Vogons thread. At the end I solve this issue with older drivers, which I downloaded from here: https://www.helpjet.net/Fs-99823576-88304586- … 20-extract.html.

Was that upgrade worth it? Oh yeah, I went from measly 12MB/s to 40MB/s, and that's still on the same drive, old 80GB IDE spinning drive. I'm planning to install there some SLC SSD for a system drive, and VelociRaptor as a data drive, and on those, I'm expecting transfer rate to greatly improve.

Interesting, I had noticed the same poor network performance with my 4CoreDual-VSTA so I also bought a Gigabit ethernet card, however after installing it I had exacly the same speeds as before to my NAS drive, so I removed it thinking the limitation was elsewhere...

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-05-26, 20:28:

Interesting, I had noticed the same poor network performance with my 4CoreDual-VSTA so I also bought a Gigabit ethernet card, however after installing it I had exacly the same speeds as before to my NAS drive, so I removed it thinking the limitation was elsewhere...

Well, the stock performance is to be expected, you can't get more from 100Mbit. But you really should get more from Gigabit NIC. Maybe lower spec cable? I had this situation once, when I used some random cable from my cable pile, and NAS downgraded connection to 100Mbit only, even though cable was spec wise capable to running Gigabit speeds.

No I had to order another cable so it was the right speed. Maybe I'll re-examine this in the future. Maybe a router issue...

Yay, another update. This time a big one (at least from outside). I decided to repurposed the original case to some other PC and therefore I needed transplant parts to a new one. And rather then go to some more appropriate one I went even more mental, and put all the parts into modern case with acrylic side panel, in this case (no pun intended) Fractal Design Focus G in Black. Current photos are in the first post.

With that, I found out, that my optical drive is too long and interfering with motherboard. I have shorter ones at home, but all of them are SATA ones, and I needed IDE one. So, find and bought one locally, and installation went without a hitch.

And last but not least, I finally installed SSD to the rig. I bought few cheap X25-E SLC SSDs, and they are great for retro machines. Small enough to not having LBA48 issues, and since it's SLC, I don't worry about longevity and endurance, not even little. To accompany it, I put 80GB mobile IDE drive there as well.

That's it for now. Though sometimes in near future, I'll probably replace that tower cooler with downdraft stock Intel (one with copper core), since VRM on this board don't have any heatsinks on it and I'll need to use that tower cooler in some other machine.