My Insane In The Brain Socket 939 SLI Sundae

Posted on 2014-04-30, 18:59

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I don't think I've bragged about my fastest Socket 939 system on VOGONS yet. So, here goes. :happy: I built this machine in February of 2007. I used it as my main computer until ~5 months ago, when I finally upgraded to something significantly faster--a Core i7 4930K at 4.3GHz. The only upgrades …

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Re: Dosbox on a 486

Posted on 2014-04-27, 02:27

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I remember playing with Dosbox on a P2-266 w/ Win2k a few years ago. It could just barely handle Keen4. You'd see Keen slowly count his fingers down as it loaded a level, and the music would sometimes glitch out. It did manage a full 30fps though! Still, I'm pretty sure my old 286-16 ran that game …

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Re: Cruising along with a 6800GT and...VIA?!

Posted on 2014-04-23, 21:50

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's pretty easy to quantify the slower GDI performance on VIA AGP. I did some tests with the Tom2D benchmark and WinXP on nForce2, VIA K8T800 and 815 years ago. It's not so slow that it raises instant alarms when you are on a VIA mobo, but if you use other chipsets a lot, you might start to notice …

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Re: Cruising along with a 6800GT and...VIA?!

Posted on 2014-04-22, 06:35

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That doesn't sound right - I'm not trying to come off like a fanboy, but I never experienced those kinds of problems with my 6800GT, and do not experience them with my FX 5800 Ultra (I still have the 6800, but it's not installed in anything right now) or later nVidia cards. Even the MX 4000 PCI …

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Re: Cruising along with a 6800GT and...VIA?!

Posted on 2014-04-22, 01:59

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It was the driver. I downgraded to some random Forceware 100 driver and it ran the benchmark. http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m139/Standard_Def_Steve/piii6800gt2dfr_zps1ff98d49.png The 2D speed is fine--pretty much identical to the 9800, according to Final Reality. But it certainly looks as if …

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Re: Socket 754 Curiosity Build

Posted on 2014-04-21, 19:22

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Flash really started to gain weight when Adobe took over, and it's been getting slower every few months since then. Just a year ago a fast PIII could handle 480p with "only" ~80% CPU usage. Today, that same machine can only push 16fps in 480p. 360p, while smooth, almost completely monopolizes the …

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Re: Cruising along with a 6800GT and...VIA?!

Posted on 2014-04-20, 17:52

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, just ran into my first NVIDIA-VIA bug with the EVGA board. Tried to run Final Reality to measure the card's 2D speed and the screen just exploded into a flickering, colorful mess. Luckily it didn't bring the entire system down like previous attempts with NV have--hitting esc brought it back to …

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Re: Socket 754 Curiosity Build

Posted on 2014-04-19, 18:17

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Try disabling Aero. I've noticed that it take a huge bite out of performance with old WDDM 1.0 video cards. Also, if you're on Chrome, try FireFox or IE in full screen mode. Seems to help performance with older rigs. Edit: Never mind, I guess I should learn to read. The CPU itself has more than …

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Re: Cruising along with a 6800GT and...VIA?!

Posted on 2014-04-19, 17:18

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cooling's fine, especially in the P3. Actually, all cards run much cooler in the P3 machine. Combination of not being driven as hard, plus the CPU itself dumps less than half the heat of the A64. This particular card is an NV40, which I just learned is a true AGP GPU. Huh. For some reason I thought …

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Cruising along with a 6800GT and...VIA?!

Posted on 2014-04-19, 07:55

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I scored a 6800GT-AGP for $10 last week. Despite the fact that every NVIDIA card newer than GF4 has given me problems of some kind in my VIA 694-based PIII-S, I threw it in and benchmarked anyway. I guess that officially makes me insane. :) Insanity sometimes pays off. Amazingly enough, this …

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Re: DX9 GPU prices

Posted on 2014-04-16, 18:39

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Probably heat. I think they ran significantly hotter. Definitely heat. The stock coolers on 9600-9800 cards absolutely suck. Not enough metal, plus whiny little fans that spin at approximately 3 billion RPM. My 9800 Pro actually seems to suffer from the "Voodoo2 Effect." When I had it running in a …

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Re: Anecdotal accounts of Windows 7 on dual Tualatin rigs for everyday computing

Posted on 2014-04-15, 18:30

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a dual 1.4 Tualatin overclocked to 1.6 and 2GB of SDRAM a 4670 agp. Also a raid 0 in the system with modern HD's. Windows 7 Ultimate is butter smooth. Aero and everything. I have flash acceleration from the video card and can play 720p HD just fine and doing lite multitasking behind it. …

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Re: DX9 GPU prices

Posted on 2014-04-15, 18:14

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I bought an AGP 6800GT for $10.79 on ebay just a few days ago. Didn't even have to pay for shipping because the seller was local. Even though I had one already, I just couldn't pass up such a deal. Who knows, this one might even work properly in my VIA chipsetted PIII-S rig and give me fast 2D and …

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Re: Anecdotal accounts of Windows 7 on dual Tualatin rigs for everyday computing

Posted on 2014-04-12, 21:50

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The HD 3000 IGPs officially support it. They have some bit of newness to their UVD hardware, I believe. For cards, you need HD 4000 or newer. But as I said in another post if you install Catalyst 9.11, all HD 3000 cards will do Flash acceleration, though it is a bit touchy and drops back to …

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Re: Anecdotal accounts of Windows 7 on dual Tualatin rigs for everyday computing

Posted on 2014-04-11, 19:01

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for all the input. If there is Flash GPU acceleration, it will probably be worth the suspected 20% performance drop. So any ATI HD 3000's series card will provide Flash acceleration in Win7? There is GUI Flash acceleration for XP? What series of ATI HD card is needed for WDDM 1.1? WDDM …

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Re: Anecdotal accounts of Windows 7 on dual Tualatin rigs for everyday computing

Posted on 2014-04-10, 19:20

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You nailed it - WDDM1.1 improves memory efficiency/performance substantially. Especially with multiple windows open. See here: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-graphics-ram-desktop-memory,7644.html I'm beginning to wish I had never sold my AGP 3850. I'm 97% certain that it would have …

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Re: windows xp box

Posted on 2014-04-10, 03:59

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by Standard Def Steve

in Milliways

in Milliways

d1stortion wrote: And what aspect of Core 2 that you are unfamiliar with would prevent you from using that instead? Obviously how it's spelled. 🤣

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Re: Anecdotal accounts of Windows 7 on dual Tualatin rigs for everyday computing

Posted on 2014-04-10, 00:54

by

by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've never tried Win7 on a Dualatin, but I have experimented with it on my single 1.59GHz PIII with 1.5GB of RAM. Performance is OK as long as you disable Aero. With Aero enabled, everything (except for window moves) becomes quite choppy. The higher the screen resolution, the choppier it gets. At …

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Re: 1.4ghz p3 or 1.8ghz p4 for win 98

Posted on 2014-04-07, 07:33

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As far as A64 being "so much better" than Pentium 4 - not really. I'm not trying to goad a fanboy argument, but you have to remember that Pentium 4 of the same era did support 64-bit, and that the IMC and 64-bit support was just as much about marketing on AMD's part as it was about actual …

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Re: 1.4ghz p3 or 1.8ghz p4 for win 98

Posted on 2014-04-07, 00:36

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by Standard Def Steve

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think the Athlon 64 will prove to be a much better retro machine than the P4 in the coming years. We'll see I guess :P This. IMO the only time buying a P4 made any sense was during the first few months of 2003--when the Athlon XP was finally starting to run out of steam and A64 wasn't quite ready …

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