Re: K6-3+ 550 vs early Athlon/Duron

Posted on 2016-02-26, 21:41

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

the problem I see with k6 3 is that it's to incosistent, it seems good for some tests, but when things go wrong, they seem to go really wrong, while k7 is always good. Q2 performs poorly per clock with a Tnt http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu/k6-iii/quake2-tnt.gif but fine with glide... so it …

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Re: Good Socket 478 XP build

Posted on 2016-02-26, 19:42

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

yes I think 6600GT is a solid choice (basically a little better than the previous gen high end like 9800 and FX5900s) 7 series is maybe more adequate for the early dual core days (64 X2, Pentium D), but could also work well, to give some extra performance for perhaps higher res/AA

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Re: 1995 IBM Aptiva build, 66mhz 486DX2, to i7 6700k!

Posted on 2016-02-26, 11:21

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

windows 95 wallpaper and all he did a very good job with the case, but I feel like the monitor and mouse kind of ruins the look, still I find it pretty cool.

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Re: Best platform for a Win9x retro pc?

Posted on 2016-02-26, 07:07

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

you can get great performance and compatibility with some pentium 4 and Athlon XP boards... as for period accurate, I would personally go with Pentium 3 or Athlon/Duron. from your hardware I would go with the Celeron 300A @ 450, awe64, Ti 4400 I think, obviously if you need glide is good to have the …

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Re: Where are all these Voodoo5 5500s coming from?

Posted on 2016-02-25, 12:11

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've used the 5500 and the 4500 with my abit nf7s, it always ran at 33MHz, it didn't have any other PCI cards at the time I think, but if the chipset supported, perhaps it was a bios limitation or some other factor, I still have a 4500, I never actually used it at 66MHz as far as I know, I always …

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Re: Where are all these Voodoo5 5500s coming from?

Posted on 2016-02-24, 12:12

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

that was a big problem for the Voodoo 5 5500, no AGP 1.5v support or slow PCI speed (and the nice thing about the v4 4500 AGP4x) Actually the performance difference between a V5 on AGP and PCI66 is negligible. I never had a motherboard with PCI 66MHz, most boards are 33Mhz the 5500 PCI I had was …

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Re: Fastest Windows XP System

Posted on 2016-02-24, 10:51

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

SSDs should work fine (with a performance hit, but still better than using a hard drive) in IDE mode!? I'd use an hybrid SSHD with Windows XP any day before an SSD. XP does not support stuff like TRIM command so I'd feel better with flash memory that is not directly managed by the OS. as far as I …

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Re: Old P3 Dell project?

Posted on 2016-02-24, 05:50

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm curious about the built-in tnt2, is it a model64 running with half the memory bus (32bit) when the slot is not used?

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Re: Where are all these Voodoo5 5500s coming from?

Posted on 2016-02-24, 05:46

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

that was a big problem for the Voodoo 5 5500, no AGP 1.5v support or slow PCI speed (and the nice thing about the v4 4500 AGP4x) but, I would also think that the hardware failure rate was higher for cards like the Radeon 9800 than it was for the 5500?

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Re: Fastest Windows XP System

Posted on 2016-02-24, 05:40

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

agent_x007 wrote: HDD : ST2000DL003 (SSD won't do => last line of this post) No AHCI support tho 😒 SSDs should work fine (with a performance hit, but still better than using a hard drive) in IDE mode!?

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Re: PSU - bust the myth

Posted on 2016-02-10, 21:28

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Deltas are generally good solid reliable PSUs and a 300w Delta can probably support more actual load than a 350-400w no-name brand. Delta gives the continuous power (full time) whereas no-name brands give the peak power (short time) ratings. . . Random thoughts/comments. . That you game adds less …

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Re: How to ID Intel stock coolers?

Posted on 2016-02-09, 20:29

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

the p3 650 I have came with a black Intel cooler I think I've been using the 65nm e6300 cooler for many years, it's currently running with my 3GHz I5 quite well, I've also tried it with a 65nm C2Q at 3Ghz but it was to close to the limit even with low voltages, it's like the Q6600 cooler but with a …

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Re: PSU - bust the myth

Posted on 2016-02-09, 20:21

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

the PSU I'm currently running on my PII 400/440bx/9500PRO (a card which uses AGP + additional power connector) seems to deliver 120W for 3.3 and 5v combined, it doesn't really have stability problems, but it's from an unknown age, and not popular brand. I tested with my kill a watt clone and the …

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Re: Will you ever build a Win7 retro PC?

Posted on 2016-02-04, 15:43

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

AFAIK you NEED to upgrade an existing (and validated) Windows 7+ install to be able to activate Windows 10 for free. Once you do this the motherboard is tied to the license and you can do a clean install whenever you want, but the first time it needs to be an upgrade and not a "side" install on …

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Re: Will you ever build a Win7 retro PC?

Posted on 2016-02-04, 15:20

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

All my current machines run Windows 7 and will until no longer supported. :) I'd image them, upgrade them to Windows 10 (so you get the free licence), and then revert the image. When it is not supported anymore you can just upgrade to whatever Windows 10 build MS will have released by then - with a …

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Re: Will you ever build a Win7 retro PC?

Posted on 2016-02-04, 14:19

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

All my current machines run Windows 7 and will until no longer supported. :) win 7 support ends in 4 years, but until July you can still do a free upgrade to win10 which gets you support until 2025, also if you play new games, being stuck with 7 during the next 2-3 years is not going to be ideal, …

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Re: Will you ever build a Win7 retro PC?

Posted on 2016-02-01, 18:50

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

a 5 years old PC can be quite good, let's not forget Sandy Bridge is 5 years old, Fermi is 6 years old... those are still relevant enough for current software I think...

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Re: Will you ever build a Win7 retro PC?

Posted on 2016-02-01, 16:53

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't remember seeing any compatibility problems with Vista+ era software and hardware on 8 and 10, so I don't see to many reasons for using 7 specifically... I think using XP or 10 works well.

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Re: VGA In Memoriam

Posted on 2016-02-01, 14:01

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What's a good way of piping VGA output to a TV? I'm temporarily working in the living room and there's a big old 1990s TV in the corner with RCA/S-Video inputs, and I was wondering if I could use it to watch movies. My video card has a spare VGA output. you will need some converter, or a graphics …

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Re: Conroe865PE Set up (Quad 775 and AGP)

Posted on 2016-01-24, 09:46

by

by SPBHM

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ok, now with a more robust set Up (a Silverstone s12 psu) my system is more stable with 4 sticks of ram. The memory divider is 3:2 by default, can do nothing about that. I am using the Bliss 7800GS+ (G71), with latest legacy drivers and I find it really slow.... On Crysys it is totally crushed be a …

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