Re: Radeon 9200 PCI and old computers
Posted on 2011-06-03, 19:09
I wonder how a PCI 6200 would do. FX 5200 sucks regardless of bus.
Re: Anyone using a RAMBUS system?
Posted on 2011-06-02, 17:57
Yes, it's well known that the P4 architecture is the slowest clock-for-clock among any of the modern lines. But the whole point to Netburst is to run at such high clock speeds as to negate that disadvantage. Obviously, they hadn't foreseen scaling issues at higher clock speeds, which made going …
Re: Questions about disk access
Posted on 2011-06-02, 00:03
I've read that busmastering IDE has little benefit in DOS because DOS is a single task OS. But sure you could get higher transfer rates which can be useful in some scenarios like disk to disk transfers. The CPU utilization savings would be less tangible though and also I can see potential for …
Re: Anyone using a RAMBUS system?
Posted on 2011-06-01, 23:52
If I didn't have several high watt recent ATX PSUs around that might annoy me too lol Regarding P4 and the semiconductor physics failure that it was, if you consider that each CPU spends several years in development, you can probably safely say that Core 2 was in development when Northwood came out. …
Re: Anyone using a RAMBUS system?
Posted on 2011-06-01, 19:25
I had a Gateway OEM board (Intel D845GV or something like that) and a P4 Willamette 1.5 with PC133 CL2. It was so slow... I swear a Coppermine 700 is similar when installing XP and just web browsing and such. P4's performance varies wildly. If the app works well with its long pipeline and loves-to- …
Re: Anyone using a RAMBUS system?
Posted on 2011-06-01, 00:12
Case in point, the N64 didn't need RDRAM. It must have been chosen for its high bandwidth on a narrow (cheap) bus. FPM would have needed to be 64-bits wide to match up on that aspect. Also, EDO and FPM were quite expensive until 1996. There was a RAM market collapse that year. This was instrumental …
Re: Anyone using a RAMBUS system?
Posted on 2011-05-31, 21:47
The N64 expansion pack bumped it up to 8MB. This mostly allowed for larger, more complex game worlds instead of more graphics quality. It didn't help with fillrate limits or solve the inflexible GPU texture cache that could only practically handle around 16x16 pixel textures. Just think about that …
Re: Anyone using a RAMBUS system?
Posted on 2011-05-31, 21:43
Here's a brief review of an STB board using the chip. VGA Out only, though. http://www.pcworld.com/article/23322/stb_nitro_dvd.html Horrible gaming card. Slow with lots of missing textures and other graphical glitches. Yup. I ran into somebody with one once and I ran 3DMark99 on it. It didn't …
Re: Anyone using a RAMBUS system?
Posted on 2011-05-31, 20:52
All that being said, the N64 may not really have benefited from too much more texture memory as the cartridges couldn't store larger textures :happyhappy:. Expansion pack supported games look better for certain, but not so much better. [/i] Yeah the cartridge space was an issue but the texture …
Re: Anyone using a RAMBUS system?
Posted on 2011-05-31, 18:49
N64's memory bus is a whole 9bits wide so that must have saved some money indeed. SDRAM would have been bleeding edge at the time too. N64 was designed from 93-96. The other consoles of the time had various separate banks of FP DRAM. N64 was the first with a fast unified bank. The console had only …
Re: 3D Accelerators Compared
Posted on 2011-05-31, 18:40
Well that would be faster than Verite V1000. 😉 And all Virge cards. But they were definitely behind the times.
Re: Anyone using a RAMBUS system?
Posted on 2011-05-31, 03:10
Willamette performs ok on an i850 setup. The SDRAM i845 boxes were horrible though. I remember reading that Willamette should have launched with 512K L2 but they chopped it down to bring up the profit margin more. Northwood sure proved that 512K was much more appropriate for P4 than 256K. If …
Re: 3D Accelerators Compared
Posted on 2011-05-31, 03:01
Maybe around a G200. They are rather buggy and best avoided for 3D. http://www.imagebam.com/image/61642730710449
Re: Practice PC # 2 - retro PC - Windows 98
Posted on 2011-05-30, 22:41
Most mobo manuals tell you a lot about putting a box together. Look up the manual online if you don't have it. Very necessary for a beginner.
Re: old nVidia detonator drivers - recommendation and where to get them?
Posted on 2011-05-29, 23:03
sliderider wrote: You mean the cheat they applied to make your FX5900 Ultra appear faster than it really was in 3DMark03? 😜 Yup those!! 🤣 Actually I think these companies optimize the snot out of all 3DMarks.
Re: old nVidia detonator drivers - recommendation and where to get them?
Posted on 2011-05-29, 19:26
It looks to me like Vanta = TNT2 M64. Those results are interesting. That the TNT2 M64 / Vanta could continue scaling upward in performance on an Athlon 1.6 GHz at 800x600x16 is curious (3dm99's default). Something is being optimized there. It might be affected by NV's image quality reduction hacks …
Re: Anyone using a RAMBUS system?
Posted on 2011-05-29, 02:30
How about Nintendo 64? 😁
Re: Found a Compaq Voodoo 3 3500 AGP for sale...
Posted on 2011-05-29, 02:12
sliderider wrote: Yeah for all those people who can afford to spend $2000 on a shoebox PC. If I had more money than I knew what to do with I'd place an order. 😁
Re: Gateway 2000 System CD Image
Posted on 2011-05-29, 02:08
I have version 4.2 from a DX2/50 system and version 1.9 from a Pentium MMX box.
Re: Anyone using a RAMBUS system?
Posted on 2011-05-29, 02:02
P3 couldn't benefit from RAMBUS because P3's bus is matched to SDRAM. Any more memory bandwidth is useless aside from maybe some AGP transfers. And if you got a sys with PC600 it was slower than P133 SDRAM. RAMBUS and P4 are a different story however. Amigaz has a sweet i850 rig but haven't seen him …
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