minigig wrote:

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. […]
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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. 1080p still drops frames.

I also have a dual Pentium 2 450 overclocked to 570 and 768 MB of ram. That has an 9800 Pro and raid 0 with 76 GB raptors.

Windows 7 Pro works well on this. Must keep multitasking down. Still can play YouTube just 480p takes everything it has to play. The Ram does limit it but really not bad.

I find Windows 7 to work better on older hardware than XP in every case if you have the drivers for the system (that does include Microsoft drivers.)

For a smooth usable system the key is more than one core , enough memory and the fasted storage medium you can get.

I demand that you create a new thread about that P3 monster of yours--complete with high-res photos, detailed benchmarks, and a YouTube video. 😀

I second the motion.

minigig wrote:

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.

Please tell us how many 3D marks 2001 you get with such machine! I would kill to know how well a ATI 4670 does with dual tualatin chips 😀

I am drooling in anticipation of hearing more about this BEAST of a rig.

feipoa wrote:

Does anyone have first hand, everyday computing experience with a dual PIII-S Tualatin 1.4 GHz computer on Windows 7? I have two such computers that I am unwilling to retire. One has 2 GB RAM, the other has 3 GB RAM. Both systems fit the system requirements for Win 7 as specified by Microsoft, however I am looking for anecdotal accounts of their performance and usability. The purpose of these computers is primarly for browsing, paying bills online, e-mail, etc. In my mind, they are sufficient for these purposes with XP Pro but I'd like to find out if everything is going to be, say, 50% slower in Win 7.

I am already aware that Youtube and other Flash-based websites can be a dog, especially when using Chrome in XP. This does not bother me. I don't watch videos online much, but if I have to, I can still play Youtube videos on Firefox 3.6.24 without any noticable loss of frames.

EDIT: For the sake of this thread, a new computer, motherboard or other new hardware is out of consideration.

For everyday use I have a notebook IBM X61s with C2D L7500 @ 1.2GHz (battery died, with battery it run @ 1.6GHz), 4GB RAM. It run W7 nicely... now it runs W8.1 even more smoothly. For simple tasks your configuration should do just fine.

I'm curious as to what the Windows System Rating is on such a machine.

This was the rating on W7 @ 1.6GHz.

On W8.1 the Experience Index is removed. But this program does the same thing. This time at 1.2GHz:

May we see the glorious motherboard that does this? 😀

Is minigig and kixs the same person? 😜

Of course it isn't... just for comparison that Dual P3 1.4GHz is in my laptop CPU power range - maybe a little slower because of SDRAM memory. Using Dual P3 and some good AGP graphics card that machine should be running W7 nicely. Just saying...

ODwilly wrote:

I am drooling in anticipation of hearing more about this BEAST of a rig.

I'd like to hear more about he got both CPU's to overclock to 1.6 ghz on the same motherboard. It usually takes a lot of experimentation to find a pair of CPU's that can both be overclocked that high and THEN you have to find a motherboard that will overclock both CPU sockets to that speed. A lot of the time what happens is the voltage regulator on one of the sockets won't overvolt as well as the other one and ends up holding both of them back. So you need a pair of magic Tualatins AND a pair of magic VRM's on the motherboard.

The prospect of squeezing more internet life out of my MSI Pro266TD Master dual Tualatin motherboard got me excited, so I went and bought a HIS-branded ATI HD 4350. While I was originally eyeing on a dual DVI 4650 on eBay, the buyers got a little too spendy for me. I found this HIS HD 4350 from an online Canadian-based shop, NIB. Unfortunately, to my grave disappointment, I beleive the HD 4350 is not compatible with my MSI Pro266TD board. When I tried to boot, the screen stays black and the motherboard has some distinctive beeps, which I beleive are related to the graphics card. Based on the HDD noise, I feel the system continues to boot, however the computer is of no use to me without some graphics display. The MSI Pro266TD does have a 4x AGP slot, so I was puzzled why the HD 4350 was having trouble. Anyone have any ideas on how to circumvent this? Alternately, is there another brand, native-AGP, graphics card I can try out which is known to have built-in Flash-acceleration?

I do have a ATI FirePro MV 2260 PCI card which I was considering using on my PCI-only dual Tualatin computer. Does this card have built-in Flash acceleration? According to Wiki, it was released in 2008 with RV620 core.

I have another dual Tualatin with 4x AGP, the SuperMicro P3TDDE. Like the MSI Pro266TD, it is based on the VIA Apollo Pro 266T chipset. The SuperMicro P3TDDE booted fine with the HD 4350 installed. I will begin some tests on this HD 4350 in the SuperMicro P3TDDE. I do not really fancy the idea of doing a motherboard swap. The MSI Pro266TD is my main computer, to swap motherboards will likely require a format/reinstall. From some past testing of the SuperMicro P3TDDE, I recall it not cooperating well with CL2 memory when 2GB was installed. This was why I went with the MSI Pro266TD - it uses DDR, although the anticipated performance boost was negligable at best. I suppose if the HD 4350 works out, running it at CL3 is a small price to pay for an accelerated online experience. I am hoping that the HD 4350 will accelerate any Flash-based web content, not just videos of a particular resolution. If all goes well with my XP test, I'll test it on Windows 7 if I can find a free trial.

feipoa wrote:

When I tried to boot, the screen stays black and the motherboard has some distinctive beeps, which I beleive are related to the graphics card. Based on the HDD noise, I feel the system continues to boot, however the computer is of no use to me without some graphics display.

Do you hear the windows login sound? Probably you know this, I used to use the Windows 'Narrator' feature(i.e if the sound drivers are loaded and working) to find out whether the system is completely booted up and that the problem is only with the display. IIRC the shortcut key combination is 'Windows + U' which will open up the narrator and read out the screen contents which was very useful to me at the time when I too faced a similar problem.
Another option might be to go to Windows boot options menu with F8 and then blindly press the arrow keys to boot with 'VGA mode' if the problem is only with the driver and not with the BIOS initialization of the card itself. However with the beeps, this possibility looks remote in which case "floopy boot to dos and running the PCI config tool to dump the configuration space of the devices" has a slight chance to identify the issue if it is not hardware-related.

feipoa wrote:

Alternately, is there another brand, native-AGP, graphics card I can try out which is known to have built-in Flash-acceleration?

Unfortunately, native-AGP cards do not have the hardware H.264 decoders necessary for full Flash acceleration. NVIDIA's fastest native-AGP card was the 6800 Ultra; ATI's was the X850XT PE.

I've never tried AGP HD 4000 series cards, but I used to have an HD 3850 that worked just fine in my VIA 694T based PIII system. My AGP-bridged x1950Pro also works great.

I do have a ATI FirePro MV 2260 PCI card which I was considering using on my PCI-only dual Tualatin computer. Does this card have built-in Flash acceleration? According to Wiki, it was released in 2008 with RV620 core.

RV620 does have UVD in it, but as swaaye mentioned earlier, Flash acceleration may be a little problematic on that GPU (it's the same chip that powers lower end Radeon HD 3000 cards, after all). You may have to stick with Catalyst 9.11 to use hardware acceleration, if it works at all on the FirePro card.

From some past testing of the SuperMicro P3TDDE, I recall it not cooperating well with CL2 memory when 2GB was installed. This was why I went with the MSI Pro266TD - it uses DDR, although the anticipated performance boost was negligable at best.

How many DIMMs are installed? I had an Apollo Pro 266T board many years ago, and iirc it could only handle CL2 reliably with 2 x 1GB installed. 4 x 512MB at 2-2-2 was a no go.

If all goes well with my XP test, I'll test it on Windows 7 if I can find a free trial.

Win 7 32-bit with SP1
Home Premium: http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-58996.iso
Pro: http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59183.iso
Ultimate: http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59463.iso

There's your 30 day trial. 😀

Is there a bridged AGP card from NVIDIA which has Flash acceleration that you would recommend?

The Apollo Pro 266T handles CL2 reliably with 1x512MB. It handles CL2 with 2x512MB fairly well, but I did receive MemTest errors after 35 hours on one particular MemTest test. With 4x512MB CL2, there would always be an error on a certain MemTest Test # after the 1st pass. I think it was Test 5 or 6 and 8.

With 4x512MB at CL3, I do not get any errors.

Here is the speed breakdown using cachechk v7:

Read/Write (MB/s)
CL2 Unbuffered = 775 / 473
CL3 Unbuffered = 726 / 395
CL2 Buffered = 726 / 395
CL2 Buffered w/ECC on = 694 / 395
CL3 Buffered = 694 / 395
CL3 Buffered w/ECC on = 656 / 395

I am shooting for 726 MB/s read.

If I am going to use Windows 7, I'd ideally want 3GB of RAM or more. This means I would need buffered (registered) 1 GB DIMMs. Or are there also 1 GB PC133 unbuffered DIMMs? I have a feeling that 1 GB buffered CL2 DIMMs will work at CL2 given the speed drop noted above, but I do not think they exist. Do they? I can only find 512 MB buffered CL2 DIMMs. I tried my 1 GB buffered CL3 DIMMs at CL2, but I received errors.

So unless there exist 1GB buffered CL2 DIMMs or 1GB unbuffered CL3 DIMMs, I will be forced to either use [2GB] 4x512 MB of RAM at 726 MB/s, or 3x1GB of buffered CL3 RAM at 694 MB/s.

I and fairly busy with work and family , I when get around to it , I will post some info on my P3 system. I have been lurking far too long.

feipoa wrote:

So unless there exist 1GB buffered CL2 DIMMs or 1GB unbuffered CL3 DIMMs, I will be forced to either use [2GB] 4x512 MB of RAM at 726 MB/s, or 3x1GB of buffered CL3 RAM at 694 MB/s.

look for BGA sdram. It is on a newer process and overclocks well. I bought three of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/121288981097 (6gb) for my dual tualatin. It ran 24 hours of memtest and 24 hours prime at 2-2-2 I don't think a better deal exists for name-brand 1gbb ecc/reg ram

Thanks luckybob. I put in an order. Do you know if the onchip ROM is programmed for CL2 or CL3? While my SuperMicro board allows for manual override of CL2/3, my SAI2 board does not.

I recall when I bought 1GB BGA DDR ram for my MSI dual Tualatin, the density was incorrect and would not work. I am taking a gamble on these BGA PC133 chips - I hope it pays off.

well, I don't know for sure. I just gave it a spin and there is not a bios option for "auto" or "by spd". resetting the bios to factory drops everything to the default 3-3-3. So either the board's default is 3-3-3 or it read the spd and defaulted to 3-3-3

That said, the chips are designed to run pc133 2-2-2. at least if i'm reading the spec sheet correctly. they are even rated for 143mhz 2-2-2! if you find modules with a -6 at the end, they are good for 166+!

Doesn't Everest Home Edition or Astra32 indicate if the memory is CL2 or CL3 programmed? Is this motherboard in a system whereby you could check? Sometimes the memory chips may be rated for 2-2-2 at, say, 133 MHz, but the module manufacturers program the SPD ROM to 3-3-3 for whatever reason. While I have alreay ordered the chips, I'm really interested to know if they are programmed by SPD to be CL2 or CL3.

astra bombs during spd detection. i dont have windows installed at the moment so i'm using dos. memtest has an spd reader, but it fails as well. its currently 4am, but I'll give it another shot later. I dont have any other boards handy tht take ecc/reg dimms, so i'm going to do an install of xp and see where that goes.